Weight of Stars: Three Gods of New Asgard Novllas
Author: Tessa Gratton
Date: 2014-09-15 22:35:14+00:00
Description: "This infinitely exciting tale's twist and turns highlight the characters' missions as they decide which identity to choose: hero, martyr, or villain. Readers looking for a sophisticated fantasy that shows a raw, rowdy, and rough side of life will be utterly satisfied. For fans of Robin LaFevers's His Fair Assassins series. " -School Library Journal The United States of Asgard is a nation of poets and warriors, of rock bands and evangelical preachers, of gods and their children. The media tracks troll sightings and reality TV is about dragon slaying and teen prophets. The president rules the c

THE WEIGHT OF STARS

By Tessa Gratton

The Weight of Stars
Copyright © 2014 by Tessa Gratton. All rights reserved.

Cover design by Saundra Mitchell

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author or publisher.

The United States of Asgard is a nation of poets and warriors, of rock bands and evangelical preachers, of gods and their children. The media tracks troll sightings and reality TV is about dragon slaying and teen prophets. The president rules the country alongside a council of Valkyrie, and the military has a special battalion dedicated to eradicating the threat of Greater Mountain Trolls.

Welcome to the United States of Asgard: Be sure to watch for troll-sign!

GOLD RUNNER tells the story of Amon Thorson, bastard son of Thor Thunderer, a rebel who specializes in illegal troll artifacts and elf gold. Someone has stolen Loki’s Mask of Changing, and Amon is the prime suspect, putting a famous hunter and a mysterious stranger on his tail.

LADY BERSERK is about Vider, the first female berserker warrior in generations, who is loved by Loki Changer but determined to stand on her own. One of six celebrities invited to participate in a televised dragon hunt, she knows things are not as they seem—which is usually a sign Loki is up to his old tricks.

GLORY’S TEETH offers a glimpse into the wild heart of the Fenris Wolf, also called Glory, trapped in the shape of a teenaged girl for hundreds of years so she cannot grow large enough to devour the sun and begin the end of the world. But Glory's seen signs that now is time she’s fated to hunt Baldur the Sun down and eat him.

With evocative writing and lush world building, Tessa Gratton once again captivates readers with her inventive reimagining of Norse mythology and American life in this collection of novellas based on her United States of Asgard series.

Note: the author recommends reading the novels in order of publication. But the novellas stand alone and can be read in any order.

Here is the United States of Asgard:

A nation of poets and warriors, of rock bands and entrepreneurs.

In Alta California Thor Thunderer trains the specialized Hunter Unit of the Army to raid the dens of Greater Mountain Trolls and track elf gold.

From the White Hall in Philadelphia the president rules Congress, a body of officials elected from each kingstate to represent the will of the citizenry. A Council of Valkyrie speaks to the nation on behalf of the gods, and to the gods on behalf of the people.

Every Yule, Odin Alfather presides over the national sacrifice at the Bright Home gallowfield.

Prophets dedicated to Freya, the goddess of dreams, roam the country, reading the future in handfuls of runes and dancing along the web of destiny to predict drought and wildfire, what apprenticeship this girl should choose, whether that boy will survive his first ritual combat.

The most famous colleges are the Poets College in Shield, Colorada, and the Hangadrottin War College in Bostown, though Yale’s lawspeaker program is considered the best in the land.

Every lost child has a home in one of Loki Changer’s orphanages, though it pays to be cautious, for the Changer comes in many forms and his heart is fickle.

Cities along the Mizizibi River are overrun of late by bridge-eater trolls with tiny, monkey-like hands and diamond teeth, while prairie homesteaders put up fences to ward off the cat wights, who roam in huge packs.

Frigg Cloud-Spinner and Freyr the Satisfied have joined with Bliss Church preachers throughout the South to promote new charities to aid veterans of the nation’s recent wars.

The people of New Asgard choose, when they turn thirteen, which of the many gods to dedicate themselves to. Berserker warriors belong to Odin, the god of madness and poetry and war. Prophets belong to Freya. Those with fire and humor in their hearts are Loki’s; he also claims any who are lost, any who do not fit into the roles the world assigns them. If you value service and family above all else, you may find satisfaction with Freyr. If loyalty is your favored virtue, or if you believe people must fight for their own choices, Thor Thunderer will welcome you.

But of course, of all the gods, the most beloved is Baldur the Beautiful. The god of light and hope, who dies every year when the summer dies, and rises again when winter passes. Because he dies, because he knows to fear the dreams of death, he is the god most human. He is hope in a world where young adulthood is made more complicated by prophecy and ritual combat, where a road trip means the danger of encountering wandering bands of trolls, where everyone has a thread in the great weave of destiny. He is the spark of divinity in us all.

In the following pages, you will find mad warriors, rebellious godlings, hidden elf gold, dragon fire, trickster gods, desperate hunger, kissing and fighting and heartache, defeat and triumph and death and destiny.

Isn’t all that what you’re here for?

Welcome to the United States of Asgard. Do watch for troll-sign.

Table of Contents

Gold Runner

Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five | Chapter Six | Chapter Seven | Chapter Eight | Chapter Nine

Lady Berserk

Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five | Chapter Six | Chapter Seven | Chapter Eight | Chapter Nine | Chapter Ten | Chapter Eleven | Chapter Twelve | Chapter Thirteen

Glory’s Teeth

Chapter One | Chapter Two

About The Strange Maid

Acknowledgements

Also by Tessa Gratton

About the Author

GOLD RUNNER

By Tessa Gratton

For all the girls who love themselves

ONE.

It’s business as usual in the gods’ hall.

Screaming and laughter, spilled beer sticky on the floor of Bright Home, static from competing personal microphones. False starlight shines down from the vaulted ceiling onto Loki Changer, with his boots on the high table, yelling out over the crowd as Thor Thunderer tries to scoop him away. The Alfather sits on his throne wearing an impassive smile, staring across the hall with that swirling crystal eye. His giant ravens glide between the golden pillars to hunt scraps of candied bacon and memories. There’s the brother-sister duo of Freyr and Freya, toasting each other in their old-fashioned velvet and silk. There’s Tyr the Just, with his silver hand on the head of the massive Fenris Wolf. She crouches beside him with her tongue lolling hungrily out. Baldur’s chair is empty as always this time of year, six weeks dead as he is, and sleeping somewhere in Hel for the winter.

Spread out from the high table are lines of benches and guest tables, covered in platters of meat and fruit, sloshed with mead and beer and the occasional disappointing glass of water. The president of the United States of Asgard dominates the first table, with his wife and his lawspeaker, surrounded by kingstate princes and members of Congress who pulled a long straw for a seat tonight. Next come artists and celebrities, Tinseltown stars, military heroes in their studded uniforms, preachers and high priests and jarls.

Then there’s my table, tucked here to the side where we aren’t quite forgotten but can be pleasantly ignored by our famous parents.

I slam my mug down onto the wooden table, chipping a new gouge. There’s no beer to slop out because I’ve sucked it all away, though cursed if it may as well be water for all the drunk I feel. Blood from my father, maybe the most famous carouser in millennia, plus seventeen years of these holiday parties has bumped my tolerance up to godlike. Jamie Calling, beside me, isn’t so cursed, and knocks his shoulder into mine as he leans precariously near to show me pictures on his cell phone. “Here we are in Baja California catching the last waves,” he slurs. It’s a sharp image of him, looking fantastic in Speedos, with his fellow kingstate prince Edward Something, whose name I never bother to remember because he’s a coward.

Across the table, Liz Thorlin catches my eye, and one side of her gorgeous mouth curls up. Despite her name, she’s Freyr the Satisfied’s granddaughter from one of the god’s more scandalous indulgences with an artist in Tejas. He gave her beauty and a sex drive deeper than Hymir’s cauldron, and no sorry side effects that I know of. A perfect distraction for me. She scoots her empty wine glass forward a touch, and I open my mouth to politely offer to go with her to secure a refill. Last Yule, we managed to get lost in the sidehalls and find plenty of ways to put her godling mouth and my sobriety to better use.

But the blaring trumpet of the ramhorn cuts through my offer like the end of the world.

The hall chokes quiet and the double doors swing dramatically open to admit the Valkyrie. They stride in, nine of them, with their double braids and death-green apron dresses, tall and elegant and deadly. All of us, me included, crane our heads to the end of the line, where the new one should be.

She carries the wide Poet’s Cup, into which the first mead was poured, between gold-adorned hands. Her chin is raised and she’s a gouge of violent red lipstick, but otherwise she blends in with them, with her Asgardian coloring and handsomeness. My mom said, After a hundred years with no ninth Valkyrie, the Alfather should’ve chosen one of ours. But he doesn’t even bother with a pretense of affirmative action. It set off a huge debate in her house about institutionalized racism and the legal system stacked against us and, as always, veered off into the militia laws and then health-care cause that’s Auntie Treena’s specialty. I’d stormed out, as always, after biting off something about earning a place with strength and courage instead of handouts. Treena bitched that my dad’s eyes staring out of my face will always mean I’ll be given the chance to prove my strength, despite the color of my skin.

I try not to get home much.

Behind the Valkyrie comes a company of Lonely Warriors, hefting a giant platter on their shoulders. It’s the great roast boar of the Valhol, with bones made by ancient elf queens and a heart blessed by Thor’s Hammer so it never runs out of meat. The Lonely Warriors eat from the boar for all eternity, sustaining them in death so they rise up and fight again and again on the Alfather’s behalf, until Ragnarok brings the end of the world. I tasted a strip of bacon off it once and thought it needed salt.

Servers flood between all the tables to refill mugs and glasses before the feast is ready. I use the shifting crowd to heave off my bench. The next hour will be dead boring as everybody eats. It’s the perfect time to hunt out the trouble I’m really here for. I try to catch Liz’s eye, but she’s got her lips up to the ear of Franklin Adamson, the president’s son. Can’t blame her; he’s got a great mouth.

There’s naught between me and the wall but a line of guards with their Bright Home house uniforms and their tall spears. I make an obscene gesture at one of them so he knows I’m going to take a piss. I learned the hard way when I was twelve to leave a trail for my dad to follow at these things. Otherwise he might level the whole place and set up an interrogation center to find me, if he suddenly recalls I should be here.

Cheers follow me out as the Lonely Warriors set the boar on the high table. No doubt my father has claimed a new flagon of beer and leapt to give the first toast. Because it’s Hallowblot, nobody but Loki will begrudge him that, as nobody but Loki has a stronger relationship with etinfolk than Thor Thunderer. And Hallowblot is the etinfolk’s night. We drink to them as the winter comes: to the giants, the goblins, the trolls, and the elves under the mountain. We give sacrifice and promise to share the middle world with them; it’s all lies, of course, especially out of the Thunderer’s lips, he who has killed more giants than the rest of us teamed. And we haven’t done much to keep the trolls from dying.

It used to be that we burned and bled, offered mead and spit and blood, set great fires to turn the night sky red. These days it’s mostly for show. Kids dress up like their favorite monsters, there are parties with candy and sweet drinks, the fires are set in pumpkins and gourds and cut-paper lanterns, and the only offerings we make are song and maybe a martyr mouse or two. Most of the USA acts as if the etinfolk are as good as extinct, and since the recent Stone Plague that’s decimated troll populations, it feels mostly truth. Giants have been gone for two generations, and goblins hide in the darkness. But I know absolutely that elves still creep under the mountain.

Dad’s voice echoes through the hall and out into this narrow corridor: “You call me the etin’s best enemy,” he begins, as he always begins.

I shut it out and push past a line of caterers in their dark blue bow ties. This is a rear exit out the back hall, through a dimly lit series of sitting rooms to a tiny library. The main entrance will be covered in spotlights, with valets smoking against the marble curb, more cameras, and plenty of witnesses. But this way leads out to the side of the peak.

The outside door of the library is glass and slides open quietly. Cold wind gusts against my face, and I don’t bother to close it behind me. It’s all shadows here, gray and black and flickering orange from the two tall torches at either corner of the patio. The flames cast out onto the mountainside, turning the thick trunks of the lodgepole pines bloody. We’re surrounded by them here.

I breathe in the icy air. There’s snow coming tonight, though the clouds aren’t gathered yet. I can feel it gleaming like a frozen promise in the elf-scar on my left forearm. Before long, my earrings and the iron nail piercing my eyebrow will start to burn.

A shuffle drags my attention to the dark wall of Bright Home. Leaning against the huge logs of the building is a man. His white coat reflects the moonlight. I can’t believe I missed him when I walked out. I jerk my chin for hello and he leans away from the hall.

“I didn’t expect anyone else here,” he says quietly.

I spread my arms out to encompass the patio. “Finest hiding place in Bright Home.”

The man shrugs.

I move so I can see his face in the light. He’s young, my age, and has the widest shoulders. He’s not taller than me, though, or better looking. His face is square and the sort that falls naturally into a frown. Not my type. Lighter skin than mine, and though it’s hard to tell by the torches, dark eyes. Hair cut like we call “sport short” back home.

He turns his cheek just slightly, eyes on mine, to show me the spear tattoo cutting down his face.

“Soren Bearstar,” I say, placing him in my memory. He’s one of Odin’s berserker warriors, but last spring he saved the world—or at least the Alfather’s reputation—rescuing Baldur the Beautiful from whatever most recent indignity he’d gotton involved with. Soren chose to stay with Baldur afterward, forsaking Odin. They call him the Sun’s Berserk now. “Why are you here when your man is sleeping dark?”

Soren looks pained, and I laugh. “Same reason I’m here?” I answer for him. “Some god invited you, and you haven’t figured out yet how to decline. Amon Thorson,” I add, holding out my hand.

He clasps my wrist, studying me like a warrior, and with an edge of suspicion.

I snort. “Don’t look much like my dad do I?”

The berserker shrugs. “I try not to judge people by their parents.”

Makes me wonder what’s wrong with his own father, but I appreciate it. “Mine is the god I can’t figure out how to say no to.”

“Mine’s dead,” Soren says, leaning back against the feast hall. It towers over us like a black mountain itself.

“May he drink deep,” I say, making the hammer sign over my chest.

We share silence for a while. Wind hisses through the pine needles, and muffled noise from the long hall vibrates through the building behind us. I wonder how to get him to leave so I can go about my business.

Soren says, “Do you know why Idun the Young isn’t here?”

I cast him a sly one. “Idun? She’s pretty, isn’t she?” Though I can’t quite picture what she looks like. Small and delicate, I think. Forgettable, with her little basket of apples.

He doesn’t answer but shifts his weight.

“She’s never here at Hallowblot,” I say.

The downcast of his frown is so disappointed, it catches me out with a laugh. “Man, she’s only ever here at the quarter holidays. Yule, Midsummer, and Baldur’s feasts.”

“Ah.”

“I should introduce you to Liz Thorlin or Manda, if you’re into kissing pretty godlings.”

His mouth falls open in panic, and I laugh again. Curse, but he’s an easy target. My laughter has the berserker snapping his mouth shut and glaring at me with vexation. It’s a little too charming, and I catch up in it for a dazed moment, mouth falling into a flirty grin. “I can help you find what you’re looking for if you tell me what it is.”

Soren hums uncomfortably through that epic frown. He says defensively, “I’ve heard of you, too. You’re a runner. You get what people want.”

“Yeah.” I mime opening an invisible coat to display my wares. “Relics and shiny things, specialty items, a few, ah…medicines…particular to your kind….” I tease with a wide smile.

“I know bearbane,” he says darkly.

“Would you like some?” I lean in. “Give your blood a rush even without your godling?”

“It’s illegal,” he says firm as a lawspeaker.

I only keep my smile wide.

He ruins it by saying, “If you didn’t have a god for a father it might not be so simple.”

A flash of anger cuts my attraction off with a razor edge. But it’s better this way. Sons of Thor aren’t supposed to flirt with other boys.

Soren Bearstar wipes a hand down his face. “Amon,” he says, using my name like an apology. He shakes his head.

I shrug a shoulder like it’s all shed water. He’s right anyway. My father is the entire reason for my line of work: why I do it, and why I get away with it.

Wind shakes the pines across the mountain. We both glance up. Finger clouds have stretched in, grasping the stars so there’s only a narrow circle of them. Moonlight filters through, but barely. “Up on the roof’ll be a grand view,” I say.

Soren shakes his head no. “I should go back in. Before the end of the boasting.”

I shrug. “Merry met, then, Bearstar.”

“And you, son of Thor.”

He walks soft for such a hulker, making no noise with his boots. The last hint of that white coat flashes as he disappears into the library. I’m alone on the patio, with the wind carving up my bones.

Backing away from the hall, I stare up at the building. The huge columns bearing up the roof are carved from the trunks of sequoias. Golden elf lights dangle from the eaves, illuminating rows of red round shields that have hung high against the outside wall for centuries. The one at the end is newly painted. A slow grin spreads over my face. They always replace the ones I steal.

Going to the nearest column, I skim my hands along its circumference. My fingers find the chinks cut for handholds. I discovered them five years ago when playing a game of seeker-stayer with Fenris Wolf. Her nose led her to the pole and she knew I’d climbed it, but she couldn’t follow.

I roll my shoulders and flex my hands. It’d be easier if I undid my boots, but where’s the fun in easy?

I dig my cold fingers into the first grips and pull.

The burn of effort scorches across my shoulders and down my back. I breathe even and push a rhythm into the climb, going slow and sure up the side of Bright Home. My toes bend against the hard wood, and I clench with my fingers. Sweat pops out along my spine. This is sheer strength, perfect control of this machine. I can’t stop smiling through it, jaw clenched, as if the hall itself could reflect my white teeth right back at me.

Frozen wind batters me, ripping at my shirt and turning my jeans to ice. I’ve never been much susceptible to cold, thanks to Dad, but I feel it in the wind, invigorating and harsh.

At the top, just under the slope of the roof, I stop. Using my thighs to grip and my stronger left arm, I reach out for the bright red, round shield. The edge is steel-plated and so cold it burns my fingertips. I grab it and jerk it free of the fittings. The effort nearly throws me off the trunk pole, but I manage to hold on.

Here, with the shield heavy in my left hand, I hang. I twist my neck to peer out at the black winter sky. Snow floats down, tossed by the wind in lazy spirals, and hits the sharp treetops. A flake lands on my cheek and melts in an instant of shock. Water’s finest form, the elves call it.

To the east across the valley, on the other side of Shield, waits Etintooth Peak. The road up curls along a cliff and is treacherous in the best weather. With ice coating the gravel, it’ll be a skit of a lot more dangerous.

Getting back down is harder than the climb up, thanks to the shield and the slippery pull of gravity. I manage an embarrassing stop and start, half sliding, half hopping and tearing up my right hand. From two meters, I leap away and hit the patio with a huge jolt. The sweat on my back is freezing, and my breath cuts down my throat. I shake myself like a giant dog, offering the snow a growl that’s more of a laugh.

This shield is easily a meter in diameter, with a steel boss in the center over the grip. I slide my hand into it and hold the shield properly against my side. The red paint glows against this white winter air. A true fancy shield would be inlaid with iron, and coated along the edge with gold leaf to flake off in battle and impress the enemy with one’s throw-away wealth.

I duck under the strap to hold the shield against my back and take off around the long side of the hall toward the parking lot. Fenris is still inside, and she won’t miss her bike for hours.

The heavy shield thumps my ass as I go. My boots are loud and I’m smiling like a marauder when I come around the corner and slam into a fleeing girl.

She jumps away with a cry, arms hugging herself. She hits the wall, and I skid to a stop. Here where the floodlights from the front entryway reflect against the trees and off the low, spinning snow, there’s enough light to see the shine of her wide, pale eyes. Dark hair straggles around her face, loose from double braids, and there’s only black lined around her eyes, none of the usual vast swathes of makeup that girls wear to Bright Home. Freckles stand out across her narrow nose. She’s wearing a tuxedo.

“Hey,” I say.

She shies away from me, and something about how she hugs her stomach and the tinge of white around her lips raises fast fury in me. “Did someone hurt you?” I demand.

It’s too much and she flinches. I draw back and hold my palms out, but even as I do, she gulps a breath and shakes her head. “Amon?” She swipes her hands under her eyes.

I falter. I stare more closely and only then realize her tux isn’t a tux but a uniform. One of the caterers. Maybe she’s a longtime servant, but rag and skit, surely I didn’t have a thing with her and forget. I wouldn’t. I think. “Do I…know you?”

“Ah….” She touches her cheeks like they’re new and raw. “No. But you’re…famous.”

“That I am. You shine?”

She draws up to her full height, which is not to be trifled with, and she’s got hips that strain the line of her pants and breasts just big enough to pucker the buttons under her bow tie. The tux sure wasn’t made for a girl. I snap my eyes back up to her face. She says, smooth and hard, “I just needed to get out.”

Cursed but I know that urge, and trouble is always better in greater numbers. Besides, she’s sexy, all disheveled as she is.

“I’m getting out even farther,” I say. “Up the opposite mountain for a real Hallowblot fire.” I hold out my hand. It’s only a dark outline in the night. She looks at my face, and in her eyes are the shadows of a pine forest, gray and green and darkest brown, and now I see hints of fire red in her hair. She slides her hand against my palm slowly. The touch zaps straight to my rocks as her hot fingers skim against my wrist.

Our fingers weave together and I pull her along. There’s a low rumble in my stomach when she slips after me, polished shoes tap-tap-tapping behind the pound of my boots.

We run off the stone porch that hugs this side of the hall, down along the line of pricy cars gathering a crust of snow. This is the tucked-away rear lot, where all the regulars have assigned spots. My breath is a hot cloud before my face as I search for Fenris’s bike. There it is, between a two-seater coup and a long-nosed red Volundr.

The girl gasps when I stop before the motorcycle. Chrome glows in the snowlight, and the front wheel stretches forward and turns like a perfectly placed leg. As if the bike were curtseying for us, inviting us onto her back.

“Can you take this?” I offer the girl the shield. She grips it and swings it onto her back with a grunt of effort. She cocks her head proudly.

I mount up, settle my hands at the grips, and roll my shoulders. “Coming?”

There’s a pillion for her to perch on behind me, and it takes her a moment to settle. She slides up against me and without hesitation wraps her hands around my waist. Her thighs line up with mine, her entire body pressed into my back. I let my breath snake out slowly as I skim through all the steps for turning on Fenris’s old beast—clutch and choke and ignition—before I kick up the stand and into gear.

When I hit the engine, the bike growls. The girl’s fingers dig into my hard stomach. I clench my teeth and feel the rumble in the back of my throat. She puts her cheek against my back and hugs. I’m so lit up from her and the shaking bike, I have to pull the throttle or explode.

We scream out of the lot, tossing gravel in our wake.

TWO.

The headbeam cuts through the snowfall, illuminating a thin, twisting road. I take it easy, gentle with curves and letting the bike lean into the mountain. The girl holds on as if I’m her center of gravity. I can’t get used to the tight feel of her breasts against my back, her thighs hugging my hips. I’m so hot, the snow should hiss when it touches my cheek. Hopefully it’s helping keep her warm.

All around are the towering pillars of lodgepole pines. They loom down the mountainside and fall away into darkness down the cliff. I squint into the delicate snowfall, glad I’ve come this way four times a year since I was twelve.

We pass wide around the town, Shield, said to be the most pious town in the entire United States of Asgard. It has more churches per capita than anywhere else, and every god and spirit, saint and jotunn, hero, demon, priest, and angel is represented either on Temple Row or off one of the alleys or in one of the thousand carved sidewalk shrines. There are mobile monuments and storefront reliquaries and not a single quick-stop shop where you can’t find incense and prayer cards. I heard a joke once that this town requires initiation into a priesthood before testing for a driver’s license.

In the summer the streets to fill up with pilgrims, sweet-smelling smog, and the bray from the martyr stalls. Rune flags flap off every roof, thanks to seasonal residents whose highest purpose is proving they’re favored over their neighbors by some god or other. I’ve got a place in town but avoid it pathologically in the busy months.

But tonight the town is only a glow of bonfire and the distant low murmur of festival music. It’s too late for trickster treating, and with the snow, everyone is probably inside for parties or ensconced on a sofa to watch the broadcast from Bright Home. Deadens the road completely.

This strange girl and I have it all to ourselves.

When we head up again on the eastern side of the valley, her arms tighten further around me. The snow slows, and pockets of moonlight flash through the forest. There’s hardly even a sheet of ice on the road when the pavement breaks and we’re back to crunching over frozen mud and gravel. I slow, taking care as we climb higher and higher. The girl’s arms relax, but she keeps hold of me. I wonder who she is and realize I never asked her name. It didn’t matter with her hand in mine, and matters even less while she’s pressed against me. I laugh to realize how rutted I am, and I blame Liz Thorlin and Soren Bearstar for getting my goat up.

When the gravel ends at a rounded overlook, I brake the bike and kick down the stand. She lifts her head. The engine purrs to silence, and we wait in this thick bubble of quiet as the clouds part and the moon shines down onto the pointing trees and the valley and there are a half-ten tiny stars exactly above us.

I hold my hand back to help her off the bike—she’s stiff and frozen—then I stand next to her. “I can take that back,” I say, nodding at the round shield.

She shakes her head. “Cutting the wind,” she says through chattering teeth.

“We’ll be at shelter soon.” I’ll warm her up then.

Together we go off the road, up the mountain. She grips my hand and follows where I lead her. She’s either brave or stupid to not ask anything, and I choose to think brave. She wanted away, wants trouble, like me, and climbs hard without pausing, without complaining. Her breath is rushed and puffs out in a cloud around her head. Those shined fancy shoes weren’t made for scrambling over needle detritus or craggy rocks, but she ignores the scuffs. She ignores the weight of the shield pushing her down.

The pines shorten and grow farther apart the higher we reach. The night sky opens up and sharp boulders push through rough mountain grasses like half-buried skulls. I grip the rock in my strong hands, knowing where the best holds are, the best places to set my boots. The girl steps where I step, pulls herself along with surprising strength. Once or twice, she slips and I catch her, dragging her to her feet again in the black night. With the shield on her back, she’s a handful.

We burst through the treeline onto the peak.

This nowhere strip where the forest and the alpine tundra dance for dominance is the best part of the mountain. Trees half-stripped of branches on the windward side mark the way higher. In the summer, bluebells and snow glories spread blue and purple like the sky spilled itself down the peak, but here at the edge of winter and a hundred meters on, the tundra’s gone all gray and yellow. I stop beside a solitary tree that curls in on itself against the constant harsh weather. Nighttime washes the color away, but I remember rainbow shades of lichen on the wind-scoured rocks.

The girl puts her shoulder against my arm, staring out ahead. I wonder what she sees through the shadows. She’s the one who steps out first.

I take her hand and pull her toward the lee of the peak. There waits the Rock Church.

It’s nearly three hundred years old, just a single room built of cast-off boulders and no mortar. The steeple grasps at the sky. The door hangs by iron hinges and screams like a dying dragon when I wrench it open. The girl grimaces.

Inside smells musty, but it’s clean and plain. The stone walls block the wind and snow. I leave the girl at the doorway to head straight through to the rear wall, where there’s an oil lamp tucked at the floor. From my jeans pocket, I pull a lighter. It flares up, casting smooth light against the cragged walls and the life-size wooden statue of Thor Thunderer in the center of the room. He’s buttery and smooth from decades of hands patting him for luck and blessings, and I take a moment to look into his eyes. The face is carved so basically, by someone who’d never seen the god in person. I know his jaw is more square and his nose is crooked from battle. He squints his eyes when he thinks, and even through the heavy red beard you can see lines of laughter around his mouth.

Before I approach the statue, I look hard into every corner of the church. The shadows appear flat and missing secrets, but I never know if Eirfinna will be here. Choosing one shadow, I steady my gaze, waiting for the telltale glimmer of her crystals. But there’s nothing.

Sharp regret needles at me; I look forward to seeing the elf princess every few months. But I did bring a stranger here, and that would be rough to explain.

With a small sigh, I put my palm against the honeywood statue, making a black hand-shaped hole on the Thunderer’s chest. I trace the hammer sign over my forehead and whisper a prayer to Thor Sky-Driver.

“Mead,” the girl says.

I turn. She’s holding a plain glass bottle up so it catches the dim glimmer of the oil lamp. It’s a golden color, swirling prettily. I smile. Eirfinna’s definitely been and gone already, tired of waiting for me.

I stride over to the girl and take the mead. Her fingers are ice, and she’s shivering. “You could use something to drink. Can you make a fire?” I say, skewing my eyes to the west, where the small hearth sits cold. The girl nods enthusiastically and crouches there as I pick up the round shield from where she’s leaned it against the wall and go outside again.

Beside the entryway is an elf cup carved into a waist-high stone. I put down the mead and the shield and kneel at the stone. A dugout hole beside it holds a small leather bag I can just barely see in the moonlight. Gathering the bag in my fist, I feel the weight of it. Nothing this small should weigh so much. But that’s the truth of elf gold. It’s weighed down with trouble. I grin and tuck it into my pocket.

I brush dust and a few dead pine needles out of the shallow bowl carved into the elf cup and pour in as much mead as will fit. I drink a sip from the bottle, then spit more onto the ground and prop the shield here as an offering to Eirfinna. Her true payment I left two mornings ago, when I had time to lug a huge bag of electronics here and didn’t have to worry about snow. She likes the shields, though, because she likes me stealing skit from Bright Home as much as I do. If she were here, we’d name it and paint ridiculous faces on it with sticky mead, pretend either of us was capable of getting drunk on human liquor.

Despite the girl waiting inside, I miss Fin. There’s a lot we should talk about, what with the Stone Plague shifting my routes and ability to get good prices for troll dust. And, her kisses hurt like ice.

Pulling a tiny switchblade from my jeans pocket, I slice the back of my wrist, hissing at the pain. A few drops gather against my skin, dark on dark, and I turn my wrist over so they fall against the ground.

The traditional Hallowblot sacrifice was metal, alcohol, and blood. Most forgo the blood now, or perhaps sacrifice a martyr mouse to the goblins, but one thing I’ve learned from my mom is sympathy for the little things. I’d rather offer my own blood than cut the head off a mouse or a dove. Hope Dad never notices.

Sacrifice made, I go back into the church with the mead and elf gold, and force the door shut behind me. It groans long and loud.

The girl has the start of a fire made with tiny kindling from the wooden box beside the hearth. I make my way to the back of the room again and the rope that hangs from the steeple. Gripping it, I give it one long yank. The rope lurches, and when the old bell clangs like thunder, I laugh with it. The noise vibrates my teeth and my chest, echoing out from the church, down the mountainside, to Shield far below. Let any who hear it believe what they like: in the power of the wind, that some hermit tends the place, that the gods of Bright Home have sent one of their indentured to ring it. Or that goblins themselves are here on the mountain.

The girl is on her feet, watching me. I go to her. She stands as high as my eyes, but her curls give the impression of more height, and her shoulders are strong, her waist slender. Her hands look bluish from the cold but like they’re used to work. No fancy nails or delicacy there.

She leans in and puts her hand on my chest. “Aren’t you freezing?”

I’ve only a long-sleeved T-shirt and my jeans on, while she shivers in her tuxedo. I shake my head and put my hand over hers. It makes a spot of ice that spreads across my chest. She fists her hand in my shirt and pulls me close. All my built-up craving expands and I shift nearer, herding her toward the wall. Her shoulders knock gently into it, and my mouth curls slowly up into a smile. She slides her hand down my arm to the neck of the mead bottle and drags it up to her mouth to take a long drink. Her eyelids shut, and for a moment it’s like all of her is letting go.

I slide my arm around her waist to hold her up. She touches into me, offering the mead. I drink, too, and it’s warm and sweet, but not heady—not for me.

Her eyes are so sad, which is like a bite in my stomach, but doesn’t distract me from her mouth as she opens it just enough to sigh with sweet honey-mead breath.

Slipping a hand under her jacket, I play with the ridiculous folded cummerbund, pressing through the layers of material into her hip. She gasps.

I watch her eyes and she tilts up her head. When I kiss her, I trap her between me and the wall of Rock Church.

She drops the bottle. It hits the floor with a glass crack, tilting over and spilling mead in a long river of gold toward the fire. She grabs my shoulders and lifts, letting me drag her off her feet for better access to her mouth, to her neck, to her hair. It surrounds me like a cloud, smelling of the Bright Home feast hall: all smoke and salty boar and beer. I groan and suck on her lip.

“That—that god statue is,” she pauses when I lick down her jaw, “is watching.”

“He would not mind even slightly,” I whisper in her ear, and she laughs.

I catch the laugh with my mouth and she kisses me back, winding her arms around my head. I’m lost in it, in the touching and pushing, and hardly notice dropping with her down onto the hard floor. Her fingers are in my tight braids, tugging at the band that ties it all back, and I skim down to the collar of her shirt. I unknot her bow tie with a flick of my fingers, and the top button’s already undone. I kiss the hollow of her throat, and she wraps her legs around one of my thighs. My knees and one arm support most of my weight as I lean over her, completely rutted, diving down with my mouth. I pop another button and another, revealing more skin, and hot skit, she’s not wearing a bra.

Her fingers dig into my shoulders when I unfold the side of the tuxedo shirt and put my lips against her breast. She slaps her hands onto her cheeks, covering her entire face and offering a little whimper. It pulls a grin across my mouth and I nuzzle in, grabbing her ribs to hold her tight. The moment my tongue starts its work, she says, “Oh, gods,” and slides her hands down to hold her own breasts. “Stop, gods.”

I freeze in shock, and she tries to roll to the side. But I’ve got too firm a hold. Her head shakes no and she tries again to turn. She pulls the tuxedo shirt closed over her chest. “Gods,” she says a third time.

My burning muscles finally obey her and I let go, leaning away. I might die. I groan, long and low, letting it take half my tension with it. My hands are fists against the packed-dirt floor.

We don’t move for a long moment, me shuddering and her…I don’t even know, because my eyes are squeezed shut. But I don’t hear anything other than the woven song of our tight breathing.

After a while, I look.

She’s sitting cross-legged, shirt open, looking down at herself. One hand cups her own breast like she’s never seen it before. I make a sound of disbelief.

Clutching her shirt closed again, she glances up. Her cheeks are flushed and her eyes still so sad, her lips parted in that same sexy way. She shakes her head, but not like no this time. It’s like she’s confused and unsure what to say. This is up to me. I grind my jaw for a split second, then offer a skinny smile. “Hey,” I say with a raw voice. “No worries.”

She laughs darkly. “I know better than that. If you’re feeling half of what I’m feeling right now.” Her eyes slide down to my mouth before she shuts them.

“Then…why?” I try not to let it sound like a demand.

“I’ve never…um,” she stops.

Oh, rag me a thousand times with a troll bone. “You’re a virgin.”

Anger blazes through her eyes and turns that pale skin blotchier than a paint horse. “No! I only…” She sits and flings her arms around. “You don’t even know my name.”

Her shirt comes open, and I can’t help my flickered glance. She furiously tries to button it and I reach to help, but she slaps my hands away. Then she stops. Waits.

I gently button the shirt. “Tell me,” I say.

“Huh?” It’s an inelegant noise.

“Your name.”

“Oh,” she lets it out in a long breath. “I’m…Kasja.”

“Like the elf maiden?”

She purses her lips as if she can’t be blamed for her parents’ poor choices.

I say, “I’d offer you a toast, but the mead ran out when the bottle broke.” I wave my hand at the chunks of sticky glass as I scoot to the wall beside the hearth.

Kasja says, “You overwhelmed me,” but not like she minded at all.

She shifts nearer to me. Or nearer to the fire, more like.

“If you’re cold, we can go back down the mountain. I’ve done what I came for.”

“No.” She pulls her tux jacket closed around her and curls her knees up to her chest.

I laugh. “No, you’re not cold?”

“No, I don’t want to go back.”

The way she says it cools the last passion out of my rocks. “Someone did hurt you.”

“I hurt myself,” she laments, eyes rolling woefully up to the low stone ceiling. “Being dangerously stupid.”

I’ve been dangerously stupid plenty of times. Comes with Thorson blood. “You seem all right. Alive. Brave. Pretty.”

She bats her eyelashes. “Thanks for noticing the most important part.”

A sudden gust of wind hits the Rock Church, squeezing through the cracks near the ceiling. We both glance up, and then Kasja’s gaze lingers on the statue of Thor. “Is this where you bring all the girls?”

“Because it’s so welcoming and sexy?”

“Reminds me of home,” she says vaguely.

“You’re from the mountains?”

“Farther north.” Her arms curl tighter around her knees, and dark hair falls around her face. It catches red in the firelight.

“How’d you end up here for Hallowblot?” I ask.

“I came… because of the new Valkyrie.”

“Skit, are you one of her handmaidens?” If I’ve stolen away a Valkyrie’s maid, she’ll be missed faster than me, and we’re both ragged.

But Kasja laughs. “Hardly, but I thought seeing her would be enlightening.”

I relax slightly. “That make you an Odinist, too?”

“Never.”

“Freyan, then,” I guess, since people so obviously anti-Alfather tend to devote to Freyr the Satisfied. I never understood any of the rivalries. They’re all related, all working for New Asgard, doing what they do.

She cuts her eyes up at me. “I won’t devote to any of them.”

Some piece of me screams I shouldn’t ask; I don’t want to know. It’s the vibrant gleam in her eyes, the wildness. I feel it viscerally in my ropes, the way I sometimes do. It’s a gift from my mom, not Dad. A basic, human instinct.

I stay quiet. Kasja studies her hands, staring like she’s never seen them. With her left fingers, she traces the lines in her right palm. “I am a new person,” she whispers.

“I’m leaving tonight on a circuit,” I say slowly. “Want to tag on?”

Kasja climbs into a crouch, leaning in with her hands on my knees. Her face is close. “You mean it?” she says, dead flat and serious.

“Skit, yes, I do.”

“Why?”

“Why not?”

She glances away, to Thor’s statue behind me. “I’m trouble, Amon.”

My laugh is like an explosion of thunder. “Trouble is exactly what I was looking for.”

THREE.

The dark roads are ice-slick on the way back down the mountain, so it takes twice as long as it should. I’m no expert driver, especially with a passenger, one whose thighs hug mine excruciatingly, so I go careful.

Shield remains bright despite the hour, lit from bonfires in every park and town square. I take us straight to the Mad Eye Bar and Grill and park beside a full-size van. Mine. Luck I left it here so I don’t have to take her to my place. After dropping the kickstand, I lead Kasja to the van door and slide it roughly open. She climbs into the nest of old quilts in the back, and I follow. With a jerk, I close the door. Darkness drops around us, and I blink to adjust to the simple blue light gently finding its way through the windshield.

“This is all yours?” she murmurs, fingering the yarn knots at the corner of one quilt.

“Yeah. It’s my Sky.”

“Sky?”

“She’s blue on the outside. Used to call everything that color ‘sky,’ my mom says, so couldn’t resist naming my van that, too.” I pat the cold metal ceiling. Rows of nails dangle from string I tacked up along the length of the car. When the van bounces, sometimes the nails jingle together. Most times, they just swing like there’s a private wind in here.

Before tucking the bag of elf gold under the driver’s seat, I slip out a handful of cash notes and fold them into my pocket. Kasja half watches, but her eyes wander about the van. There are no benches back here, but the space is plenty full. I’ve got two duffles stuffed with clothes, a hiker’s pack of survival gear, a laundry basket of canned goods and protein bars, and a crate of bottled water. The cooler’s not stocked, but I was planning a cheese and beer run tomorrow morning. There’s a TV/radio Velcroed to the thin carpet.

“I’m hungry,” Kasja says, as if it surprises her.

“Let’s go into the bar.” We can hear the bass thrumming across the asphalt. “I have a sweater if you want.”

“No. I don’t suppose you have a brush, though?” She pinches the tip of one unruly curl.

I crawl half across her and dig into the side pocket of a duffle bag for my pick. “Just this,” I offer, along with a couple of hair bands.

She thanks me, and we climb back out to run through the cold to the bar door. It swings in, hitting the wall behind it hard. The sound is swallowed by the merriment that suddenly surrounds us. Louder and more chaotic than up at Bright Home. No bouncer tonight, just a great crowd, half in costume, all drunk. I press through and drag Kasja in my wake to the bathrooms. Leaning in to her ear, I yell I’ll find us a table and grab some ale. She slips away, and my breath catches like I’ll never see her again.

I buy two pints. They slosh over my hands as I shove through pirates and sharkmen and sexy wolf girls. I avoid the draugar with their dripping fake blood—nobody needs corn syrup in their beer.

There’s a tiny round table with high stools that a couple dressed like goblins are making out against. They keep giggling as they kiss off the plastic rubies stuck to their cheeks and foreheads. Not properly placed, but I’m probably the only person in here who’s seen an actual goblin. “Mind?” I yell, nudging the guy away. They spin a little, hands under clothes, and I sit, hooking a second stool with my toe.

Leaning against the rough brick wall, I take a massive drink of beer and smile. This is more my party. No high table, no fancy dress, no daddy-ragging gods. There’s notes in my pocket, fresh elf gold back in the van, and a dangerous, shiny girl about to find me again.

Kasja appears just as I think of her. She’s lost the cummerbund and tied the ends of her white shirt in a knot under her breasts. It leaves a smooth swath of belly bare, peeking out between the lapels of the tux jacket. The pants hug her hips.

She wetted her hair enough to comb it and tame it, but the curls bounce enticingly around her shoulders.

“Fair shine,” I say as she lifts onto the open stool and claims her beer.

She lifts it, holding the glass high. “To new friends, running away, and being pretty,” she boasts.

“May it be!” I answer, tapping my beer to hers. We drink. Kasja holds her glass with both hands, tipping it back and gulping down at least half the ale. I laugh, and when she breathes again, she says, “Your turn, Amon.”

I roll my eyes to the sticky, smoky ceiling as if I’ll find an easy answer there. Usually I knock it away, make something up. My mouth opens to pour out a standard For strength, but the words catch on my teeth. Kasja’s waiting with her whole face open, those flickering wilderness eyes wide and her lips parted just barely. Like she’ll breathe in whatever I say.

My stall gets her leaning in. “How about,” she says just loud enough to punch through the bar noise, “To our hidden hearts?”

“Hearts,” I say, sliding off my stool, “are not a thing I’m gentle with.” I drain the rest of my beer. “Dancing, though, that’s a thing I can do.”

Kasja looks at me a moment too long, just a pinch, to make it awkward, and then downs her drink. She puts her hands on my shoulders, and I lift her down.

The music is live, from a mountain band in the corner, heavy on the strings. Their fingers burn up time. I pull Kasja onto the crushing dance floor and whip her around under my arm. She hits another dancer and winces, but I don’t pause, just pull her back and grab her waist. I stomp my feet, find the rhythm, and she manages to follow. Doesn’t matter; it works. My blood pumps and her face reddens, making those freckles stand out and reddish wisps of hair stick to her temples and the back of her neck. I sweat, too, and when she strips out of her jacket three songs in, I spin it over our heads to clear more space. I let it go, and it flies like a raven through the air.

We swing into a fast three-step, while other couples back away and the music burns through me and into Kasja. I’m laughing and almost feeling drunk, ignoring all but the smooth floor, the rhythm, and her body. She keeps up with me, and nobody keeps up with me. Her hands are strong on my shoulders, her feet hitting hard beside mine without flagging. It’s like lightning in my blood, and my boots echo the thunder down down down, freeing all that need that’s been caged and pinned and trussed like a swan inside.

The songs blur together and I get stronger the harder I go, especially with cheers feeding me, and other couples joining in, too, with this real dancing, not that chaotic every-man-for-his-own skit they were doing before. But Kasja suddenly wilts into my chest, shaking with laughter. She wraps her arms around my waist, and her knees fold. Her face presses into my T-shirt and she kisses my chest, her hot mouth jolting through my shirt to my heart. I cup my hand against her skull, and warp her body in my other arm. The band’s breaking, people shifting away, and Kasja’s spinning eyes find mine.

She wants me again. Finally.

I’d like to rip off that flimsy white shirt and push her down on this dance floor. Instead, I pick her up. She wraps her legs around my waist, and instantly I’m jolted ready. Holding her ass, I turn, to run if I have to, back to the van where there’s blankets and condoms.

The bar doors slam open.

There’s a woman with deadly green eyes, skin-tight green shirt, and jeans so low on her hips, it’s magic holding them up. Silence cuts through the Mad Eye, and Kasja twists in my arms to look. Her whole body clenches around mine, and I whisper in her ear, “Slip down.”

Nodding, Kasja lets go and hits the floor smoothly. She darts behind me and I don’t glance back.

Bar patrons clear a path for the Lady Fenris, but she’s not moving. She’s waiting. She knows I’m here.

Before she can call me out, I shove through the frozen dancers. I wipe the sweat from my face as I step into the open space and flash her my greatest smile. She smiles right back and strides toward me. I hold my ground, trying not to think about how sharp her teeth might be behind those dark red lips.

I’ve known Lady Fenris—Glory, she goes by, when she’s like this—most of my life. Met her by pulling her ruffled tail one Yule when I was five as she curled in wolf form under Tyr the Just’s chair. She jerked and growled, startling Tyr so he knocked his silver hand into his goblet of mead. The chain reaction that started only ended when my dad lifted me up onto his shoulder and let go his thundering laugh. Glory’s never forgiven me for the embarrassment, so, of course, the only way to keep the relationship civil is if I keep pulling her tail. And she pulls mine right back.

Tonight she curls her fingers into the collar of my T-shirt and tugs. She rubs her cheek against mine and takes a long pull of breath. “Ahhhh, Amon, you smell like my bike. And… sex.”

“Jealous?” I snap my teeth near her ear. Blood is a roar in my ears, so loud she can probably hear it, too.

Her sharp nails cut down my chest, around my sides to my hips. She presses against me. “Aren’t you eager, little boy.”

I think of Kasja, glad Glory’s particular skills don’t include reading minds. “Always.”

“Like father, like son,” she spits, shoving away from me.

It’s a struggle to keep relief from showing as she stalks around in a fast circle. The crowd throws itself out of her way. That brings an easy smirk to my face. Don’t they know she hates it? She absolutely despises them for being afraid. This is the United States of Asgard, where courage is the first commandment.

“It’s in the lot,” I say casually.

“I know, Thorson.”

At least three people around us gasp in recognition. Curse it, there’ll be cameras out now. Lady Fenris and Amon Thorson, circling like enemies just down the mountain from Bright Home? Those pictures will sell for hard cash to the tabs. “Maybe we should take this outside,” I grind through my teeth.

Her smile is glorious. “Afraid of a little publicity, dearie? One might think of that before stealing the Fenris’s motorcycle.” She raises her voice just enough to make certain nobody in the bar misses it.

I push past her and out into the frozen night. Her cackle of laughter follows me, and then the wolf herself. I speed up toward the van, weaving through the rows of parked cars. She could catch up, but doesn’t bother until I’m at Sky.

Strong hands grip my shoulder and spin me around like I’m nothing. Glory slams my back against Sky, rocking the van on her wheels. The Fenris puts her face in mine and hisses, “Is not only my bike was stolen from the gods’ hall tonight, Amon, son of Thor. And you, god-child, your scent screams of the world-under-the-mountain, of etin magic and heavy destiny.”

A shiver makes its rattling way down my spine. “I didn’t take anything else,” I manage to whisper.

Low clouds have muffled the world, trapping us here in frozen darkness. The parking lot is an empty cloud-cave, just the Lady Fenris, me, and lines of ghostly cars. Glory wraps her arms around my neck and smells me slowly. The tip of her nose skims my neck, her lips my throat. I push back against the side of the van as she tortures me with light touches, bending to claw gently at my thighs through my jeans. Her mouth hovers over my stomach, and she pushes up my T-shirt.

“Silver rut, Glory,” I nearly shriek.

Her laugher crawls up my skin. “Tell me why you smell like giants, or I’ll make you beg so hard, you’ll hate puppies.”

My brain is all afire, turning black at the edges, but I scramble, I grip at the van door. Why do I smell like giants? Why why whywhywhy?

Oh.

My breath explodes out of me. “Gold!” I say, grabbing her hair. I push her away from me, shoving with all my strength. Ninety-nine percent of the world would go flying. But Glory barely staggers. She growls. Her face stretches and her teeth push through her mouth before it all snaps back into that perfect, young, beautiful woman’s face. “Gold?” she purrs. Like a gods-cursed cat.

I fumble with the handle but pop it out and slide open the door. Diving in, I drag out my bag of elf gold from Eirfinna. I keep it fisted as I thrust it at the wolf, so she can’t just snatch it away.

Glory shoves her nose against it, then reels back immediately. She shakes her head at me. “Naughty, naughty Amon.” Delight pinches her smile, though.

I pull the gold against my chest. It pulses in my palm. “I earned it, and it’s none of your business.”

She shrugs. “I’ll just take my bike then, and you can hunt back up that cute thing you were dancing with.”

As she turns on her spike heels, I nearly throw myself after her. “Wait— you said something else was stolen? Besides the bike?”

It’s so quiet, I hear the first new flakes of snow hit the pavement. They gather in her dark hair like lace. Slowly, Glory turns back to me. Her expression is a feral grin, her eyes black. “Loki’s Mask of Changing,” she says.

My whole body goes cold.

The Mask hung from the Changer’s belt tonight, reflecting gold, as the god stomped down the high table flyting at my father. Fashioned by ancient elf queens in the time when Loki was young, it taught him the art of shape-shifting, and its said any who wear it could change as he does: not just an illusion, but wholly and complete. Loki Changer does not merely appear as a child or an eagle, a woman or horse or massive dragon, he truly becomes those things in form and essence. It’s magic only he and Freya the Witch have now, since the elf queens diminished.

Whoever took it will be hunted to the ends of all nine worlds. The gods do not like to share their power, and even less do they like being made into fools.

But what takes my breath away is the realization that hot skit the Mask would be worth so much money.

Before I recover, Glory leaps for her motorcycle, flips it on, and skids away. She vanishes with a roar that shakes the parking lot. I hear it for far too long, like a song trapped in a feedback loop, bouncing off the clouds.

• • •

Kasja finds me sunk down onto the asphalt, my back against the passenger wheel.

“Amon?” She crouches in front of me and puts her hands to my face, hissing and snatching them back before dragging at my hands. “You’re frozen, Amon. Get up. Are you all right?”

I blink, breaking my steady stare through the night. Her fingers scramble at me, and I turn my hands to grip her wrists. “Kasja,” I say. I’m thinking of all the complications piling atop my life as long as the Mask is missing. There’ll be bounty hunters out, investigating all the black-market avenues. And investigating my contacts, who are the only way to get rid of this gold burning a hot hole in my lap. It’s dangerous enough trading with Eirfinna under normal circumstances. Elf gold out in the world is pretty cursed illegal. My route’ll have to shift. No stopping here in Colorada kingstate since it’s so close to the scene of the crime. I wish I could contact Fin and hand it back immediately. Maybe I’ll take it straight north to the Yellowstone caldera and leave it there for her six weeks early. Or I’ll go straight out to Salt City, to trade it in bulk with Uriah. He’s got the best stash spot. Third option: I lay low until Fenris finds her daddy’s mask. “Skit,” I mutter.

Kasja scrapes her nails down my chest lightly, and all my attention snaps to her. “What’s wrong?”

“Somebody stole Loki’s Mask of Changing.”

She twists her lips. “The god of changes still needs his training wheels to shift shape?”

It’s nice to be with somebody as generally disdainful of the Bright Home gods as I am. Almost comforting. I shrug. “Even if he doesn’t need it, you know he’ll have fit that he let it out of his hands.”

“And you’re so bothered because?” She draws circles on my collar.

I fix my eyes firm on the curve of her hairline and manage to say, “There’s the fun sort of trouble, then there’s this sort. I’ll be on the short suspect list for sure.”

“So what do we do?”

I open my mouth to say we isn’t in the equation anymore. It’s better for her not to be caught up in whatever’s getting ready to go down in the circles of the gods. People always get hurt. And by people, I mean anyone with a life to lose. But she tilts her eyebrows as if to dare me to push her off. It’s cursed annoying, and just as cursed sexy. I say, “I’m gonna get us a head start out of Shield, before morning traffic. We’ll stop for supplies in the morning and make a decision about where to head.”

Instead of answering, Kasja drags open the sliding door and climbs inside. “I’ll get settled in then.” She closes the door.

I stand there alone in the quiet, feeling off-balance, then shake it off to get behind the steering wheel. As I shift gears and send us out of the parking lot, headlamps cutting through quietly falling snow, Kasja nestles down just behind me. The shuffle of blankets and her small sigh as she relaxes into my old quilt soothes the hot pins pricking my spine.

We leave Shield a few hours before dawn, Hallowblot bonfires still burning, and I can’t help thinking we’re dragging a string of trouble behind us.

FOUR.

The sun rises as we pass through the Rock Mountains. Weak silver light shoves at our back, creeping ahead of the van to illuminate the road. I push faster. A month from now, stretches of Highway 34 behind me will be closed with snow, like the earth sealing our escape hatch.

Most of the tense thoughts that chased my heels out of Shield were consumed by the need to concentrate on the winding way. Now the highway straightens for a while, with only low brown hills around me and a lonely phone line running parallel to the road. Along with a resurgence of stress comes the need to piss and find coffee.

I fill up Sky’s tank at a gas stop and jog into the building for a break. Returning with two coffees, I find Kasja still collapsed in her little nest. Her lips are parted and her hair tangled at the nape of her neck. The rest of her is swathed in my grandma’s quilt. There’s color in her lips and cheeks, and it occurs to me this is the first I’ve seen her in daylight.

She’s just a girl I met less than twelve hours ago, crashed in the back of my van like she belongs. I blink, squeeze my eyes shut, then look again, wondering at the familiarity I feel, like I’ve known her far longer. Could it be some future I sense?

The very thought makes me snort hard enough I nearly spill my coffee.

Once I stole Dad’s hammer, when he left it on the kitchen bench overnight. He’d told Mom he was leaving in the morning, and I thought if he couldn’t find his hammer, he’d stay.

Of course, the cursed thing always finds its way back to him.

He pulled me onto his knee and said, What was your end goal, Amon? We’ve always got to have an end goal.

I want you to stay.

The one thing doesn’t lead to the other in this case, son.

That was the moment I decided that most things don’t lead anywhere.

I hit the highway again and drink both coffees.

Over the next hour, the mountains fall away completely. Sky shoots out into the nothing-plains. Scraggly desert brush and fields of yellow winter grass in endless stretches. The flatness should open up the world, but the sky is a gray lake overhead, uninspiring. We’re nearly alone on the road, since it’s a holiday and most people are slugging off last night’s drink. I don’t turn on the radio, as I don’t want to know if they’ve announced the missing Mask yet. Rather assume to know as little as possible.

Kasja stirs about half an hour outside Dragon, Colorada. A perfect place to stop. Tiny enough town but with a Walton’s and a handful of eateries.

“There’s water bottles and protein bars,” I call back to her. “We’re near a city to stop in, if you can wait a bit for a toilet.”

She mutters something, and I glance in the rearview. After a few minutes and three kilometers of landscape as dry as lizard scales, she clumsily climbs into the passenger seat. She pulls her legs up so her knees are against her chest. A half-empty bottle of water rests in the crook of her elbow, and she sticks out her hand to offer me half a ThinkStrong protein bar. There’s a logo on the wrapper of an ax with a bite taken out of the blade. Dad thought it was a great joke. He’s simple like that sometimes. Live long enough, Amon, and you’ll find humor everywhere, he says.

I take the bar and eat it in two bites.

“Are we in the desert?” Kasja asks, leaning toward the window.

“Yeah. Sort of.”

“It was snowing last night!”

“It’s probably freezing out there, too. Will be until the sun’s higher. The desert is hot or cold based on the sun. At least this one.”

“Where are we going?”

“Dragon, Colorada.”

“Dragon?”

She glances at me, bright in the corner of my eye.

“There’s a huge old wall of fossilized prehistoric dragons there. National monument.”

“Can we…see it from the road?”

I look, and her nose is pressed to the glass. Fogging it in a tiny little balloon around her mouth. “I’ll take you. It’s just bones, though. In the rocks.”

“Amon, that sounds amazing.” She rubs her cheekbone as if it itches.

I say, “We’ll go to Walton’s and grab you some clothes, some supplies, make sure we’re stocked. Then we’ll head out to the wall for you. Maybe spend the night, and go for Salt City tomorrow.”

She’s quiet. I look, and her hands are in her lap, her legs crossed at the knee. She fiddles with the cuff of her white shirt. The knot she tied last night at her midriff is undone, and the ends are more wrinkled than the rest of her.

“Kasja?”

It’s another kilometer before she responds.

“Here, this should help pay.” She holds out her hand again. Tiny red gems sit in her palm. Garnet earrings.

I stare out the windshield. “No way.”

“It’s more than fair,” she says darkly.

“Not necessary.”

“I want to trade. I…you don’t need to just buy me things. I’m not that kind of…girl.”

It’s my turn to be silent. Maybe I misjudged last night. Maybe she regrets taking my hand. My ropes are churning. The bites of protein bar sit in there like chunks of lead. “Look, Kasja,” I finally say, as fast as possible, “I don’t expect anything, shine? This is just us getting away, finding trouble, not being skitting alone. But if you’d rather, there’s a phone at Walton’s, and you can call somebody to pick you up.”

I keep my eyes on the highway, on the pulse of passing yellow lines, the curve of the horizon. It’s so far away, impossible to reach. Shifting and changing depending on the land, on the weather, the light. But always the distant spot where the land and the sky come together. In the old stories, that’s where the spirits of men dedicated to Thor Thunderer go when they die. The far mountain, between earth and heaven.

“Things are different in the daylight, aren’t they?” she sighs.

“Yeah.” Things always are. People leave. They sober up. Look in new directions.

Wind knocks against Sky, pushing at the wheel. It brushes over all the tall grass on the sides of the highway, an invisible hand making waves.

“I only want to trade, to be fair. A gift for a gift.” She puts her fist, with the garnets inside, against her knee.

“Save them. I’ll share what I have, and someday I’m sure it’ll even out.”

She slides the earrings into her pocket. “Why? Why are you doing this?”

With a grimace, I pull carefully off onto the shoulder and shut off Sky. Twisting in my seat, I stare at her. She’s tall and white, and soft shadows mark her eyes. The sun makes her even paler, like new paper. Seems as delicate, too, despite the strength I remember in her when she pulled herself up against me. I reach out and touch her earlobe. It’s not pierced.

She shrugs me off.

What does she need to hear? Why I am trying so hard to convince her? The memory of her mouth is my obvious answer, her fingers digging in my back, her thighs pressed behind mine. But the flutter of her eyes, that little slick of wildness I glimpsed last night, all of it tells me she needs a grander reason than sex. Most people in our country do. They want destiny. They want meaning.

I sigh. “We give aid to those in need, and make of our strength an entire world,” I say.

“What’s that?”

“The Charge of Thunder,” I grumble.

“How noble.”

“Well, I do also want those pants off you,” I say in order to shift far far far away from the subject. And to insert some honesty.

Luckily, Kasja laughs, and the silence warms slowly between us.

• • •

We bounce into Dragon, Colorada, to an acoustic version of “All Quiet/Night Riot” by the Wereboars. Kasja says, when the strains of electric guitar fade, that the whole band grew up dedicated to Freyr the Satisfied but defected after disapproval from the Southern preachers’ union over one of their songs. They’d been called Boar Spears but changed it to We Were Boars and finally accepted the fan-derived Wereboars, appearing onstage in elaborate headdresses with tusks and bristling golden manes. I don’t know if I’m impressed or disturbed by her vast knowledge of their history, and she backtracks when she sees my face. She waves her hands to wipe out the conversation. “I get obsessed with old bands. We’re outdated in my mountains, behind the times.”

I just stare.

“Not just music,” she adds slyly. “I wore low-rise jeans until last year, too.”

I imagine her in low-rise jeans and can’t remember what I’d been complaining about. Chalk one up for Kasja.

Walton’s is on the south side of town, and I drive straight there. It’s a massive warehouse building painted an oddly bright brown, with a sunflower logo you can see for kilometers. Only about thirty or so cars grace the lot, thanks to the holiday. We decide to grab toiletries and clothes for Kasja first, so she can duck into the bathroom while I finish up. I’ll take my turn brushing teeth after, when we find a lunch joint.

She takes at least twice as long as she should, even with being a girl. Finally, she emerges from the toilet in jeans and a dark shirt that hugs her curves. Not that I’m staring, but her new bra seems just a tad too small, like she didn’t know her own size. She’s braided her hair in a seven-strand with the curly ends loose and rioting down her back. It does crazy things to me, half ordered, half chaos like that. I can’t stop from grabbing a handful of curls. Kasja touches my mouth with her fingers, like a kiss, then swoops past to the van.

The best food in town is in a double-decker café where the seats are shaped like long-necked brachiodracus and the bar is held up by brightly painted tyrannodracus. A large sign over the door reads We put the grrrrrr in hungry! We’ve got a paper prehistoric map of New Asgard spread across our table and a little cup of crayons. Kasja takes up a green one and reaches toward me, past the napkin dispenser, draws a triangle in the middle of the map, where a wide inland sea covers everything. “Bright Home was under the ocean then.”

I say, “At least we’d be dry out here.”

“That long ago, the gods didn’t even exist,” she murmurs. “They were barely even sparks in the fires of Alfheim.”

“The gods are older than the elves,” I correct her.

She darts a disparaging glance at me, as a waitress with tight oiled curls sashays over and takes a pen from behind her ear. “Can I get you anything?” she asks, hip cocked like she’s completely uninterested. We order burgers and two ridiculously fruity drinks called Dragon’s Brew that I assure Kasja will come with tiny plastic dragons hooked to the rims.

After the drinks arrive, Kasja leans in. Her thumb on the map obscures the ancient Mexican peninsula. “I would not mind if Bright Home were drowned now.”

I lean back in my chair, feeling like I’ve been here before. In exactly this moment, with this cord of anticipation tightening around my spine. Probably it’s just my rocks demanding attention.

“I used to think the gods were perfectly flawed,” she says. “Like the best diamonds.”

“Pretty sure Thor isn’t a diamond,” is all I say, plucking the blue pterodracus toy off my goblet by the wing to mime its flight across the table to Kasja’s. I perch it beside the bright orange velociraptor hooked to her glass with its large claws.

Kasja ignores my play. “They became what they are through fire and war, and rule because of it. They destroy what refuses to love them or give in to them. That’s always been their way. The Romans, the Biblists, the Skraling tribes here in New Asgard, your own ironskin people before the Thralls’ War, and they even, finally, defeated the giants who refused to sit back and accept subjugation. The… elves are gone, and now….” She squeezes her huge plastic glass. “Now the trolls, too. Dying of this plague.”

I blink in surprise. “The Stone Plague? You think the gods caused it to happen?”

Her hand slams the table. “There’s never been anything in history, recorded or oral, to suggest it’s a natural phenomenon, Amon. Trolls don’t just turn to stone and die forever.”

It’s true, what she’s saying. Around this past midsummer, trolls just began calcifying, even at nighttime. Huge greater mountain trolls, hill trolls, vicious prairie trolls, and even the tiny, pretty harmless iron wights that live under bridges. It’s sad for them, seeing as they’ll go extinct soon, and frustrating for me because I can’t make as much selling their parts when those parts are as easy to get as walking outside your house. But if the plague were a weapon, I think the gods would have used it before, and besides…” Thor wouldn’t do it,” I say. “Not underhanded like that.”

“So you do have faith,” she says.

“It isn’t…exactly faith.”

“You love him?”

“He loves me, at least,” I mutter.

“The gods don’t love us, Amon.”

“Some of them love some of us,” I say, thinking of Eirfinna suddenly, her black-diamond eyes and crystal teeth, telling me, The gods don’t love the elves, Amon, it’s why we hide and slowly die.

Kasja blows out a harsh sigh. “You think you know Thor so well? You’re not like him.”

Not on the outside, for sure. I don’t look anything like him except for the storm of my eyes. I’m broad and strong, sure, but my black skin, wire hair, flat nose—they all tell a very different story. Especially to a white girl. When Kasja looks at me, she can’t see any of Dad.

It galls me to realize I might want her to. I say, “That’s how I know he wouldn’t do something like this to the trolls. He wants them gone, sure, but fairly. Honorably.”

She nods, like she’s awarding me something. “But he’s not fixing it either. They’re not even trying.”

“How do you know?”

“I asked them. Last night at their party.”

I stare at her, forcing myself to take a sip of my fruity drink.

“I asked Tyr,” she says, “because I thought the god of laws and fair shots might tell me. And he did. The answer is no: they’re not trying to save the trolls.”

“Why do you care so much?” I turn the stem of the glass in my fingers, worried Kasja is actually off her rocks.

She leans back in her chair, watching me with her arms crossed, that wildness in her eyes ready to strike at whatever I say. I like it more than I should. “Why don’t you?” she asks back.

I say, “I try not to care about things I can’t change.”

Kasja reaches across the table for my hand and winds her fingers in mine. My pulse feels strong in the tips of my fingers, and she touches them one at a time, as if tracing the beat of my heart. I like the anger, too, as much as I like her wildness. “And I can’t stop caring,” she says, almost viciously.

“You’ll need to eat to keep up the energy for it,” I tease, because I see our server coming with platters of food.

She smiles at me, slanted and sexy as if she knows I’m just avoiding an answer, but lets it go.

• • •

The rain clouds have lifted, along with Kasja’s spirits. She dances from café to van as if she has wings on her feet, her smile bright and shoulders loose. I open the passenger door for her, but she tilts her head toward the sky and stands there, blinking up at the blue with wonder clear in her eyes. I think What if someone looked at me like that? and the longing catches me off guard, so when she glances my way, I’m scowling.

“Amon.” She puts her hands on my face like a child would, to tug at my attention. My cheeks warm under her palms.

She tilts onto her toes and kisses me. It’s gentle, more like a sip of wine or the taste of a sugar petal melting on your tongue. Then she’s finished and her fingers slide down my jaw. She climbs into the passenger seat and pushes me away in order to swing the door shut.

I’m gutted. The echo of her kiss tingles on my mouth, and it’s my turn to just stand there. How can a girl I just met make me feel such a riot of changing emotions?

Kasja touches the window from inside, splaying out her fingers. Her face is expectant. Shaking myself, I go around the front and climb in behind the wheel. To avoid saying anything or even looking at her, I reach into the Velcro pocket under my seat for my cell phone. I turn it on, and three messages pop up. Two from my friend Britta and one from Mom. I don’t listen, instead offering the phone to Kasja. “You should make sure somebody knows you’re alive.”

Her grin is dangerous. “I’d rather they all think I’m not.”

The Dragon National Monument is about ten minutes outside town, along a gorgeous two-lane highway surrounded by painted desert. Rivers cut through the layers of orange and red and ivory earth, creating amazing canyon vistas. The jagged buttes and cliff surround us like a herd of giant rock turtles, with prickly Joshua trees, junipers, and dark pines shading their edges. It’s not easy keeping my eyes on the road, even though I’ve driven this land over and over again. There’s something raw about it, like the earth shifts and changes in ways it doesn’t anyplace else. Trees don’t grow taller than a giant here, because they don’t have time before the ground trembles and turns over, before the wind and rain scour loose soil away.

We roll down the windows. Wind blasts inside, filling up all the empty space between us. Kasja says something, but it’s torn away and flung out the van. She hooks her elbow over the window ledge and puts her cheek down. Hair drags free of her braids, flailing out like thin red tentacles. Her coloring matches the desert beyond.

I hop out at the visitor center for a pass to drive up to the Dragon Quarry. A half-ten other cars are parked before the large glass building that shelters the quarry from the elements. Inside is cool and climate controlled, crowded with scientific displays and a walkway alongside the main attraction, a wall of stone that used to be the bottom of an ancient riverbed. Hundreds of dragon remains were washed here and buried and fossilized, and eventually the mountains shifted the bed into this nearly vertical display. Over time, erosion exposed the bones.

Kasja rushes along the walkway and leans into the railing. The dragon wall is like an overturned box of pieces from a monochrome puzzle. Femurs and skulls and ribcages peek haphazardly out of the sandstone. It takes the eyes awhile to understand and adjust.

The first time I came here, it was with Mom. I spent the visit explaining to anybody who’d listen how my dad had defeated all the dead dragons here, that it was a monument to his strength and skill. My audience was probably just very patient and amused. Even if they’d believed the Thunderer was my father, they knew these dragons had died before gods and men existed.

I join Kasja, standing with my arm against hers. We’re dwarfed by the dragon wall, and just near enough I could reach out to touch the dark fan of a shoulder blade. She says, “Can you believe how old they are? Millions of years. Before anything else. Before the mountains and even Old Asgard or Alfheim. It makes me feel so small.” Her voice is hushed, surrounding us in a cocoon. The awe falls dead against me, though.

“I like the feeling,” I say. “It’s easier to matter less. To just be what you are—one tiny person who doesn’t really affect huge things like this.”

“You don’t think one person matters?”

I tentatively slide my hand down her spine to settle against her hip. “Maybe everybody can matter that much to at least one other person.”

Kasja laughs softly, just a low chuffing sound, and leans in.

We stand there staring up at the wall of dragon fossils instead of looking at each other. “It’s so sad,” she says.

“The fossils?”

“That’s what we could all be one day—and it’s all the trolls are becoming. Going the way of extinction.”

I think of Eirfinna and the elves, hiding under their mountains. “The ultimate destiny of monsters: turning to rock and being put in a museum.”

“Monsters, were they?”

“Sure.”

“Are you a monster, Amon?”

I pinch her hip. “Skit, yes.”

“Am I?”

“If you are, you’re a beautiful one.”

Her lips spread out over her teeth in a smile that lifts her eyes and proves my point. But it fades as quick as it arrived. “You’re maybe going to destroy me and all my plans,” she says.

I don’t ask what those plans are. I don’t like plans. They get in the way of everything else.

• • •

We wander out onto the quarry. The weather is perfect, warm for this time of year but windy, with the sort of cloudless blue skies that tug the red right out of the desert for contrast. Kasja wants to see the petroglyphs, but there’s not enough daylight hours left this time of year, so we buy a camping pass and make friends with everyone else staying on the grounds: a professional poet from Sealth; two journeymen students from Nuevo Spain, Jared and Addy, vacationing from their rigorous lawspeaking projects; a small family that visits yearly, an artist here to draw the petroglyphs, a couple on their honeymoon. We share roast sausages and down beer to laughter and singing led mostly by Kasja, who knows an endless supply of rounds and kids’ tunes. I tend the fire and smoke my cloves, just listening and relaxed.

When we curl up in the van to sleep under quilts, with the sliding door open to the night, she lies in my arms and talks out to the stars, but all the words are for me. She tells me old stories about elf maidens and dragons—some I think I’ve heard before, others she must be making up on the spot. She has three versions of how such a great number of dragons died on this ancient river so that we could stare at their bones.

It’s easy for me to listen, to stare at her mouth and the flash of her teeth in the moonlight. I don’t tell any stories; she never asks it, only that I laugh or snort or frown when appropriate. I do, waiting for the right moment to kiss her quiet and see about getting into those pants. There’s an easy elegance in the way one story tumbles into another, a litany of images that coalesce before me, making up a world I’ve never known quite so well before. She sees everything differently. I put my lips against her shoulder and her neck and feel the buzz of her voice under my mouth until I fall asleep.

First thing in the morning, we head out to the rock-art trail. The petroglyphs are hundreds of years old, chipped directly into the red rock faces. They’re abstract lizards and hexagonal men-figures, spirals and antelope. Near enough most paths to touch, though we aren’t supposed to. We climb a kilometer-long trail that scissors up a cliff side to get closer to a spread of petroglyphs of a man wearing an elaborate headdress. I’ve never been out to this one and have my head craned up to study it. Sweat trickles down my back. Kasja toes off her scuffed shoes and climbs over the wooden fence. Before I can react, she’s scaling the cliff wall.

She moves slowly but surely, finding tiny handholds and placing her toes carefully. It should make her look odd, gangly or monkey-like, but she’s too graceful for that. Her shoulders bunch and her thighs are like rocks. Then her face is just beside the nearest petroglyph. She stares at it, not quite touching. Her breath must be hitting the red stone. Does it smell different up there?

I wish her hair was loose. It’s the exact color of desert mud, a dark red like rust and sequoia bark.

Before coming down, she turns to smile at me. A smear of dirt across her forehead is like war paint. I think I could fall for her completely, and slick behind it, Thank god she’s a girl.

High up on the cliff, she sees the snarl of panic twist my face and calls down, “What’s wrong?”

I just shake my head, say, “I thought I saw you falling.”

On our way back, we race down the path, and Kasja slips easily in front of me because I’m not trying. She cusses back at me for it, skids around a corner, and shrieks. I run and she falls back toward me, hitting her ass on the ground. She scrambles for me, and I grab her into my arms, searching for danger.

There’s nothing but boulders and the gentle slope of the canyon. In the quiet, her breath gasps harshly, ruining any chance for me to hear if something is fleeing through the low, scraggly desert brush. A skink flickers away over an orange boulder that looms slightly over the path. The green of its tail vanishes as I think Surely that isn’t what scared Kasja. Not a little lizard.

“Kasja?” I ask, holding her gently as my adrenaline quiets.

She pushes away but not out of my arms, and twists to look behind. “That boulder. Oh, skit, Amon.”

I stand up, lifting her with ease. She returns to the cluster of boulders, and I follow. My boots crunch against the dirt, and I begin to hear the normal desert sounds again: wind through the stiff yucca leaves and rattling the dry Joshua branches, the scatter of pebbles, the distant scream of a hawk.

The boulders that scared her are taller than me, leaning in against each other unnaturally. Kasja places a reverent hand on one. “A troll,” she whispers. “Lost and sleeping because of the plague.”

“Are you sure?” Eying it, I can’t see any evidence of it being anything but a chunk of desert. There are troll-warning signs surrounding the campground, and last night Kasja stood in front of one for a long time. I waited behind her, reading the long list of rules for not attracting them. Keep within the ward boundaries. Tie up your food. Have a UV torch on hand. It’s all irrelevant now. Four whole months since the plague struck. I haven’t seen a decent internal organ on the market since summer.

Now Kasja flicks an irritated glare at me, and I hardly believe the gleam of tears in her eyes can be real. She’s crying for the dead beasts. “What is that?” I say.

“I pity them,” she whispers, leaning her temple against the stone. “Poor beasts, who did nothing to deserve it.”

“We don’t deserve most things that happen to us.” I turn and go.

It’s only a few moments before I hear her jogging behind me and she scrapes her nails down my back. I open up my arm, and we walk back to the van pressed together.

That night, we lay together inside Sky, the sliding door wide open again so the stars gape down from their milky scatter. It’s too late in the year for meteors, but we still watch for them. My head is propped on a clothes-filled duffle bag, and Kasja’s back tucks against my chest. I drape my arm over her ribs, and she toys with my fingers. It feels so great, relaxed and not as urgent as I usually get, laying with somebody I want to rut like this. Honestly, I’m stuck in this moment, letting it linger as long as possible.

She says, “When you said some of the gods love some of us, what did you mean, Amon?”

I’d been listening to her heartbeat during the long pause before she asked. The only other noises come in on the wind from the lawspeaker students’ camp. They’re laughing and smoking by their low fire. “Uh,” I say in my rough, unused voice, and reach up to brush her hair away from my mouth. “The gods.”

I’m stalling for time, but Kasja doesn’t call me on it.

“I meant…they’re more like us than not.” I pause. There are things I know I shouldn’t, things I’ve gleaned from the high table, things Eirfinna has confided in secret moments. “They’re not omniscient, despite their other powers. They can love the idea of us, they can love humanity, just like we can love ideas, love humanity. But they can’t love us the way we pretend they can, love us all at the same time. Love doesn’t really work like that, does it? We have to know somebody to love them, so I guess I think it’s naïve to think the gods could love you just because you worship them.”

“Naïve.”

“We can’t love everybody, especially people we don’t know. Why do you expect them to?”

It’s a long while before she reacts. Her shoulders move with her breathing, and her eyelashes twitch as she blinks, as she stares outside the van. Just before I turn her around to face me and start backpedaling like a madman, she sighs. “Unrequited love.”

“The curse that starts most tragedies, and probably all serial killers,” I joke.

She turns in my arms and kisses me.

I hold her closer, returning the kiss, and she curves into me, spreading her body against mine. Her cold fingers dive under my shirt. I’m gonna eat her alive. I smile against her teeth, but she moves her hands up to my shoulders, turning the kiss gentle, until her hands are on my jaw, her thumbs replace her lips, and we’re staring at each other across a hand-span of darkness. “There’s lightning in there tonight,” she whispers.

With this groan under my skin, I barely remember what my eyes look like. I used to know, used to spend hours before a mirror, hunting for magic in them, for the crackle that calls storms. Mom would squish her face against mine and ask what I was looking for. Lightning! I’d whisper. With a knowing, taut smile, she’d part my hair for braiding. The whole while I searched, her fingers would weave tiny, tight zigzag rows, oiling as she went, until my scalp tingled just enough to distract me. There, she’d say, how about lightning on your head, tanna?

“They’re like a monster’s eyes,” Kasja murmurs.

I cringe, and a loud yell of laugher from the lawspeaker camp shoves the real world back into the van. I climb roughly over her. “Gotta piss,” I say. She scrambles after me.

“Amon. I’m sorry.”

She darts around me, bare feet sure on the dirt. She touches my stomach and pushes so I stop. I look past her head, toward the orange glow of our neighbors’ camp, at the spill of stars. It’s so dark, and the moon is behind me, a thick sliver just rising.

“I’ve seen magic eyes, and gods’ eyes,” she says quietly. “They hurt with how lovely they are, and yours aren’t that, but—no, wait.” A hint of pleading checks me as I start to move off, wanting to demand what the point is, where the gods-cursed ragging rut she’s going with it. I should demand she tell me more of herself: where she gets these ideas, why she was really at Bright Home, what her plans are that I’m supposedly going to ruin.

But I’m afraid of the answers. I grind my teeth, trapped in this glass cage.

The moonlight soaks into her fair skin, and she’s the brightest thing in the desert. She says, “Yours are such a surprise. They’re so strange in a face like yours.” Her own eyes widen as she realizes she’s digging a deeper hole. “I mean, yes, you’re so dark and your hair is even blacker, and that little nail stud in your brow, the iron piercing all the way up your ears, and then there are these pools of…pastel. Of lake water. Or snow-melt rivers. They’re devastating, Amon.” Kasja lowers her voice. “They are a glint of opal trace in the darkest corner of a cave, a lost pool of jewel-perfect hot springs. Like this perfect shock that hits me all the way down to my bones.”

My heart is stuck in an off-beat and my fingers cold like they’ve never been before. I feel empty and clean, like after a really good fight, but insubstantial. I haven’t felt so breakable in years.

Then it took me months to recover. What will it be this time?

• • •

Ten minutes later we’re returning from the outhouses, and I hear a rustle and thud coming from Sky. I’ve adjusted to the moonlight enough to see movement, the flash of a light. I stop, tugging Kasja behind me. “What?” she asks distractedly, and I hush her. A curse spills out of the van. Kasja hears it, too, and clutches the back of my shirt.

Three long strides, and I’ve grabbed hold of one intruder, dragged him out of the van. I toss him to the ground with an extra shove of strength.

“Aw, skit, man,” he says. Jared, the lawspeaker student.

I step on his neck. “What are you doing in my van?”

Kasja points behind me. “Addy is in there still.”

“Come out, Addy,” I say calmly. “Before I crush Jared’s windpipe.” His hands fumble around my ankle, but he’s got nothing on my weight and strength together.

Addy scrambles out, screeching a little, like a wounded bird. “Stop, stop!” She falls to her knees beside Jared’s shoulder, clawing at my jeans. I take a fistful of her hair and jerk back her head. They both reek of leaf and their eyes are wide, unfocused. Jared makes a rough noise, trying to talk. I say, “Addy, you tell me.”

“We wanted to find you—we thought you had some good party, seeing as you…you live in there!” she cries. I want to make her quiet before she wakes up the rest of the campground. Thank luck we picked this isolated corner.

“And then when we were gone, you decided to steal all our skit?” I lean down, balancing carefully so I don’t accidentally break Jared’s neck.

“It wasn’t like that,” she wails.

“Quiet, jill. Tell me what it was like. Softly.”

She grimaces at me and wipes her hand under her nose. “I don’t know, I just—we wanted to find it.”

“Find what?”

“The….” Her wide eyes tear up. I don’t loosen my grip. “The….” Addy shakes her head, or tries to. My hold on her hair keeps her too still.

“They’re so high,” Kasja says unsympathetically.

“Addy,” I threaten, twisting her head farther back. “Tell me what you were looking for.”

She closes her eyes, squeezes them and claps her fingers over her mouth. A humming noise pushes out, not like a melody but a long, haunting note. “It hummed,” she says after a second. “It was so beautiful. Calling me, like it knew my name. I wanted to find it.”

Understanding swoops down like a hawk in a field. I release her suddenly, and Addy collapses. I step off Jared. “Get out, both of you. Sleep it off, and don’t tell anybody about this or I’ll make you regret it.”

Jared rolls over, pale desert dirt covering his back, and gets up woozily. He touches his head and glances at me in surprise. Before he can ask anything, Addy takes his elbow and drags him away. They stagger together through the darkness.

I spin and dive into the van. It’s been tossed, clothes and protein bars everywhere, the blankets half spilling out like soft woolen intestines. But under the driver’s seat, in the secret pouch I sewed there myself, is the heavy bag of elf gold.

Relieved, I slump on my hands and knees.

This little retreat was too good to be true. We stopped running and searching out trouble, and so, like to its nature, the elf gold dragged trouble to us.

Clutching it in my fist, I slide back outside. Kasja hasn’t moved. She stands like a salt pillar three meters from the van, holding herself and staring at me. Her eyes glint in the moonlight.

“We have to get out of here,” I say.

“You hurt them,” she says softly.

“I protected what’s mine.” I go to her, frowning unapologetically. “I’d do the same to anybody who hurt you.”

“I’m not yours.”

That hurts, but I keep it off my face. “Come on. We have to go.”

“Tell me what that is.” She gestures to my fist with her chin.

I pause. This isn’t the place. We need to be in motion. The stars overhead are enough of an audience, and the moon—the moon is too bright. If I show her the gold, that moon’ll snatch up the wicked glow, and everything with half a skill for prophecy or reading dreams will know exactly where we are. I’m skit lucky the gold hasn’t tempted Kasja herself yet. “I’ll tell you,” I say, “but not here.”

“You promise?”

Holding out my hand. “I promise. I’ll tell you when the sun comes up.”

FIVE.

We’re through Vernal and into Uto kingstate before the sun rises high enough for me to put the bag of elf gold into Kasja’s lap. She’s been silent for an hour as we watched the dim silver morning creep pink and blood-orange over the desert. Now we’re surrounded by scrub brush and flat-top hills. Rusty dirt blows over the highway like a quick disguise.

Here’s an advantage to talking while driving: I don’t have to look at her. I say, “Open it.”

She does, daintily untying the thin leather drawstring. The leather creaks as she tugs it. Even from the corner of my eye, the flash of gold is bright. Unlike regular gold, this shimmers to a man like me, with a god’s eyes. To Kasja, it’s probably dead yellow, like polished chunks of sulfur.

The cab slowly fills with a tinny song, like miniature axes picking at crystal caves, like whispers that echo from under the mountain. I narrow my eyes onto the road, glad for the iron piercing my ears like a shell, dulling the effect.

Kasja reaches in and pinches out a single bean-shaped chunk. It catches sunlight reflecting off the side mirror, and the song vanishes. Relieved, I sigh. Kasja raises it to her face, though, staring. “It’s vibrating,” she says.

“Don’t hold that piece for long, or you won’t be able to put it down.”

She casts me a frown.

“Really. You’ll think you put it away, but will find it in your pocket. Your hands will betray you. The leather is only slight protection. Usually enough for me, and I get rid of it fast, spread the pieces around. In bulk like that….” I lift my shoulders. “It’ll poison you.”

“What is it?”

“Elf gold.”

“What?” She wraps her fingers around the chunk in her hand.

“You’ve heard of it.” Everyone has.

“How did you get it? Aren’t the elves under the mountain gone?”

“They want us to think that, and so do the gods.”

Her bitter hiss is enough to reassure me Kasja won’t question me much in that regard. I continue, “There’s still a court of them in the Rock Mountains, higher up near Snake River where the old supervolcano is. They keep to themselves for survival—they wouldn’t want anything like the Anti-Troll League shifting focus onto them, imagining they’re more of a threat than the trolls.

“Why do you know this, Amon?” Her tone is shrewd.

I glance at her fist. “Put that piece away.”

Her hand uncurls in surprise, and she shoves the gold back into the pouch before jerking the drawstring tight. “My heart is roaring,” she whispers.

Snatching the bag, I tuck it behind my seat in the shadows. “A few years ago, I met one, and we began to trade. She wants electronics and plastics. I take the gold from her and sell it.”

“That sounds dangerous.”

“It’s illegal,” I say flatly.

Silence is her response, and after a moment, I add, “I should have told you what you were getting into. But I didn’t think it would attract anything out in the middle of a national park.” The whole truth is that I hadn’t thought much past Kasja. Dumb dumb dumb. If Addy and Jared had found the gold, Loki only knows what they’d have done with it. Ruined their lives, certainly, been caught up with harder people, vanished into the mountains—any number of things. The people I sell to know how to spread it around in tinier chunks, how to soothe the edges and dull the trouble. But I’m not fooling myself that it’s not a dangerous substance, what I do hardly better than drug-dealing or gun-running.

“So,” Kasja says quietly, “what will we do?”

“I usually spend about three weeks on my route, trading with the under market in little towns and cities around here, down in Alisonak and Nuevo Spain, up to Cheyenne. I get cash notes and computer parts, SIM cards—just technological trash—and dead-drop it in Yellowstone for my buyer. Three weeks after that, I’m back at Bright Home for a holiday and grab my payment at the Rock Church.”

“The chapel you took me to? I was your cover? You need an excuse to run off there, so you grab the first girl you find?”

“That’s just goat skit.” I point my finger at her. “I go up there by myself every single gods-cursed holiday. I didn’t need you. I wanted you.”

She crosses her arms. “Fine. So. You’re planning to take me around to your under market contacts? That’s the road trip?”

“You want off, you can get off,” I snap. “But I’m unloading all of it in Salt City, today. It’s too dangerous to go around to all my contacts now, with the Mask missing. Fenris and her hunters will be nosing through every place that smells a hint like etinfolk of any kind. We’ll get less commission, though.”

“It’s been three days. Surely…don’t you think they’ve recovered it? Does the Mask leave some kind of trail?”

“I have no idea if Loki got it back. Maybe. We’ll have to listen to the radio or look at a paper. I’ll ask Uriah this afternoon, in Salt City. He’ll have had his ear to the mountain. If they do, we’ll be able to relax a bit. And yes, it’ll stink like etinfolk, because that’s who made the Mask. Glory thought I had it, because I smelled like it.” I slide Kasja a meaningful look. “It was really the elf gold I smelled like.”

“Oh. Would you be able to smell the Mask? Would I?”

“Doubt it. Maybe if I was trying?” I tap my forefinger against the steering wheel. “Lady Fenris is part giant herself, and a wolf besides. I’m just a godling. You’re just a girl.”

Kasja pulls her hair over her shoulder and begins combing her fingers through. She braids it, combs it out, and braids it again, her fingers moving quickly. This has gone better than I was expecting, but somehow I don’t feel all that relieved. It’s like I’ve opened a door instead of locking one down.

We turn north with the highway, cutting around Provo through the foothills of the Wasatch Range. They slope up and away, barren except for a few leafless trees and evergreens spotting along the edge of the road. Metal barns and flat ranch houses with old stone walls to keep out the trolls appear in clusters and flash away again before I can register them properly, and soon we’re joined by working trucks and family cars, heading toward Salt City.

“You’re so powerful,” Kasja says suddenly.

I’ve got nothing to say to that. The sun flashes off the car passing in the opposite direction, punching into my eyes.

“There’s something about you, Amon. Not just your eyes, but maybe it’s all of them in you. I can’t pull away, and every time I start to try, I’m ripped right back.”

I manage a laugh, low and rough like the bleat of a goat. “I might’ve said the same thing about you,” I confess. “You sure you’re not a godling, too?”

“Oh, most definitely not a godling.”

I watch her, flicking my gaze from the road to her again and again. But she only smiles privately and refuses to say more.

• • •

Salt City’s broad, clean streets have always appealed to me, laid out in their simple grid that any man can navigate. It’s easy to find what you need, and the purple mountains guarding the borders rise up to stand as obvious landmarks, so you can tell the cardinal directions even when the sun hides. Today, though, the sky is bright and the sun casts onto the small downtown, with its not-so-high high-rises and wide temple square. Though the Salt Cathedral is a straight shot, we stop first at a motel I know in order to shower the desert away. I go first, knowing I’ll need the extra time with my hair, and tell Kasja to put on something appropriately conservative for a visit to an arch priest. Before I’ve finished picking the worst kinks out of my hair, she’s showered and dressed, in jeans and a long sweater, with her hair braided in a damp crown. Unfortunately, her formerly shiny dress loafers still have red dust pressed into the seams.

“Can I help?” she asks, coming up behind me in the tarnished little mirror hanging over the sink. Her eyebrows are lifted with uncertainty as she eyes the pick in my hand, the dark bottle of oil sitting on the counter. She avoids looking at my hair, so I presume the answer to her question is a resounding no. I shake my head. My hair puffs out in a huge halo except where I’ve already braided a third of it back over my left ear. Not for the first time, I consider shaving it all off. Mom would murder me, though.

Kasja waits patiently, watching as I style the rest. Usually I slick my hair back into an easy, oiled club at the nape of my neck, but Uriah will be more impressed with some cultural effort on my part. I put it in three fat braids tight to my head, the ends sparking out in the back like miniature black eruptions. Kasja says, “It looks like the wind permanently sculpted it.” She stands behind me, her mouth near enough to my neck that I feel the heat of her breath. “That oil smells really good.”

I lift my eyes in the mirror, but she’s entirely hidden by my body. Until her hands slide around my ribs and she hugs me. I visualize her slowly unbuttoning the silky shirt I pulled out of my duffel, and am instantly tight and hot all over. Covering her hands with mine, I say, “Gather all your stuff so it’s in the van when we go.”

Her head pops around mine so she can see my reflection. “I thought we were staying here tonight?”

“If all goes well. If not, we’ll have everything with us.”

She touches her cheek to my shoulder. “I’m not used to thinking this way.”

Guilt makes me a little rough as I shrug and start dumping my crap into the toiletries sack.

The drive to the Salt Cathedral is fast and straightforward. The parking lot is packed, so we’re forced to park a few blocks away at the edge of the square. Kasja tumbles out of the van, craning her neck to take in as much of the temple as possible.

There’s no difficulty getting caught up in the beauty of it. In perfect symmetry, square stone towers rise high enough to touch the clouds when they’re low off the lake. Today the contrast of white rock against the deep blue sky has me shading my eyes. Spires twist from each corner into sharp, smooth peaks, mirroring but improving upon the rough shape of the mountains all around us. The cathedral rises out of its manicured green square, paths paved for walking with white salt-gravel that near glows in the sunlight. At night the spires of the cathedral light from the inside, creating a cool magic to spread out over the city, reminding everyone that Thor’s blessings are with us.

“It’s the oldest rock church in the country,” I tell Kasja proudly, “except for that tiny one on Etintooth Peak. Built a hundred and fifty years ago to honor the Thunderer, to be a beacon west of the mountains to guide all our people here.” After the Thralls’ War, so many former thralls came this way, seeking land untouched by history, by oppression. Thor himself set the cornerstone of this church, and dug the first irrigation trenches in the arid basin.

I walk around to the cathedral’s south side, passing the great double doors, and put my hand against the cornerstone. It’s smooth and as tall as me. Etched into the face are the words So may this be my mountain, where my people will gather in life and death.

Kasja touches the words, too. “I didn’t grow up with anything like this. It looks like all the old cathedrals in Eurland.”

“Most of those are Thor’s, too. Manmade mountains of rock and prayers. But so many were destroyed during the last Eurland War.” Like the rest of my dedicants, I don’t want to linger on that dark episode of Thunder history. Glancing over my shoulder at the full parking lot, I add, “I think there’s a service going on, so we’ll have to be quiet inside.”

Kasja stays near me as I shoulder open the small rectangular door fitted into one of the massive stone and iron double-doors. We step into a silvery space scented with candles and myrrh. Here in the vestibule are beaten-gold bowls of blessed water for washing your hands, and a prominent pedestal with a stone hammer on it. I touch the handle and whisper a prayer. Kasja walks past me, her lips parted and eyes wide.

We stand at the base of the hammer-shaped sanctuary, looking up the grand nave of the handle toward the wide head where the altar waits. There’s an afternoon service ongoing and the stone pews are full up, all attention on the slab altar, where the priest Uriah lifts a smaller hammer and recites a chant of strength that the congregation repeats. My lips move with the call despite myself. Behind Uriah is a row of statues of heroes who died in Thor’s name, and rising over them is a great blue stained-glass window that invokes the sky and one perfect lightning stroke.

I follow Kasja as she wanders past alcoves of prayer candles and blue velvet kneeling stations, stone statues of saints and heroes, toward the chapel that fills the northern arm of the cathedral. She pauses at a statue of Sif Fairhair, who smiles calmly, her stone eyes lifted toward the sky. The goddess wears a blue mantle, and her long hair is tinted with gold-laced paint. It’s discomfiting for me to look at her, the wife of Thor, knowing my mother lived in her place for a time. I saw the goddess at Bright Home once, and she saw me. Her huge blue princess eyes hung steady on me as I fought every instinct to look away, because I’ve no fault in the situation to cause me legitimate shame. When I held her gaze, she smiled.

In the nave, the congregation rises one pew at a time to receive the Hammer Benediction from Uriah. The sound of rustling clothes and the murmur of thanks fill the cathedral cavern. Kasja asks me softly what’s happening. I explain that a rock-church service consists of three parts: welcome blessing, preaching, and the receiving of the hammer. The congregants are lining up for the last bit.

We stand at the frontmost pillar, within easy distance of the altar. I lean a shoulder into the white stone, and Kasja hooks her finger around my pinky as we wait.

Uriah stands before the altar in blue and yellow vestments embroidered in gold lightning patterns. His white hair is braided in eleven thin rows, and his beard is too close-cropped to curl. He lifts the gold-adorned temple hammer as the congregants approach, one at a time. They touch it and say, As the hammer returns to Thor Thunderer, so may I.

I’ve known Uriah for years, and he’s the sort of man who, the more difficulty surrounds him, the harder he pretends there’s nothing wrong. Makes him a good priest of Thor. But when he catches my eye and smiles, then slowly skews his gaze across to the opposite pillar, I know there’s trouble. I hope it’s not my sister, who lives in the convent here.

But no: waiting at the pillar where Uriah glanced is an Asgardian man a few years older than me, his back straight as the ribbon medals pinned to the breast of his uniform. His shaved white head is tattooed, his sharp-featured face expressionless. There’s a gun holster pressing wrinkles into the shoulder of his dark blue military jacket. The insignia on his collar is easy to recognize even from across the nave. He is not in the Salt City Militia, but a captain in Thor’s Army. Behind him are so many shadowy men, I involuntarily squeeze Kasja’s finger. He’s brought a small contingent of warriors with him.

When the blessing line dwindles, the captain shocks me by striding to the end of it. He’s the final person to grip Uriah’s blessed hammer, the last to accept benediction. Uriah places a dark hand on the captain’s tattooed scalp and murmurs something.

I press back with Kasja, touching my lips so she knows to be quiet. Our fingers linked, I lead her quickly to the statue of Sanctus Chambers, hero of the Second Eurland War, who fought wearing a white glove so that the enemy would see him coming, and in order that he never forget the stain of those he killed in the Thunderer’s name. Behind the statue is a thick blue curtain. I push it aside and usher Kasja through. It brings us into a short stone corridor lit by a single bulb. “What’s this?” Kasja whispers.

Shaking my head, I go to the plain wooden door opposite the curtain and unlatch it. Here is a dim stairway descending into the earth. In a tiny alcove, a thick beeswax candle waits beside a rusty lighter. I flick it to life and light the wick. “Pull the door shut behind us,” I instruct Kasja and start down, holding the candle.

The stairway is so narrow my shoulders occasionally brush against the rough-cut walls. It smells dank and muddy, though there’s no visible water soaking the low ceiling. The stairs are worn in the center and deep, and I warn Kasja to take care. Twenty steps later, the way ends in a cool chamber barely big enough for me to stand up in. It’s dark stone, with only one decoration. Above another doorway is a carved lintel: Be Wary for You Enter the Mountain of Death.

“Amon,” Kasja whispers, finding my wrist and holding me back. “What is this?” Her voice hisses through the darkness, fluttering the candlelight.

“The Salt City Ossuary.”

“I don’t understand.”

“A place for bones, to lay Thor’s own to rest until Ragnarok when he claims them.”

She shakes her head. “What are we running from?”

I lift the candle to see her face better. A stubborn pucker fits on her lips, her eyes glint with orange firelight. I say, “There’s a soldier upstairs. We’re too late—they came looking for the Mask, must have. They’re checking all the known under markets, and even Uriah doesn’t have enough oil to grease away this hitch. I’d hoped this would be the first place they came, that they’d be gone already. We can use this tunnel to get out, though. There’s an escape door a kilometer through.”

She sucks in a breath, holds it, and nods, her lips pressed tight together.

Turning, I step into the ossuary first. The candle barely illuminates the widening space, and there are electric camp lanterns here, but I don’t grab any. The gentle orange light catches an arch of skulls, stroking the round craniums with fickle fingers.

The walls are carved with shelves to house entire bodies, skeletons that wait in peace for Thor’s call to join him in one of the higher worlds, in a heaven across the Rainbow Bridge. Their arms cross over swords and axes and hammers, their heads rest on small, round shields. Between are larger recesses where entire families of bones are stacked and entwined beyond recognition, so that nothing in Hel could separate the family members. Femurs lined into spirals or pelvises one atop another, vertebrae hooked together into great snakes. My sister is always saying she wants to dig in and try to identify all these bones from historical records. What a mad project that would be; but then, she’s something of a shut-in.

We walk for a few minutes through the dry, silent chambers, watched by empty eye sockets. At the end, another door waits; its lintel carving reads Go Through Again into Life. I turn the handle. Nothing happens. Passing off the candle to Kasja, I grip it more firmly and pull. Hard harder hardest. Something inside the door snaps.

“What the ragging rut,” I mutter. I could pound on it, but that would make a skit-load of noise. “We’ll have to wait for Uriah.”

“Are you sure we can? If they’re looking for the Mask? Will they, um, come down here? Or smell it?”

I grimace at her obvious fear. It sharpens her features, widens her eyes. “I won’t let you get arrested. This isn’t your fault. I should’ve left you in the van and come in to check in first.”

She takes my hand again, setting down the candle. Weaving our fingers together, she looks into my eyes and says firmly, “It isn’t your fault.”

We wander back a ways through the ossuary, until I choose a section of the cave wall that’s empty of bones. Sitting, I pull Kasja down with me. She settles between my legs, leaning into my chest. Her hair tickles at my jaw. With the single candle, we’re covered in shadows. There’s no noise but the quiet shuffle of her shoes as she drags her feet up and hugs her knees, my sigh as I put my arms around her. I close my eyes and listen to the nothingness.

“It’s strange being underground again,” she murmurs. “Like this.”

“Surrounded by bones?”

“I like it here. Maybe because you’re here.”

Underground again. “Again?” I ask. “You’ve been underground before?”

“I’m from the northern mountains, remember? I know caves.” She plays with my hand, tracing the lines though she can’t possibly see them, teasing my palm until I’m breathing ragged. She presses into my pulse. “My heartbeat is faster than yours. I can’t catch my breath,” she whispers.

I want to kiss her, suck down all her anxiety. But a bark jerks us both. It ricochets toward us, dragging behind it footsteps and even electric light.

Kasja’s on her feet, and I get up more slowly. There’s one very easy way out.

“Kasja.”

She whirls to me, face desperate and hopeful.

“I can use my dad’s name to get out of this, like always.”

Her eyes narrow, a snap of wild anger erasing her anxiety. “He’s your crutch. You have to let go of him.”

“We’ll be arrested!”

“Then we’re arrested,” she snarls. “Be your own man!”

It’s too late. The barking dog is here; we’re faced with a gang of uniformed men holding lamps and huge spot-lanterns, the captain like a young hawk at the fore, Uriah scurrying behind them.

“Don’t make any sudden movements,” the young captain says with a rolling Southern accent. The glow of light shows the tattoo covering his shaved head: two curling ram’s horns that spiral thickly around his skull. His skin is rougher-looking than Kasja’s, but just as white, and his eyes so pale they burn orange from the candlelight. “I am Sune Rask, captain in Thor’s Army. State your name.”

The dog they brought tugs at his harness, tail bristled, teeth bared. He’s part wolf, at least, probably smells the elf gold in my pocket. I’ve only one tiny piece to show Uriah as proof, while the rest is stashed in the van. Instead of answering Captain Sune, I step toward the wolf-dog and hold out a hand for him to smell. If he’s trained to sniff out giants, he’ll also know me beyond the sticky trouble-stench of elf gold.

“Halt,” snaps Sune, blocking my path. “Your name.”

There are five men with him, all primed to attack, though it should be obvious I don’t have any weapons. I’m in slacks and a shiny silk shirt, a little dusty from sitting on the cavern floor, with a couple of dark gold rings on my fingers, and the iron nail in my brow marking me a Thunderer. Other than being huge, I shouldn’t present danger.

I sigh, as if it’s all a huge inconvenience. “Amon Thorson. This is my girl, Kasja. I’ve got some elf gold you’re welcome to confiscate, Captain, but hardly worth the trouble of an etin-sniffer and your time.” I put my father’s warm tones into my voice as much as I can, enunciating smoothly and meeting his eyes.

Captain Sune’s face tightens as he recognizes me. His mouth tilts up, but not with pleasure: He doesn’t like godlings. I don’t blame him. All the royal guards, all the militias, have dossiers on us, because we’re half again as likely as our parents to cause problems. My godling cousins tend to disregard rules and laws, and I can’t say as I’m that different, skirting around the undermarket the way I do. Worse, if he arrests me, it’ll be more a pain in his ass than mine. If he’s right and I stole the Mask, his career is made. If he’s wrong, he’s totally ragged.

I dig the gold out of my pocket and offer it in the palm of my hand.

He stares at it for a moment, and I feel the atmosphere suck closer; his minions do, too. Without touching the gold, he says, “Bring the dog nearer.”

The man holding the sniffer’s leash lets him forward and the animal bounds to me, nose in my crotch, then front paws up. Its tongue lolls out and I grin, scratching behind its shaggy triangle ears. It entirely ignores the chunk of raw gold in my other hand. The captain grunts in disgust and grabs the gold. While I make friends with the dog, Sune passes the gold back to one of the others, who seals it in a plastic bag.

“What are you doing here?” he asks me. The sheen of sweat on his brow is from the gold, no doubt. It’ll be making him feel desire or hunger or some fierce longing right now.

“The boy’s one of my congregation,” calls Uriah from the back, held by two guards.

“Didn’t ask you, Hammerer,” Sune responds, managing to be polite but firm. “Quiet, please, or I’ll scour this entire cathedral with the dog. Wonder what else we’ll find?”

“I came to show the bones to my girl,” I say lazily. I reach for Kasja, who slinks against me without hesitation, her body melting into my arm. She starts to speak, but the dog leaps back, hackles straining. It points with its entire body at her.

“Restrain him.” Sune calmly leans toward Kajsa. “More gold tucked in that pretty hair of yours, miss? In your pockets?”

Kasja flutters her lashes and gives a languid shrug. “Aw, no, sir, I’ve only been handling this one’s rocks a bit too much.”

I laugh and this Captain Sune actually glances at my crotch. My laughter gets pointed, and he meets my eyes.

“Watch out for this one,” Sune tells Kasja, but slinky and staring at me. “You should know, being what he is, he’s nothing to offer you.”

It galls me, because it’s true. “Some Thunderer you are,” I growl, eyeing his tattoo and stepping forward.

Sune lets me get in his face. He’s as tall as me, but slender. He drawls in that rich accent, “Some Thunderer you are. If you wanted to honor your father, you’d be in a militia, you’d be in his Army. Not running around with elf gold and girls.” He raises a hand as if to grab my face; it’s wiry and long, and I suspect he knows exactly what to do with it.

I suddenly wish he would, and I barely lick my bottom lip.

He sees it.

Rag and skit. My eyes widen a twitch.

Sune makes the same tiny, barely-there lick. “And not just girls, apparently,” he breathes, just for me.

I hit him.

He’s fast, but not fast enough, and my punch has the strength of a mountain behind it. Sune stumbles back, his men yell, and one has a sidearm out and pointed at me before I can move again. But Sune snaps, No and charges me.

In a flash of insight, I realize he wants this. To prove himself against a son of Thor. But there’s no more time before I take his fist in my gut, and block a second strike at my chin.

I’m no boxer. I avoid training. But I don’t need it.

He bounces off me like nothing, and when he blocks my hits, it still hurts him. His speed and skill give him too many strikes; I’ll be a bouquet of bruises, but I won’t go down. He jumps on me and we grapple. He’s just strong enough I can’t quite get an arm around his neck or push his face into the earth, but oh, sweet Sif, I want to. I want it grinding into the rough dirt until he forgets what he saw. Till his spit and blood smear on the walls.

It’s not until we crash together into a pile of bones that anything penetrates my fury.

I hear Kasja cry out, and suddenly my arms are up, away from Sune. “Stop stop stop,” I say, trying to roll off.

We end up crouched, glaring. My breath comes nearly as hard as his. A spill of ribs and cracked skulls surrounds us. Uriah’s voice is a constant stream of prayers. One of the soldiers has Kasja’s arm. She hangs there, staring desperately at me. The dog stands at sharp attention beside its handler.

Stalemate.

Sune could arrest me now, sure thing. I attacked him.

My right cheekbone throbs, and there’s a radiating ache in my right arm. Sune has blood on his mouth in a terribly enticing way. One eye swells shut already.

But he smiles. “Get out, Thorson.”

“What do you want?” I glare my best, hoping lightning spits out of my eyes.

“Tell…” he wipes his arm against his mouth. “Tell your daddy my name.”

I stand up. Eyes on him the whole time, I take Kasja’s hand and go.

SIX.

Remnants of anger fuel my driving, and I’m halfway out of Salt City, about to merge onto I-80 and head for home, when Kasja tugs on my wrist. “Amon, stop, where are you going?”

My fingers are locked around the wheel, and I shake my head. “Alta California.”

“The motel—can’t we go there? Recover? Sleep? Eat? He let us go.”

Her words sink through my skin. “I…yes.”

She releases my wrist to stroke her hand down my arm.

The progress of her fingers helps me put my boot on the break.

Twenty minutes, and I’m parked at the motel, unclamping my fingers from the steering wheel. All that adrenaline left behind jagged, stiff bones. Feeling rather outside my body, I gather my stuff again, heave it onto my back, and follow Kasja inside. She had a key in her pocket.

I drop my duffel and stand there, not sure what to say. I’m still humming with anger and the echo of Sune Rask’s punches. Kasja walks all over the brown carpet, turns on the overhead light, both bedside lamps, the weak florescent over the sink, and even the toilet light. Then she takes one of the threadbare cloths hanging on its creaky towel ring and dampens it. “Sit,” she tells me, and I obey like an automaton tuned into her frequency.

Perching on the edge of the bed, I put my hands on my knees. Kasja stands before me, chest at my eye level. I raise my gaze. The moment our eyes connect, she grabs my chin and turns my face to dab at my cheek with the cloth. Pain spreads dully, melting along my skull. The cloth comes away pink and bloodied. We don’t speak. I wish I could reach the remote to turn on the TV for some cursed white noise. If it weren’t for that ragging soldier, I’d crack a smile, tell her the only nursing I need is the sweating kind. Instead, I stare past her at the paint on the wall. It’s chipped and dreary blue, the color of low pollution.

Kasja drops her hand. The cloth is pinkish all over, hanging from her fingers like it aches for the floor. My ribs ache, too, and my left arm where I blocked plenty of Sune’s hits. It occurs to me Kasja’s looking at my eyes. I close them.

She moves away, leaving a vacuum before me. But the bed shifts, and I know she’s climbed onto it. She kneels on the mattress, reaches for the top button of my shirt, and flicks it open. She skims down to the next one, and the next, and I hold my breath as she folds back the shirt completely, baring my chest and stomach. I’m still ragging thinking about Sune Rask, so I force my eyes open to watch her as she pushes me down onto my back and straddles my waist. Her fingers trace down the center of my chest. She’s all heat, clamped across my hips, and she laughs softly. “I see how all your muscles shift and tighten,” she whispers.

“You’re destroying me,” I answer, but sitting how she is, she can tell.

I grip the quilt as she kisses my chest again, mouth skipping along a meandering path to my belt. Her tongue touches my skin, and then her teeth, and my hands fly to her hips. She lifts her eyes and asks, “Are you ready for me, Amon Thorson?”

“I don’t…don’t think so,” I whisper, “but I want to, anyway.”

Her wicked smile softens, and she places a kiss over my heart. “Good answer, godling.”

• • •

It’s only later, when I’ve rolled half off the bed to drag the quilt up over us and opened my arm to welcome her sweaty body back against mine, that she says sleepily, “Tell me about the elf who gives you your gold.”

I sigh into her, let my eyes close, and picture Eirfinna. “I met her five years ago, after my dad broke my arm in ritual combat—don’t worry, I asked for it, literally. I’d snuck up to the Rock Church to make Dad care, to be a little skit, basically, and she was there, in the shadows. I thought she was a goblin at first. That she would eat me, or spirit me away to the mountains forever.”

“Why didn’t she?”

I shrug awkwardly, bobbing her head. “I think she…liked me, too. We spent that whole first night kind of just staring at each other. You’ve never seen anything like her. She’s all moonlight and silver and diamonds, a perfect grown crystal with clear purple eyes like amethysts, and black diamonds growing in a sharp ridge along her cheekbones.”

Kasja touches her own cheeks, as she’s done before. Her eyelashes flutter.

“That’s why I thought she was a goblin, but she quickly disabused me of the notion. She used elf magic to heal my broken arm.” I raise my left arm, my shield arm, to show Kasja the long streaks of elf gold embedded against the brown skin from my wrist to my elbow, like a tree. “The gold makes me stronger than even Dad’s blood, and thrums sometimes with energy. Or just when there’s gonna be snow.”

She reaches across my chest to touch the tip of the scar nearest my hand. I feel her warmth soak into the gold. “It sings,” she murmurs, “like the gold in the van. I’ve never noticed before.”

There’s something like awe staining her voice, but I chuckle. “You haven’t had so much time to notice.”

“Do you love her?” Kasja leans up and into my chest, gaze right on mine.

I want to kiss her and start up all over again, but thinking of Eirfinna and staring at Kasja makes something sharp come alive in my chest. “I don’t know.”

It seems to displease her.

I add, “She’s wild, but not like you’re wild, where it’s something you contain inside you. Eir is inhuman, alien…she is….” I shake my head. “You can’t love something like that, because maybe her heart is made of the same diamonds as her cheeks and finger claws.”

For a moment, Kasja’s mouth shifts as if she’s going to snarl at me. Her fingers dig into my shoulders. But then she drops her head onto my chest. Her shoulders tremble. Tentatively, I put my hands up around her, stroking the long lines of her bare back.

She says softly, “Unrequited love.”

That startles me into laughing. “You think Eirfinna loves me?”

Kasja lifts her head and offers a playful smile. “Why else would she put up with you for so long?”

“Nice, jill, after I’ve been so good to you!” I laugh and shove her off me, but not with force, and pin her to the bed. She pretends to struggle, hissing like a cat, and I have a strange double-vision of her with sharper teeth and paler hair. I blink, and she uses my distraction to slip away.

“I’m putting on pants and getting us something to eat,” she says, sauntering toward the dinky bathroom.

I listen, stretched out on the bed, as she turns on the sink and ruffles around with clothes. For all my afternoon was truly ragged, I feel stupid content right now, and fall into a doze.

SEVEN.

I wake heaving and retching, but strong hands help me lean over the bed to puke in a tin bowl. My stomach knots and my sinuses are a sieve of fire, blinding me. Cold cloth on my neck and against my forehead, a low, soothing murmur. Sleep.

• • •

There’s sunlight the next time, and a dull hammer in my skull, but I’m not still sick. My body is heavy, though, and needs a stretch, water, and some ragging bacon and potatoes. I grunt as I roll on my side to push up. The place smells of sweat and fresh air. I can hear the road and something like a squeaky wheel on a laundry cart.

The door of the room is open to the parking lot.

And Captain Sune Rask sits in the only chair, beside the TV stand.

I fly up, but grip my head as it swims with the sudden motion.

He doesn’t move. Through narrow eyes, I stare at him, trying to find a thing to say.

Despite the shabby chair and the worn paint behind him, he sits straight, uniform unwrinkled. He watches me right back with those hooded pale eyes, mouth pursed thoughtfully, one brow cocked. His hands rest on the arms of the chair, tense and still. Everything about him is sharp; a man built out of knives. But there’s a brilliant red bruise arcing around his left eye, and split skin on the same cheekbone, a slice down his bottom lip, pluming it up like a pout.

Almost makes me smile.

But rag me sideways, I remember him helping me last night. It was Sune who put the cloth on my neck and held the bowl for me to be sick in. I might be sick again right ragging now. “Where’s Kasja?” I manage, though not so demanding as I intended.

One finger lifts, and he points out the door. “With your missin’ van, I wager.”

“She stole my…what?” I sink back onto the bed, head in hand. Where my fingers press into my skull, the ache eases. “No way. You’re so full of skit, Rask, what’d you do to me?”

“Kept you from swallowin’ your own vomit.” His tone is even, but he goes all tense again.

“I don’t get sick.”

Now he picks up a thin, clear vial from the pressed-wood TV stand. Holding it delicately between his fingers, he says, “Smells like thorncherry leaves.”

It’s from my own stash. A hallucinogen when smoked, but mildly poisonous ingested. Knocks you out, only kills you if you asphyxiate or choke. My eyes unwillingly go to the remains of the dinner Kasja brought back last night. Foil from the wrapped burritos and two giant honey sodas. She could’ve spiked it before bringing it in. And probably she knew it wouldn’t kill me, with my constitution.

I get up again and slam into the bathroom. It’s not until I’m leaning over the sink that I realize I’m buck-ass naked. My pants are out there on the floor—rag and rutting jack-licker skit. I twist the shower on high and get in despite the ice-cold water. It heats up too gods-cursed slow, but I grind my teeth and shake as I try not to punch the tile.

She played me.

And I bet she has the Mask. It’s never been elf gold I smelled like to Glory the Fenris Wolf or Sune Rask’s etin-sniffers. It was always Loki’s Mask of Changing, sitting on Kasja-I-don’t-even-know-her-ragging-last-name’s face.

I let her do it.

I liked her.

My palms itch to pick up a hammer and bash it into something. Instead, I let the now-scalding water strip me down, burning the little scratches she left on my shoulder, the raw ache in my skull. I get out, flinging water everywhere, and drip onto the cold tile floor. There’s water beaded on my oily hair and I slick it off, then tie it all back in a knot with shaking hands. I wrap a towel around myself and thrust open the door.

Sune turns to me from where he’d been leaning against the outer doorframe, watching the parking lot. There’s a slip in his sure face when he sees me, and his mouth parts as he flicks those cursed all-seeing eyes up and down me before he reigns in. I ignore it all and say, “You’re gonna take me with you to find her.”

• • •

We head out in his Army Jeep, which bends in its shocks when I climb in. He’d come after me last night, Sune says, because something wasn’t sitting right with him, and he thought he’d use the excuse that I’d been at Bright Home when the Mask was stolen to question us further. “All professional-like,” he says. “I called the guard at Bright Home, and do you know, there was nobody on the guest list or catering list or any other approved list named Kasja anything?”

“I know now,” I say darkly.

“You really didn’t know she had it? You met her there and just whisked off together for a love drive?”

“No, I didn’t know, and at the time, it seemed a shiny idea.” I grip the side handle and stare out at the passing desert. After stopping for coffee, we’re headed north on highway 15, because Sune put a BOLO on my van, and it was seen heading across the kingstate border into Idahow. Nobody’s supposed to intercept Kasja as long as she keeps to the main roads, just radio him her progress. We’ve got a load of kingstate troopers at the ready, and the Idahow Army Depot is dispatching some trucks from Boise to meet us.

“Let me know if you have any more shiny ideas,” Sune drawls.

We ride in silence for a long time, past scrappy desert mountains and walled towns. My coffee’s cold before I can bring myself to drink it. I keep thinking back over the last few days—about meeting Kajsa at Bright Home, and how she knew my name right off, her bitter disdain for the gods of Asgard, the sympathy for the trolls, and even the little metaphors she used that were so full of diamonds and caves. Kasja’s questions last night about Eirfinna, her reaction when I said Fin can’t be loved. And this road we’re on, it’ll take us up into Montainia unless we cut over into Cheyenne, where the Yellowstone Caldera, my secondary elf gold drop-off point, is.

“Rag me,” I say, leaning forward to stare at the horizon, as if I could see my van if I tried hard enough.

“What?” Sune asks.

“I know where she’s going, and once she gets there, she’ll be gone from us and your justice forever.”

He slides me a right skeptical look. But I’m so dead serious, he must read it easily in my eyes. “Where? Can we get there first?” he asks.

I nod. “But we’re gonna need to fly.”

• • •

Sune pulls over immediately to argue and it takes me five minutes to convince him Kasja’s real name is Eirfinna Grimlakinder, and that she is an elf from under the Rock Mountains who I’ve been trading with for years. She’ll be at the Yellowstone Caldera, because there are only two places where she leaves and enters her underground caverns, and the supervolcano is the only one north of here.

The captain stares at me with his brow low, one hand on the steering wheel, the other settled loose on his thigh. If it was me, I’d be picking at my pants or tapping a finger or something, but he’s completely still except for the tiny motions of his eyes as he studies mine. “You definitely believe what you’re saying,” he says finally.

“I’m not crazy,” I cry, thumping a fist against the dash. Since the car’s been off, the cool winter air has crept in, and our breath steams the windows at the edges.

“Elves are gone, Amon,” he says flatly.

“They aren’t, you just don’t have the clearance to know about them or something. They’re hiding in the mountains; that’s where the gold comes from, dumbass.”

“Be careful,” he warns.

“You gonna let me beat on you again if I keep it up?”

“I think you’d like getting your hands on me again, Amon.”

It’s crushing how he says my name with that accent. I grind my teeth and bite back any retort. “Look, Sune, she’s getting away, and what I’m telling you is true. You’ll never get the Mask back once she’s underhill. Then what about your career? I’ll be telling my dad your name when I tell him how you kept me from catching her.”

“I’ve never had any evidence for trusting godlings.”

Breath rushes past my teeth, all frustration. What can I say?

Sune glances out the windshield, then back to me. “You hide so much, lie to yourself and others, it must have been easy for her to lie to you. All those lies—what should I believe?”

“I….” I leave my mouth hung open, reaching for something real to say. “I don’t lie to myself.”

He scoffs. “You hit me for those lies.”

And not just girls, apparently.

He’s right about that and why I punched. I lower my chin, study my hands the way Kasja—no, Eirfinna—did. For a second, I give up. She deserves to escape, to get away from me and all of New Asgard, to do what she wants with that Mask. She stole it from a master stealer, fair and right, and whatever my old elf friend wants with it, maybe she should win.

Sune Rask touches my jaw, and I don’t jerk away. He takes my chin in his long fingers and turns me back to face him. I don’t breathe. He studies me for a moment, then slides his fingers slowly off my skin and reaches for his radio to order us a heliplane.

EIGHT.

The Army pilot puts us down across the rough switchback road, ten miles ahead of Kasja and the van, and gestures when we can get out. Sune starts talking, but I tear off my headgear and toss it onto the narrow, uncomfortable seat before piling out the open side of the heliplane. The rotary blades push battering wind down at me, and I shield my eyes with my hand as I jog down the center of the roadway. There’re no cars. The Army and local militia were shutting down any traffic behind Kasja, which is light anyway this late in the season. Most of the upper trails and passes are already closed with snow. No more battle matches are scheduled until spring, and that’s the largest tourist draw to Yellowstone Park: the professional battle guild matches. I’ve seen a few myself, historical reenactments and the more entertaining mummer battles, when one army takes on a goblin or giant role and the outcome isn’t preordained. Those crowds make me great customers.

Even as the heliplane’s blades slow, the wind takes its place, streaming across the steep slope of yellow grass. The valley dips away from the road toward a crystal blue stream before rising again into the Specimen Ridge and, beyond that, the Amethyst Mountain—that’s her ultimate destination, more than ten miles off-road. She’ll have to leave the van in one of the pull-outs or picnic spots and go the rest of the way on foot, unless she’s got a horse in her pocket. Our drop spot was at a lone petrified tree northeast of here, along one of the public trails. There’s an elf cup carved into the stone stump. I stop and cross my arms over my chest, wincing against the brilliant sunlight. A few puffed clouds sit high in the deep sky dome, and it all shines like diamonds.

Sune joins me, hands clasped behind his back. The wind snaps those long tails of his uniform jacket and his eyes tighten, but otherwise, you’d never know if anything bothered him. The tips of his bare ears are pink from the cold, though. I see he’s strapped double-bladed axes to his back with a cross baldric. And his gun’s at his thigh now. He says, “I thought all the volcanoes around here would keep the mountains from being good for underhill castles and caves.”

“Eirfinna told me they can build in any stone, and there are natural caves around here. Not to mention the hot spots that elves and goblins have always craved.”

“The natural gases, you mean?”

“And hot springs. She said they create vents to go where they want. Can build their forges anywhere.”

“I thought goblins had forges and elves had…magic.”

I shrug. “She talks about it all in the same breath. Elves and goblins aren’t so different from each other as maybe they used to be. They joined to survive.”

“So it’s a fallacy to believe the Battle of Sanctus Helen’s truly rid the world of their kind.”

“Propaganda.”

“He doesn’t do that,” Sune says, more offended than I’ve heard him, but showing it only in his taut voice.

I laugh once. “Sure, Thor might not, but men do.”

His shoulders roll very slightly, only to push back more square. Then he says, “What can you tell me about her strength and speed? I know nothing of elves.”

“Well, Sune,” I say in my best afternoon-special voice, “she’s very strong and very fast.”

In answer, he opens his gun holster with a flick of his thumb.

All the breath goes out of me. “You can’t kill her.”

Sune frowns at me, eyebrow rising as he takes in my expression. I grip my elbows tighter across my chest.

“Amon, she betrayed you,” he says like to a child. “Lied to you and stole from you and used you. But you still feel loyalty to her?”

I feel my muscles will creak with the force of my grip. “Yes. She must have had a reason and will have thought the Mask mattered more than—than us.”

“Maybe you’re more your father’s son than I thought,” he mutters, turning back to face the road.

“I’m not a giant ragger, or troll kisser, you skinny rag-ass bastard.”

Both his eyebrows shoot up, but he does not look at me. “I meant the loyalty piece, but take it as you will, I suppose.”

Shame floods my face with blood. I can feel the heat of it.

Our unfortunate silence only lasts a couple of minutes, both of us staring down the rough road. Once or twice, I glance at his sharp profile: long nose, low brow, thin lips, all strong and sleek. He’s a weapon. My father’s weapon. I can perfectly see the raging red of the bruise, and the darker mottles blossoming slowly since this morning. Guilt tears at me. There was no call for that, just because he read me so easy.

The van, my sky blue home on wheels, appears, nosing around the switchback below us, then slowing up the approach. She stops a few meters back. I can see her through the windshield, despite the sunglare. For a moment, she does nothing but turn off the engine. Then the driver’s door pops open and she hops down. She’s in her ruined loafers, the Walton jeans, and one of my sweaters hanging off her shoulder, all cockeyed and sexy. Red curls slicking over her breasts. My mouth goes dry. Last night was ragging meaningful, and then she just ragging left. She should have told me then, even if I said she couldn’t be loved. Maybe she could’ve proved me wrong.

My head shakes in denial. Kasja—Eirfinna—doesn’t even glance at Sune, but keeps her gaze on me as she approaches. “I’d have left your van where you could find it, Amon,” she purrs, “no need to chase up here after me.”

“That’s not why,” I say, too much emotion beating up the words.

“Why then?” She shrugs that bare shoulder so my sweater falls farther down her arm, revealing her thin purple bra strap and the edge of lace.

“That’s—that’s what I want to know. Why.” Gods curse it. I hug myself to keep from grabbing her. From punching her.

Sune says, “In the Thunderer’s name, Eirfinna Grimlakinder, give me the Mask of Changing.”

Her mouth opens, and she laughs delightedly. “My name!”

“Fin,” I plead, but I don’t truly know what I’m pleading for.

“Hand it to Amon,” Sune says.

She shakes her head. “I don’t think so.”

I start to ask her to tell me why she left, but Sune pulls his gun and shoots her.

The crack echoes in the clear autumn air, a sharp roar like from the fumaroles around here. Sune’s arm is straight out before him, and Eirfinna steps back, shocked. Her knees buckle and she falls onto the gravel road before I’ve made it halfway to her.

My boots skid as I sit down beside her. Blood drips in scarlet threads down her collar, onto her neck, seeping onto the gravel below. The black wound is tiny, billowing blood in the rhythm of her heart. But the pool beneath her grows too fast: The exit wound must be even worse.

I see it all, ears pounding with my own pulse. Her forest eyes are wide and strained as I pull her against my knees, reaching under to put pressure on her back. Blood pours through my fingers, and she cries out when I touch her. “It hurts,” she gasps. “Oh, Amon, the pain!”

Sune, standing over us like Death, says, “Take off the Mask, and you’ll be yourself again. Elves are made of stronger stuff, yes? You won’t die if you take it off and give it to me. Quickly.”

“Rag you, Sune!” I spit, flailing at his thigh. My fist makes red streaks on his uniform pants.

Kasja looks up at him with a wretched smile. “Well played.”

“She’s dying, you son of bastards.” I’m crying, as gutted as my friend, burning and lost.

She touches my mouth, and I taste the sting of blood. She says, “I thought, when I saw you that night, when you appeared like destiny, maybe I wasn’t supposed to…to go through with my plans. I took the Mask for my people. I wanted to use it to save us, before they do something to us like they’ve done to the trolls. But I thought, when I saw you, maybe I could just…go with you. Be a woman for a life, with you.”

I kiss her. I kiss her too hard, and she whimpers. I say, “Don’t die, Fin. Please.”

“You’re right, though” she says. “I’m too wild for you, for this form. How delicate you humans are! That surprised me. How cold I was, how easily I bruised. How hot your skin was against mine.” Her fingers dig at the skin by her ear, slipping in blood, but she shuts her eyes and there’s strain in her lips, in her furrowed brow. Then, with a slight suck, a thin golden mask cleaves off her face.

She tosses it away, and her back arches. I grip her tight, holding her against my chest. The wind howls around us, but it’s nothing supernatural; it’s the heliplane starting up its blades again.

“Come on,” Sune says, and I glare up at him.

“Get away with your prize,” I snarl. “I’ll take my van wherever I want to go from here.”

He studies me for a small moment, letting sorrow curl over him like a cowl. But he nods, and turns back toward the heliplane.

I put my head down again, but her hair against my lips is cold and silky and straighter than spidersilk. Sharp nails press my cheek, and I lean back to look down at Eirfinna herself, milky-gray, slick skin covered in streaks of blood and crystalizing amethyst. Her solid black eyes fill her head, alien and remote, and the sun gleams on those tiny nubs of black diamond pressing along her cheekbones like a miniature mountain range. She smiles through sharp diamond teeth. “Amon,” she rasps. “Take me to shade. I need shade.”

Swooping her up, I carry her off the road into a patch of evergreens and stumble down with her. She’s smaller than she was, but still long, slender, and heavier from her crystal and gold bones. I set her gently on the fallen pine needles, pushing down the grasses to make as comfortable a bed as I can. “I’ll get you sleeping bags and the quilt,” I say quickly, “and I’ve got all sorts of remedies and powders that can strengthen you. Sugar…ah, protein….” I trail off as she puts her hand up to my lips, catching my mouth with curled fingers.

“No, Amon.” Her round eyes flutter shut. “Leave me. I need my people now; none of your men’s folk remedies will aid me.” Her words click against her sharp teeth, pronounced swiftly and correctly, but with a rhythm not quite human.

“You’re still bleeding,” I protest, anger surging. “You can’t just send me rag off, nothing else. You left me, and now you just want me to go?”

“That’s why.” She heaves up onto her spindly elbows. “I left you: We are not friends.”

“Rag that! You—we…we slept together! We….” I think I might ragging cry. Like a ragging baby.

“My heart is a black diamond, Amon.” She hands my words back to me. “I cannot be loved by such as you.”

I sit back on my heels. Teeth ground together so hard, they might crack and crumble. “I was right,” I grind out. “If you aren’t changed by last night, I was right.”

She spreads her spidery hands and lies back with relief. She is a silver and gray and black corpse, all hard edges and violet hollows. Breathing through her mouth, lips cracked, teeth tiny pointed fangs.

“So much history,” I mutter. “Wasted.”

“Not wasted,” she says, never opening her eyes. “It was learning, for both of us.”

“What did you learn?”

“I understand what I want now.”

“Not me. Not us.”

She nods. “I am Eirfinna Grimlakinder, a queen under the mountain, not a woman. That is how I was born, and what I was born to be. I will ride that truth into history and legend, Amon Thorson, just wait. I will save my people from your gods.”

Her voice fades toward the end, and I think she’s passed out. But then she presses her moon-gray hand to my knee. “Go. When the stars rise, my people will come, and I will grow strong again.”

Almost as if she’s become something repellant, I tear away from her touch and stand.

I return to my van and drive away from Eirfinna of the Elves, off into the sunset. I’m not sure what it is I’ve learned, but it feels ugly.

NINE.

Though I’d rather shove my rocks in a blender, a summons to Bright Home is not a thing I can ignore.

I show up late, in dull dread, park the van in the assigned lot—in Glory’s place—and wind through a surprising number of cars for the side hall where my dad does his official business. It’s shaped like a hammer, just like his cathedrals, jutting out from Etintooth Peak on a spur of cliff. Early snow stains the gables and long roof. There are no pillars here, just thick stone walls, and no windows, either. More soldiers than I’m used to line the entrance, wearing their dress uniforms, and that’s the first thing to ping my suspicion.

I head into the entryway, which is lined with armored knights from the past thousand years, at least one from every century. All are such large examples Thor could wear them if he liked. Though he prefers much older-style corselets and smaller plates. No helmets, since he’d not be caught dead in a helmet.

The double doors leading to his sanctuary are thrown open, and brilliant firelight pours out. I hear Dad’s voice flowing over everything but muffled by a lot of people.

It’s a ceremony. If not for the line of soldiers formed up behind me, I’d turn and go.

My only luck is that when I step reluctantly inside, I see it’s not me who’s the star guest.

The benches are lined with medal-crusted dignitaries from the Army, Lightning priests, and other men in fancy suits. Up front with the cardinal priest in his deep blue raiment is my dad, all silver metal and fire-blond hair, and Loki Changer, slowly transforming from ten-year-old up to hoary old man and back again, with a gluttonous smile on his face in every shape.

And Sune Rask.

Groaning loud enough the back benches can hear me, I thump to the side and plop down on the floor against the far corner, happy to let my irritation be known.

Sune’s being promoted.

And awarded the title Hunter. Plus a medal.

Rag me sideways.

The moment he shakes Loki Changer’s awkward teenage hand, I get the skit out.

Knowing better than to leave before I talk to Dad, I skulk around the armory for a while, hefting the maces and old battle axes, though that makes me think of Sune, and I switch to the hammers. Dad has every kind imaginable, from pointed knee-knockers to pyramid-shaped skull crushers. They’re made from stone and steel and wood, handles wrapped in silver wire or blued iron or sharkskin or troll skin. The tapestries on the walls depict him battling the World Snake or sucking down the entire ocean through a drinking horn. Nobody ever accused Thor Thunderer of modesty.

There’s a table with a war game set up on it; tiny figures about an inch high spread out over some Danish hills to depict the battle where Hrolf Kraki died two thousand years ago. I lean over it and begin the tedious process of rearranging the cavalry so they’re in the correct position for a different battle. I pick up Hrolf Kraki himself and tuck him into my pocket. Not saleable, but good to know I’ve stolen something of Dad’s when I’m already having a bad day.

“You came,” Sune says from the darkened doorway. “I didn’t know if you would.”

“I don’t ignore my dad’s invite to anything.”

His jaw muscles shift as he tries not to look peeved. “Of course.”

“Congrats,” I say offhand, keeping the table between us, hands crammed in my front pockets. “On the promotion.”

“That’s why I wanted you here. It took both of us. I got the Mask back because of you.”

“But you kept my name out of it, I note. There wasn’t a medal waiting for me.”

He squares his shoulders, and I can’t help seeing how fine the dress uniform fits him. Even in this dim light, the cut shows off that V from shoulders to hips, and the seam of his pants doesn’t hide the muscles in his thighs. “I thought you preferred it that way,” he says quietly.

Chewing the inside of my cheek to distort my expression, I nod once, like it doesn’t matter. “You’re right about that.”

Sune toys with one of the miniature conifers on the Danish battlefield, skimming his fingers along the wiry green fringe. “I won’t tell anybody anything about you that you don’t want them to know,” he promises.

And not just girls, apparently.

I grunt so I don’t have to say anything.

“Did she make it?”

My skin goes cold. “Far as I know.”

He’s staring at me with an intensity I can’t begin to interpret. “Good,” he says.

“You give a skit about her? Who you ragging shot?”

“I care because you care.”

The laugh I choke out is high-pitched with incredulity.

Sune comes around the table to me, stalking smooth and graceful as a giant cat. Hunter. That’s what he is now, and I feel it in my rocks. He stops a pace away and says, “I’m not the one of us full of skit.”

I shove my face into his. “No, you’re the one of us who shot my best friend and sorta hoped she’d survive.”

“I know the Mask,” he snaps. “I study my prey, and I know how it works. It changes you totally, not just your appearance, or else Loki couldn’t have babies using it, you dumb ragger. She only had to choose to take it off and be herself. Bullets don’t kill easy elves or goblins, whatever she was.”

I’m shaking, thinking of Eirfinna and how delicate she looks with her crystal bones, even having diamond claws and fangs, even with those deep black eyes. Thinking how she says there’s nothing between us anymore. “You might’ve hit her heart, killed her instantly.” Even as I say it, I think how I called that heart hard as a diamond.

“I’m an excellent shot,” he says back.

And then he shifts in so our chests almost touch, and his breath is hot on my mouth. “Always hit what I’m aiming for,” he says. If I move at all, my nose will brush his; I could crush us together, to rag him or beat him, I don’t even know.

Sune chooses.

He kisses me, but the instant our lips touch, I shove him back over the miniature table.

His body slides across it, flinging tiny soldiers every way, and he catches himself in the center. The look he gives me could scathe the fur off a bear.

I go.

• • •

It takes all night long to reach the Rock Church on foot, all ragging night, when I can get there in under an hour on a motorcycle. As dawn crests the peaks, I see it, glittering with frost across the icy tundra. The stone building perched there like a forgotten toy.

That just reminds me of the miniatures and throwing Sune across them. This place is mine and Eirfinna’s—and I don’t know if maybe I didn’t ruin it by bringing a stray lost girl here in the first place. I was the one who broke the magic, because I didn’t think. I didn’t care, just wanted out, like an addict, like one of those raggers I sell leaf or cloves or bearbane to.

When I reach the church, sweaty and frozen, I put a boot on the small boulder elf cup, and with all my might, I shove. It’s so heavy, I roar with the effort, but the rock tears up from the frosty mountain and tilts to the side. The monument to tradition, to men’s ancient worship of the elves and goblins, hangs there, off-balance, and then slams into the ground.

The dull thud of it breaking echoes in my heart.

I dig a clove cigarette out of my pocket, and light up.

THE END.

LADY BERSERK

By Tessa Gratton

For all the girls with dragons in their hearts

ONE.

They’re saying it’s the first official dragon hunt in the history of the United States of Asgard.

Used to be every few years in Eurland, especially toward Rus and Deutschland, where the largest populations were, the kings would round up heirs from every famous dragon-slaying family and send them out to bring back heads. That’s how so many dragon skulls ended up gracing the hearths of drafty old castles, but why few dried hearts and ribcage sculptures were dragged across the ocean here to the States. Most of our dragon bones are the fossilized kind, from when they liked it here because of the glaciers. Like most of our monsters, dragons prefer ice and cold to tropics or deserts. Something about their inner fire, blah blah, et cetera. I didn’t pay attention during that lecture, because unlike my peers that year, I was only interested in things that could hurt me. Dragons, being endangered, were extremely low on that list.

Every once in a while¸ a loner buzzes down from some mountain because of encroaching civilization, and we have to kill it. By we, I mostly mean Thor and his Army, and by every once in a while, I mean it’s happened four times since the founding of our country. Five times now, I suppose.

The first time was two hundred years ago, when some pioneers ignored very explicit warnings from the native warriors—I don’t remember which tribe, if I ever even knew—and got themselves massacred when they sheltered in the wrong cave. Took Thor himself three days and that big hammer to put the pair of wingers down.

The second time was when they were blasting tunnels to drive the transcontinental railroad through the Rock Mountains and woke up a really mean black wyrm that supposedly was as long as twenty boxcars nose to caboose.

Then ten years ago, a dragon the size of a barn crawled out of the Lake of the Ozarks and a kid named Sean Hardy killed it practically by accident. Turned out he was descended from an old-school dragon-slaying clan with thousand-year-old dragon teeth in the attic. He was all over the television for a while, and two boys I knew in the caravan used to play Dragon Slayer with wooden swords, fighting over who got to be Sean. They weren’t my friends, because I thought any self-respecting Lokiskin should be fighting over who got to be the dragon.

Hardy did it again a year and a half later, somewhere in the Adirondacks. I barely remember it, even though I was nine, because my dad had just come back to us from a tour of duty in some secret, terrible place, and he rocketed to number one on my list of things that could hurt me. All I know is that Hardy survived the second dragon, too, but spent a few months almost dead in a Friggan hospital. Now he pops up every once in a while on one of those “Where Are They Now?” type shows or magazine spreads. He always looks harassed.

So now there have been three months of reports out here on the prairie of entire herds of cattle going missing and grass fires nobody admits to setting; and half the passengers on a plane flying from Westport City to Dallas swear to Tyr the Just that they saw a dragon with a head nearly as long as the airplane flying above them.

A dragon that big shouldn’t be hard to find. Especially on the prairie, which distinctly lacks the mountains and valleys for monsters to easily hide in. Yet nobody has. Not with satellites or heliplanes or magical powers. Odin, the god of sacrifice, says the ranchers can sue the government for reparations for the lost herds, and the dragon will be found when he wants to be found. Thor Thunderer says we must band together to scour the land for the creature. Freya the Witch only smiles mysteriously and refuses to say what she sees in the strands of Fate. Loki, the lazy coward, has said nothing at all.

The president and Congress, the Council of Valkyrie and the War College, the Departments of the Interior, of Environmental Protection, and the National Park Service have come together and assembled a crack team of heroes to take care of the problem:

1. Sean Hardy, the Dragon Slayer himself. He’s twenty-nine now, bright yellow hair, full manly beard, gray eyes, with a two-year-old daughter hanging from his neck more often than not. He’s been avoiding the crowds here by remaining in the tactics tent, this great-hall-like tent about twelve feet high at the peak and fifty feet long, full of topographic maps and water maps and maps of cattle pastures and property lines. I ran into him this morning in the shower tent. I’ve seen a lot of terrible scars, having spent so much time with berserkers, but rag me, has he been destroyed a couple of times.

2. Major Sune Rask of Thor’s Army. He’s tall and has legs that go all the way, if you know what I mean. His eyes are hooded and his nose large, and probably he’s only as attractive as he is because of how he moves. It definitely isn’t his face. He’s about twenty-two, I guess, with a shaved head and the most gorgeous ram’s-horn tattoos on his scalp I’ve ever seen. Even though it’s pushing equatorial hotness here in Kansa, he wears his full Army kit, including the iconic blue hunter’s coat, because that’s what he is: Thor’s best hunter. Recovered Loki’s Mask of Changing is the rumor, which doesn’t exactly enamor him to me, since I’d rather Loki not get things back that others have managed to sneak off him. Oh, well. Sune Rask carries double axes on his shoulders, in addition to a sidearm at his hip and knives in his boots, and since axes are my weapon of choice, too, it’s possible I won’t hate him.

3. Lydia Wolfdottir, who is amazing. She’s a wolf guard from the Valkyrie of the Prairie’s retinue, which means she has a full-face tattoo of a wolf mask and she knows the prairie best. She saved her Valkyrie from an assassin a few years ago. And last night she ripped this douchey camera guy a second bellybutton just for using the wrong terminology for her tattoo. Not to mention she has piles of amazing black hair and skin so pale, she might as well be sculpted from mother-of-pearl. There has to be something supernatural in her face cream that’s keeping her from the ragging sunburn peeling the flesh off my own nose.

4. Visby Larue, which is the most made-up-sounding name I have ever heard in my life, and I grew up in a Lokiskin caravan. He’s a couple years older than me, and everyone is saying he single-handedly saved his town in Dakota from a pack of sun-crazed prairie trolls during the worst of the Stone Plague Summer. He is unbearably good-looking in that dirty cowboy kind of way; he wears his jeans, his hat, his leather world-snake necklace, and nothing else all day long; but even though you think he should put on some daddy-ragging shoes or maybe a shirt, you’re mostly glad he doesn’t. His family line must be old First Peoples because of that sword-straight black hair and trademark copper skin. A Skraling—but we’re not supposed to call them that anymore, I think. Then there’s the smoke always hanging unlit from his lips, like he just wants to draw your attention there.

5. Soren Bearstar. This remains a rumor, but one I’ll treat as fact until forced otherwise. I haven’t seen Soren in a year and a half, not since Baldur’s Day two autumns ago, when I was invited as Baldur’s own guest to witness his annual death and light the pyre. Soren was there, too, since he’s dedicated to Baldur now, the only berserker warrior in forever to dedicate to a god other than Odin Alfather. Soren and Baldur have this intense romance going on, to the point where plenty of folks speculate it’s more than platonic. Those are the assholes who don’t know how Soren looks at Idun, the goddess of youth, who he is infatuated with. I don’t like to think about it, or about how he told me, as I stood next to him and watched Baldur’s body burn, But you’re a berserker now, Vider, as if he meant You’re untrustworthy.

6. Me. The first female berserker since Luta Bearsdottir was killed at Sanctus Helen’s about thirty years ago. I’m seventeen, the tiniest ragging berserker you will ever see in your life. Two years into it, at least I can say I’ve replaced my kitten grace and size with the solid muscle of a pit bull. A pit bull with madness spinning around in her chest that she can unleash at any moment to destroy her enemies. I’m here because of all that, and also because Soren and I rescued Baldur the Beautiful, when the entire country thought he’d been devoured by the Fenris Wolf and it was the beginning of Ragnarok.

So that’s it. The six of us—Sean, Sune, Lydia, Visby, Soren, and me—are here to find and kill this dragon, if it exists. Under the loving gaze of the entire country, reality-television style. The only good news, other than getting to see Soren, is that nobody forced me to sign the waiver, so the cameras can’t get in my face and I can make them erase anything that has to do with me and my interests. I’ll bet hotpigs and silver dollars Soren won’t sign it either, and the only reason Lydia Wolfdottir and Sune Rask signed is because they’re here under orders. Sean Hardy is used to the spotlight, and it’s possible he needs to do this because his revenue’s down; it’s been more than eight years since the last dragon. He should have joined a Stoneball team or something. Run for Congress or a kingseat. I don’t know if Visby Larue signed anything, but it’s hard to imagine a guy who won’t put on a shirt not signing a waiver to have his ripped chest and fine, fine shoulders plastered on televisions across New Asgard.

The camp is sectioned into three areas, much like a Lokiskin caravan, with the most important stuff—us and our parties—in the center, then a U-shaped area hugging ours for journalists and television crews and support staff, and then the outer ring, for the public. All in all, I estimate about three hundred people are here, and I’ve heard the nearest town is full to the feathers.

My tent is in the central cluster, bigger than I need, because unlike the others I don’t have an entourage with me. I didn’t exactly leave the Devil Bears berserker band under the best circumstances, so I’m alone. My training mentor, Henry Halson, would’ve come with me, but our captain said it was too soon for me to be away from the band, that I’d lose all the progress I’d made working in a unit; when I told him the invitation came to me, not him, and he could shove his progress up his ass, he sedated me and threw me in the brig. I lasted about five minutes before picking the lock and slipping out.

They all forget that before I was a berserker, I was a Lokiskin orphan. Sure, another berserker would try to use force to smash out of that hole, but I’m not just any berserker. I called Henry from Sun Valley City, Alisonak kingstate, and he brought me some of my things. He told me I was mad to run off like this. Said I’d be declared wulfheart, which is basically a traitor, and I said Odin was a god of betrayal, so it really seemed ridiculous to take my deserting so seriously. He tried to flare up my frenzy, to prove I needed to stay, but it didn’t work. Like Captain Storm said, I’ve made progress. Henry dropped his old black cowboy hat on my head, the one with the sign of the Lone Star Henrys, and told me to bring back some dragon scales at least, to mollify Storm and the Bears.

Now here I am in my tent, four days later, practically naked and using that hat to fan myself.

The hunt starts tomorrow, and I’d like to remain just here until the morning, hopefully as cool as possible. It’s unusually hot for this early in the summer, they’re saying, but it’s not the heat that’s unbearable. I lived in the desert last summer, and in Tejas with the Henrys in the autumn, and I think heat and I entered into a common marriage. It’s the humidity, which I didn’t know was a factor on the prairie. My caravan stuck to the dry plains of Lakota and Cheyenne kingstates most years, and when we did venture south, it was in the winter. The years I lived with my dad we were in Colorada, which gets so dry, your nose will spontaneously bleed.

A scrape against dirt sounds outside my tent, a little too soft to be purposeful, and I toss the cowboy hat aside and roll off the metal cot and onto my bare feet. Since I’m in my underpants and sports bra, I grab the thin, ultra-dry towel laid over the folding stool and wrap it around my waist as I consider and discard the idea of picking up a hand axe. Might sound too cautious, but I spent two years living with overaggressive men resentful of a pair of titties that weren’t there for their pleasure.

In a swift move, I loose the ties and fling back the tent flap.

It’s Visby Larue, the First Peoples cowboy, startling back with a hand slapped to his naked chest in exaggerated surprise. “Hey there, sweet thing, where’s the fire?”

“You can call me Vider or nothing,” I say.

His smile seems familiar to me, the way it curves up slowly, but probably that’s because it’s so calculated. There’s a thin scar under his nose, marring the edge of his upper lip. “Vider,” he says.

“What do you want?”

Sliding his thumbs into the pockets of his low-slung jeans—and dragging my attention to his hipbones, curse him—he says, “Sean Hardy wants to talk to all of us in the tac tent.”

“Now?”

“Yep.” He waits, hips slightly thrust forward, shoulders straight, black hair braided half-back. He gives the impression of being tall, but now that he’s right in front of me and I come up to his nose, I realize that’s only because he’s so slender.

“I’ll be there,” I say, raising my eyebrows.

“I’ll wait.” To prove his point, he turns away from me and pulls a cigarette from his pocket. He pinches it in his mouth without lighting it.

I snap the tent flap shut and go to my duffel to dig out clean clothes. There’s a fancy bra-vest combo that Henry helped me design for Yule, and I’ve been intending to save it for the start of the hunt, but it occurs to me that if Sean Hardy is calling us together, Soren arrived when I didn’t notice. The first time he sees me in eighteen months, I want him to see me. He might disagree vehemently with my choice to become a berserker, but it was my choice, and I don’t regret it. I have to make him respect that.

The vest is simple and black, just like standard berserker uniforms, but there’s a reinforced band that hugs my ribs and laces up the front to hold my fortunately small breasts in place, like a decent sports bra. The vest flares a little over my hips and falls to mid-thigh. It’s great for heat, despite being black, because it cuts down on layers. First I put on black lightweight-canvas pants that tie shut around my ankles and fit into the heavy leather of my combat boots. I whip my colorless hair up into a spiky tail at the back of my skull and catch the wisps and tendrils with pins, so it looks disastrous but is out of my face. I should shave it all off again, like I did a year ago. But the sunburns were atrocious to deal with, and nothing is worse than melted sunscreen dripping into your eyes along with your sweat.

Last thing I grab is my iron collar to hook around my neck. I’m not supposed to take it off, not since I was put into the Devil Bears for training, but the thing is hot and heavy and I hate everything it stands for. Namely, being owned.

Visby Larue is still standing there when I emerge, positioned so that the brim of his cowboy hat casts his eyes and nose in shadow but sunlight burns across his mouth and the thin black cigarette.

He doesn’t move, as if lost in thought, contemplating the beauty of the slow evening, but hot-cursed-dillie, I’m sure he’s posing. I can’t help but smile. “You are something amazing,” I say.

“Oh?” Larue plucks the cigarette off his lip and glances three-quarters toward me.

I snort. “Your grandmama teach you how to do that?”

He laughs, brief enough I think I knocked a real one loose. “Rolled her own, actually,” he says.

Since it seems I can’t shake him without being flat skit, I start walking. He easily keeps up, and I glance down to see he’s managed to find some boots. “What kind of name is Visby Larue?” I ask as we head past the other inner tents toward the long tac tent.

“Visby’s one of the oldest cities in Gotland, one of the holiest,” he says, as if he’s reminding me of a thing I should’ve known. “Larue is a name my grandmama,” he winks at me, “got from her grandmama’s owners, before the Thralls’ War down in Mizizibi. Some family lore about all us native slaves being kept on one side of the street and the slaves from old Africa on the other. Called us La Rue and them La Terre.”

If that’s supposed to make me feel something, he miscalculated. “Why do you use it if it’s got such a skit history?”

“It’s my name, kitten.”

I immediately thrust my foot in between his, and with his next step, he tangles up around my ankle. An easy shove at his elbow, and he’s overbalanced, falls to the ground with a grunt. His hat rolls away.

With my boot, I nudge him over and flatten the sole on his bare chest. The leather thong that holds his world-snake charm cuts across his throat like a hanging scar. “Vider or nothing,” I say firmly.

His hair’s sprawled around him and the sun slashes his eyes as he glares up at me. One hand goes to my ankle and I keep loose, ready for him to try and turn the tables. Inside my chest, the frenzy stirs, tiny brittle fingers of glass poking under my ribs. My breath comes a little faster for it, but I keep my eyes hard on his.

“And Vider,” he says casually, “is such a name to be proud of? What is your surname? I heard you gave it up very easily. Lokisdottir to Bearskin? One orphan name to another.”

I jerk my boot off him and point a finger at his necklace. “You should know, Lokiskin, there’s no shame in being an orphan, nor in choosing a new path.”

Larue spreads his hands out. “Truth, Vider, truth. I’ll stop teasing you.”

“You do what you want,” I say, giving him my back. I walk on, pausing to snatch up his cowboy hat. With a little spin, I bow at him, sweeping the hat in an arc and up onto my head. His surprised laugh tugs at my own, though my mirth is tinged hot by the frenzy slicing up my heart.

The final yards to the tac tent I spend calming the berserker madness. She’s a fickle beast, never easily tamed. It’s been two years since she was born inside me, since the Alfather leaned his mouth to my ear and whispered, If you become a berserker, little girl, the heat of that madness will scorch your womb, it will strip motherhood from you entirely, forever. That is your sacrifice.

I gave up Loki’s greatest joy for the Alfather’s darkest danger, and I do not regret it.

Soren called his an iron star, cutting at his ribs.

But my frenzy is alive, a bright, fire-breathing creature.

She is fire and scales and the wings of a dragon beating inside me. A thin wyrm coiling around my spine, clicking her teeth against my sternum, squeezing my lungs and liver, licking blood from the lining of my heart.

She is why I’ve come here to find the prairie dragon. This frenzy that is a dangerous creature inside me. When I received my invitation, stamped with a bright sun seal, and saw the words written in fine calligraphy, my inner dragon shrugged her wings in curiosity.

We invite Vider, Daughter of Berserkers, Hangatyr’s Own
To join in a hunting spectacle in the Great Flint Hills of Kansa
After a King of Dragons

The date and arrival information hardly registered in the moment, as I recalled the reports we’d heard of the airplane witnesses, the rumors of missing cattle, and realized that I was the one of all the Devil Bears—of all the berserkers I’d lived with for two years, most of whom thought I was small and useless and not a team player—I was the one to be called.

Nothing could keep me away, not when I know my heart is a dragon and here is likely my only chance to see one, to look him in the eye and know if maybe, possibly, there is some kinship between my frenzy, my pain, and such a legendary beast.

A crowd presses at the flagged rope separating this inner circle of tents from the journalists’ circle, and I lift onto my tiptoes to see. It’s obvious somebody is shoving through, drawing all the attention. I can’t make out the questions the reporters are asking, yelling, but I catch a glimpse of a dark head and stop, hoping and hoping, and there, yes, there is Soren Bearstar, shouldering gently through the throng. He grabs the rope and jerks it up to duck beneath, backs up a few steps, probably saying something too softly for any of the journalists to hear.

I take a moment to breathe deep and admire the huge cut of his shoulders under a tight yellow T-shirt and think of when I saw him the very first time: sweating at the edge of the Half Serpent caravan circle, one hand on the fence holding the goats and pygmy horses in their pen. He frowned as if he knew some heavy thing the rest of us did not, and I fixated on his bottom lip, full and slightly pinker than the rest of his dark face. It surprised me by stretching into a bowed smile, with a flash of white teeth, when he stepped forward to catch little Sam as the kid climbed over the fence. The smile stayed pinned in place like a mask, and when Soren turned, I saw the berserker spear tattoo bisecting his left cheek.

Everything I knew back then about berserkers made me consider them dangerous, wild, and a little bit mad—the fiercest warriors, said to be the least trustworthy, because that is how Odin Alfather made them. They band together and rarely wander apart from the flock. But that one, that young, handsome boy with desert-colored skin and the tightest buzz of black hair and warm eyes shaped like half moons, stood alone and laughing at the antics of a Lokiskin boy. He was wearing jeans and a T-tee shirt like any teenager, with a massive sword strapped to his back.

With him was Baldur the Beautiful, the god of hope and joy, and there was such ease and friendship and obvious trust between them. Love and trust between a man and a god was a thing I’d stopped believing in the moment Loki Changer—my friend, who I had loved—did not come when I needed him most.

How could I blame myself for chasing Soren half across the country, for kissing him and wanting to be like him? For begging the Alfather to make me a strong berserker in return for my part in saving Baldur’s life?

Soren blames me, though.

He turns away from the crowd of media, and because he thinks there is nobody behind him, I catch the subtle grimace in the corner of his mouth.

“Soren!” I cry with all the gladness I feel, because here is the person who saved me.

His eyes widen, and the unguarded first expression when he recognizes me is gladness, too. Relief gives fire to my heels, and I rush at him, arms up. Soren catches me with a grunt as I throw my arms around him and hug tight, Visby Larue’s hat crushed against his shoulder.

I don’t push my luck by hugging too long, and nudge away so Soren drops me onto my feet again.

“It’s good to see you,” he says, and my dragon reaches for his iron star. I don’t stop it. I want this. I don’t expect him to allow me in.

Soren’s expression darkens, but he doesn’t close off his frenzy. When the spiky energies meet, I lick my bottom lip and look away, holding still. This is a berserker embrace, two wolves circling, reaching out to communicate with burning energy instead of scent or teeth.

I’ve never felt his frenzy before, not as a berserker myself, and it is unlike the Devil Bears’ or Henry Halson’s. Soren’s churns like gears, intricate, solid, crushing like the guts of a clock tower. I can tell things about him now that I could not before: He is predictable and dependable, slow to change but always moving, always ready, never sleeping. His frenzy does not hibernate, as mine seems to.

My dragon licks at him, scraping curious claws against his iron spikes, displaying her sharp fangs for his blunt gear-teeth.

And then Soren’s frenzy roars.

I black out.

The ringing in my ears is high and strong. Soren’s got me by the elbows, holding me up in a careful balance.

My heart tingles with a hollow sort of burn, an empty hot oven, for my frenzy is coiled tight and tiny around my spine. Tamed, overcome. I feel her stretch as I breathe a long sigh and struggle to get my feet under me again.

What a trick he played.

Blinking, I smile dazedly, feeling loopy and not just a little drunk. Bobs of sunlight bounce and dance around his head. His frown is immense.

“Vider?” he murmurs.

“Soren!” I say, breaking into laughter. “You are a liar and a sneaky, dangerous creature!”

His frown turns to a scowl, but I keep on prattling. “What a clever trick that was, holding your power so even and calm; it was like you unleashed a tidal wave. I thought you were a clock, but that was a roller coaster.”

Soren puts his hands on my face, angling my head up so he can peer into my eyes. “I hurt you,” he says.

“No, no, no!” My head is still floating, though, and I turn in his hand to snap my teeth at his palm, like my dragon snapped at his gears. Not the guts of a clock, but the fine, fine ticking time of a nuclear bomb!

He drops his hands away fast. “Vider.”

“I’m all right!” I widen my stance and put my hands together over my heart. I shut my eyes and breathe deeply. “I am a mountain, Soren,” I murmur, recalling the first lesson he showed me of berserkers and strength. Breathing the sticky air, I imagine it pressing into all the cracks of my bones, out to my fingers and toes, cooling my mind, swirling around my heart in a calm, tender wind.

“I thought you were ready for it,” he says apologetically.

“I was just saying hello.”

“Most berserkers I’ve met this year have been aggressive.”

“Not me, not toward you.” I hold out my hand. After a moment studying my face, he takes it. I grab up Visby’s hat off the dusty grass and lead him toward the tac tent.

“Competition, eh?” Visby Larue says.

Soren flicks his eyes over Larue and clearly dismisses the young man, merely offering a brief nod of acknowledgment. I smile, too meanly, at the cowboy. “Soren, this is—well, he goes by the name Visby Larue, but can you imagine it’s his real one?”

Soren hardly responds other than with a twitch of his mouth.

Visby snatches his hat from me, and mirrors my obnoxious bow from earlier. “’Tis not the name my mother gave me, indeed.”

“Did you just make up that story about thralldom and the street and the earth?” I demand, incredulous but impressed.

He smiles that long, curling smile. And I feel my eyes twinkling. That lie had been smooth, very smooth. “Don’t forget to dust off your hat,” I say, tugging Soren after me to the tac tent.

We duck through the rolled-up flap—or rather, Soren ducks, I waltz right in—and wait for our eyes to adjust to the orange light filtering through the thick canvas walls. The tent isn’t crowded yet. Sune Rask and Lydia Wolfdottir lean over the long table where the maps are tacked down. Their shoulders are bent at the same angle, heads together. Sune points at something, tapping his finger. In the back, Sean Hardy and two of his handlers are standing by the coffee cart. His little girl sits on his boot, with her arms and legs curled around his calf and her cheek pressed to his knee. Her eyes are shut like she’s sleeping, and her braids are messier than a tangle of baby vipers.

“Major,” Soren says softly, but not so quiet that the hunter doesn’t hear it. Sune Rask turns sharply, hawk eyes pinning Soren immediately. I’ve only seen Sune for a handful of minutes, but he’s made that stoic, rigid Army thing an art form, so I nearly trip on myself when the hunter’s shoulders relax and he smiles.

“Soren,” is all he says.

They clasp hands and embrace one-armed. I’m at a total ragging loss, tinged with an awkward combination of jealousy and relief that Soren has another friend here. To hide it, I plop down in one of the folding chairs, slouch low, and prop my boots up on another. I close my eyes to seem unconcerned, focus my frenzy, and listen.

“Good to see you,” Soren says.

There’s a shuffle of movement, and then Sune says, “Here is Lydia Wolfdottir, of the Valkyrie of the Prairie’s household. Lydia, Soren Bearstar, the Sun’s Berserk.”

In her gravelly voice, she says, “Bearstar.”

They give nothing else away. I could groan.

Then Sean Hardy calls, “You made it, Soren,” and I guess they know each other, too. I squeeze my eyelids shut and remind myself it’s been a while since that week we spent together, and Soren’s been famously traveling around with Baldur the Beautiful for most of that time. Of course he has plenty of other famous friends.

“Bored?” Visby says. The creak of the metal folding chair tells me he sat down beside me.

I open my eyes, sit up, and call out, “We’re all here now, Sean, did you have something for us?”

Sean, Soren, Sune Rask, and Lydia all glance at me, and I keep my expression light. The frenzy in my chest unfurls her wings just a little, calming me down and spinning me up at the same time.

The dragon slayer’s little daughter, still hugging her dad’s leg, cranes her head around to look at me. “You have a tattoo on your face, too,” she says.

“Half of us do, lizard,” I say fondly, jerking my chin at Soren and at Lydia, with her wolf-mask tattoo. Only then do I realize that Soren’s spear tattoo looks different than it used to look: Not a traditional berserker spear but has a thinner shaft, a more spade-shaped head.

Sean clears his throat, and as he crouches to grab up his kid, I struggle to pull my attention back to him. Hefting her onto his hip, he kisses her temple. She shakes her head and snuggles against his neck as if she’s wiping off his touch. “This one,” Sean says, “is the reason you’re all here. I wanted you to know that before the hunt officially begins in the morning, so you have a chance to get out.”

“Get out?” Lydia Wolfdottir repeats as if he’s an idiot. Her wolf-mask tattoo and royal nose triple the disdain.

The dragon slayer shrugs one shoulder, looking harassed. “I’ve killed two dragons,” he says, “and though I’m told it was destiny, I’m sure it was luck and the will to live, nothing more.”

“You don’t say that in the frosted wheat commercials,” Visby Larue laughs, knocking his hat back on his head to make eye contact.

“I follow the script,” Sean says, tapping a finger on the table in no particular rhythm.

Soren says, “There’s no script for dragon slaying,” as if that’s especially insightful.

But Sean jumps at it. “Yes, exactly,” he says, leaning against the map table, his gray eyes pinched.

I can’t help myself; I glance at Visby. He raises an eyebrow at me. I want to say, These boys are so serious. The cowboy mouths, Odinists.

Even though, technically, Soren gave up Odin when he swore to Baldur, I snort in amusement.

Everybody looks at me again. I smile. “Isn’t the script: Find, kill, celebrate?”

“It’s the killing part I’m worried about. All reports are that this beast is massive, and….” Sean glances at his daughter, who’s braiding the ends of his yellow hair. “Eight years ago, I asked for a tank or a rocket launcher, and the government said no. They wouldn’t let me have anything but my sword and shield, for the sake of the story. If I die from this one, they’ll probably blow the dragon out of the sky from a heliplane, but dragon slayers are supposed to die.”

It’s what they say about berserkers, too. I’m startled he talks so openly about it with the little girl there, but she doesn’t seem to notice: Either she thinks he’s just telling stories, or she’s entirely used to it. For the first time I wonder about her mother, and if she has one, and if not, whether the lack is why Sean Hardy seems so agitated all the time.

Sune Rask says, “We’re your weapons.”

“I need more than luck and the will to live this time,” Sean Hardy says. “Not just because I’m older, or because third time’s the charm, but for my daughter. I’m what she has, and I intend to be where she needs me: here in the middle world.”

“Not weapons,” Visby says, “shields and distractions. We’re here to make it less likely you’re the one who dies.”

Sean doesn’t flinch. He meets Visby’s gaze and nods once. Just like that: simple and honest. No wonder he and Soren get along.

Lydia lifts her hand, palm up. “That is what I am, always. A shield for my Valkyrie.”

“I like glory,” Visby says. “It’s worth the risk.”

Sune Rask says, “My job is to hunt where my god bids me. To glory,” he nods to Visby, “or to death.”

Soren says, “I have been dead, and there are worse things.”

My frenzy gnashes her teeth. I remember now: Soren died a few months ago, under dismally mysterious circumstances, and no one in the middle world knew of it until he clawed his way to life again at Baldur’s side this spring, at the roots of the New World Tree. He’s been in Hel, he’s been through so many things without me. We are strangers. It strikes me finally, hard and heavy, that the week we spent together driving Baldur to safety was a piece of our separate journeys, not the beginning of something together.

Soren will always be the person who broke me out of my daze, the two years I spent frightened and hating after my mother died and my father went to jail. He opened a door for me, and even though I keep looking back, both of us have moved forward. The dragon under my ribs purrs, alive and calm and eager for flight.

“Vider?” It’s Soren, sounding amused.

Everybody in the tent is staring at me, while I’ve been staring at Soren.

I flash a grin and say, “I want to smile at a dragon and see if he will smile back.”

Visby laughs.

Most of the others look at me as if I’m mad or ridiculous. But Sean Hardy accepts it with a nod, and his daughter claps her hands and says, “Me, too!”

The dragon slayer releases us, saying he’ll see us in the morning at oh-eight-hundred for the official sendoff.

I consider sticking to Soren to ask him about his death, about his past two years, but there’s my epiphany to consider, and Sune Rask already has his attention. So I leap up and stride for the door, knocking Visby’s hat off his head with a flick of my wrist as I pass.

He yells, but I speed up, darting through the late evening toward my tent.

With the sun hot pink in the west and purple clouds spanning the sky, it’s cooler now, and I scrape my boots through the grass, listen to the hiss of grasshoppers and the buzz of cicadas, the clacking and laughter and grind of generators from camp. It’s a comfort to me, like the sounds of a caravan, and if somebody pulled out a fiddle or an accordion or even a set of drums, the song of Loki’s children would be complete. But this isn’t a caravan, and Loki’s children are outnumbered here by Thunderers and Odinists; the warriors, the soldiers.

I duck into my tent, tie the flap down so I can ignore any visitors, and stand in the muffled noise. This feeling welling up in me is akin to loneliness but tinged more with a thrill of anticipation; I am alone in this caravan, connected to others but separate still, and though it isn’t what I knew as a child, though it’s not what berserking promises, I find I rather like it.

Vider No-Name, I think.

Vider, the Daughter of Dragons.

A smirk pulls at my lips, and I know exactly how mad I would seem if any could see me and know my thoughts.

Bending to untie my boots, I plan to flop on my cot and relax, listen to the music of the prairie and all these people until I fall asleep.

But there’s something on my pillow.

I go still as my frenzy pulses bright, my feet firm on the ground, breathing deep to remain calm and in control.

It’s a wrinkled yellow apple no larger than my eyeball.

Curse and ragging skit.

Loki Changer is here.

TWO.

Once I was in love with the god of mischief, of orphans and shape-shifting and lies and thieves.

I didn’t know he was a god the first time he appeared, a tiny coyote mutt at the edge of the caravan. I was five and filthy already from crawling under booths to hide from my parents—one would put me to work, the other might hurt me. Across the caravan’s wide-flung camp from my family trailer, I liked to sprawl behind the sweet-corn booth. It smelled of oil and sugar, and sometimes the lovely fat lady popping the corn whose name I can’t remember would give me a tiny handful, fresh and hot, to hold in the pocket of my thin summer dress and eat one fluffy kernel at a time. Nor was I opposed to scavenging pieces that fell onto the packed dirt.

The coyote nosed at my pocket before I saw him, and I sat up too fast. But the dog didn’t run off in fear; he just sat his fringed butt on the ground and let his tongue loll out.

I knew he was special when he said Vider, because coyotes don’t know how to speak.

He came again shaped like a little boy with the same green coyote eyes, then a little girl in a dress that matched my own exactly. A cat, a purple griffon, a dragon the size of my hand. He was my secret friend, my pet, my imaginary creature named Jade or Lukas or Dog or Natalia. Because of all the names, my mom didn’t guess for years that I was always babbling about the same friend, always eager to wake up in the morning and do my caravan chores so I could go running off with him or her or it. But I was never confused. Never unsure of our bond.

It was Loki who saved me from my dad, the first time Dad thought I was an enemy to catch and kill, the first time I was the target of his trauma. I escaped with a torn dress and bruises, face sticky with snot and tears, and there was my best friend—a bit taller than usual, stronger like a ten-year-old, and ready at the base of a tree too big for me to climb on my own. He lifted me up and curled around me in the crook of a branch, and his eyes went huge and dark as the night sky. I fell into him as he whispered star-poems and silly limericks, facts about snakes; he kissed my forehead and wiped my cheeks.

Hours I remained in the tree with Loki Changer, and as I calmed down, I told him all the names I’d made up for him. I told him knock-knock jokes he pretended to think were the funniest jokes in the nine worlds. We talked about Lokiskin I’d never heard of, mothers and siblings who went on adventures here in the New World and back in the Old. By the time the sun had set and my mom was rushing frantically through the park calling my name, I wasn’t afraid anymore, and I loved Loki with every little piece of my heart.

He came more often after that, and for two years, there was nothing but drama and adventure in my life. My dad was in and out of therapy, in and out of vicious nightmares, Mom got skinnier and skinnier, I’d run off as soon as the sun was high, with Loki or pretending to be, shunning the caravan rats who should’ve been my friends. From the outside, my family must’ve seemed dysfunctional, but I didn’t notice; I thought it was normal.

I was ten when I kissed Loki—a fast, shy, desperate little kiss, and he laughed and flushed and held my hand.

I was ten, too, when my mom caught a glimpse of my imaginary friend Lukas, and she interrogated me, having always believed he wasn’t real. I answered her questions, unconcerned, as her mouth dropped open and she demanded to meet him. When I asked him, Loki said he had no use for mothers who took five years to notice him. Mom told me she thought my friend was a god. Loki Changer, god of our caravan, she whispered in awe. They say he chooses a caravan child with which to play, and here it’s my baby Vider, my little girl. Thank him, Vider, and this month at your birthday, we’ll tell the Matria and get you a special last name.

I did no such thing, told Loki nothing, for what did I care if he was a god? What did I care but that he played with me and changed shape and lifted me into trees too high to climb? He was my Jade. My Lukas, my Dog, my Natalia. Not my god.

And before my birthday, Dad kidnapped me away from the caravan, dragged me to his cousins in southern Colorada kingstate, because he’d freaked out that the caravan lifestyle was terrible for me, and a bad place to raise kids, as if he knew anything about raising me, or living, or anything but surviving.

Loki found me in the tiny backyard, with its metal fence and spindly, un-climbable trees. He said, I can take you away from here, I have the power. And I shrugged. I tugged his ear and traced a smiling face in his freckles and said, I’d rather you just play with me, Loki.

He knew then that I knew, for I’d never said his true name before, and we had the longest, best game of Escape from School ever. I called him a hundred names, never the same one except Dog, because it made me laugh when he turned his tongue long and lolling or grew a tail.

It took Mom a year to find me, and four months after that for Dad to track us down with the Half-Serpent caravan in the bottom of Cheyenne kingstate. She let him back in, but he didn’t stop drinking or screaming his dreams. Mom told me it wasn’t his fault; his pills kept him calmer but made it easier to scare him. She said again and again he’d not been built for violence, and so when it crawled into his brain and into his heart, all he could do was let it out.

I started bleeding that year, and in the caravan, you’re an adult when you can be a mom, so I took my pillow and took my knife and got a corner of somebody else’s booth for sleeping, in return for mucking and sweating to earn my keep. Sometimes Loki came after dark, and we climbed onto the roof of the Matria’s trailer to count stars and whisper secrets. I thought the rest of my life would be so wonderful: dusty caravan, freedom and stars, Loki, who eventually I would kiss again, when I was older and prettier, and maybe we would make a family of our own, better than mine.

But one night, when I was nearly thirteen and Mom was pregnant, I woke up alone in my corner to screams and yelling and terrible roaring fire.

My mom’s trailer was burning.

She was inside, my dad, too, and nobody could get in. The caravan water tank malfunctioned, and the volunteer fire brigade from the nearest town was minutes away. I fell to my knees and called Loki’s name; I prayed to him, to the god of the caravan, of orphans and liars and thieves. Save my mother, I screamed, if ever you loved me, please please please.

Loki did not come.

My father stumbled through the blown-out window of the trailer, burning but alive. Crying and frightened, he tried to go back in for Mom but couldn’t.

He’d started the fire, setting it too well for escape, because in his dream, he’d been surrounded by enemies.

Though the Matria and all the caravan joined in my prayers, the trailer I’d grown up in served as my mother and my unborn sister’s funeral pyre.

Loki did not come the next day, either.

Or the next.

And then I stopped saying his name.

THREE.

I grab up the apple from my pillow, teeth clenched, heat seeping off my body.

This apple is no ordinary apple: It is an apple of immortality. The fruit of the gods that grants them resurrection.

And Loki Changer has been trying to gift me one ever since I became a berserker.

As if he can make up for abandoning me. As if he can make me say his name again.

With the apple in my fist, I march out of my tent, directly through the inner circle and the outer one, away from the public campground with its RVs and nylon tents and trucks and fires, away from the comforting sounds of people. I walk toward the neon-red fireball of the setting sun, out of the mowed field and into the knee-high grass and tangled prairie flowers. Down the steep incline I go, skidding against limestone dirt to a narrow creek that cuts through the hills, eroding the prairie away. Here is a flat, pale limestone boulder that fell off the sheer side of this hill. I stand on it, staring down at the thousands of tiny spiral fossils from when all this land was under an ancient ocean.

And I wait.

The sky darkens from pink to purple to midnight blue; stars appear in this slice of sky I can see from the gulley.

My initial reaction has faded, the anger replaced by a little bit of shame for feeling any fear, but rag him for sneaking into my ragging tent to leave this thing.

I lift the wrinkled, ugly apple. It smells like dust, like nothing you want to put in your mouth. The first time Loki brought one to me—when I joined the Devil Bears routing domestic terrorists from the Great Canyon two summers ago—I told him he was the god of lies, and I didn’t believe such a terrible little thing could grant immortality. I told him berserkers are supposed to die: We burn and fight until suddenly we stop.

He said I was not a berserker, no matter the frenzy-fire in my belly.

My dragon growls, she flexes around my heart, and I touch a hand to my chest, to the sticky warm skin between my breasts. I don’t know how good a berserker I am—insubordinate, uninterested in Odinist principles like the poetry of violence and animal sacrifice, still sneaky and slender and desperate to wander—but I know I am strong.

I wish being strong meant I wasn’t at all excited to see him again. I wish my dragon were restless because of only anger and irritation, not this thrill, this anticipation.

Loki is coming. He’s here, he was in my tent. He left me this gift.

I wish I were strong enough not to like it.

“Eat,” Loki says behind me, and I curse myself for startling, but do not whirl around.

I let my dragon grow to fill my cavities, to heat my muscles and tingle in my blood, so that when I step off the limestone and splash into the shallow creek, turning to face my old god, there is fire in my eyes, and I know he can feel it.

“I don’t want this any more than I have before,” I say, holding the apple out in the palm of my hand.

Loki Changer stands before me in my favorite guise of his from childhood: He’s my age and perfectly androgynous, his white face as lovely as a marble statue of Roman youth. A white T-shirt shows off fine shoulders, a slick black vest accents his narrow waist, and tight jeans ruin the androgyny without anyone having to stare. He’s so ragging good at knowing what I like.

It’s his secret superpower: shifting his shape to mirror our desires.

“Perhaps,” he purrs, “if you eat the apple, I won’t bother you for another year, at least?”

I laugh. “If I eat it, you’ll convince yourself it’s a sign I’m wearing down.”

“Or maybe your continued refusal is the only way you know how to keep me coming back.”

“Tell yourself whatever you like. I’m not eating it.”

“Why?” he demands. Freckles pop out across his cheeks, like somebody had just splashed reddish mud on him.

I shrug. “I don’t want to.”

“Why, you stubborn creature? You don’t get that from me or mine.”

“Maybe I was never meant to stay in the Lokiskin family.”

His eyes narrow. “Not true, Vider, you’re—”

“I am not yours.” I slice off the very suggestion.

“If Baldur gave it to you, or Soren Bearstar, you’d eat it.”

Fisting my hand around the tiny apple, I say, “Maybe,” just to be mean.

Loki crosses his arms and his shoulders widen; his skin darkens, hair shrinks down to a buzz cut, and he goes square all over. He’s not quite Soren but close. “I can arrange that.”

“Stop it,” I say.

The god slips into the shape of a woman in the same jeans and T-shirt, now with suspenders and a pink bow tie loose like a necklace. “Better?” she says in a smooth, succulent voice.

I drop the apple in the creek and turn to hike up the rough hill.

“Vider!” he says, voice deeper again.

There’s splashing behind me. I stomp up the incline, but not so quickly he thinks I’m fleeing. He grabs my elbow, jerks me around.

My frenzy blows out and I punch his mouth.

Loki’s head snaps sideways. His fingers tighten on my left arm and I lift a boot to donkey kick his knee out, but he twists and gets his arm around my neck. I use the momentum to get my heel against his ankle instead. He squeezes my throat, cutting off my breath, and I suddenly drop all my weight.

Unprepared, Loki loses balance and we crash to the side of the hill. Pain shocks my chin and my knees. I struggle, turning, but we’re tangled and scraping against the hard ground and Loki won’t let go. We tumble over and slam down into the creek, and it’s my luck that has him hitting bottom first.

Wet and furious, I roll off and out, but he grabs my foot, and I hit mud again with a scream.

Choking on water and smeared grass, I spit and hack, pushing up. My dragon whips and roars inside me, and even though I’ve faced other berserkers in practice bouts, I’ve never, never been able to let go, let completely go, without worrying about the consequences.

I face Loki Changer as he stands, wet and marked with grass burn on his forearm and face, his jeans torn. My breath heaves and I pump it faster, summoning the frenzy from my chest. I grin at him, tasting mud and blood in my teeth.

His black eyes widen. I charge.

I slam into his chest like a bull, and he skids back but holds his stance, wrapping his arms around me as I sidestep, grab around his waist, and fling him with all my might. We spin together.

I laugh. He laughs, too, his hands strong and hard, his power all around me, and my power welling up, pouring out.

I let go my frenzy.

And Loki catches it.

My world is nothing but
fire and
strength and
pain and
bliss
because I am burning
flying
soaring on the huge leathery wings of my dragon, her heart and wings under me, lifting me up and up
and up

Loki’s hands just as hot in mine.

We’re flying—raging—together!

Suddenly, all my thrill and fire suck away.

Empty.

I slam down.

I am hollow and aching, breath knocked out of my chest, wracked with pain, pinned to the hill.

He growls.

I gasp.

Distantly, I know him—Loki—and I know it’s a laughter-tinged growl. Playful. His hands pin my wrists over my head, his body presses down against me. I gasp, wincing at the raw pain inside.

Loki releases my wrists abruptly and touches my face. “Vider? Vider! Are you all right? Did I…break something?”

I groan, shaking my head, unable to make my eyes open. I don’t know what happened. It was like a tornado swallowed my frenzy, an airless black hole dragged my oxygen away. I shove my hands into my eyes and rub hard.

“You were completely deranged,” Soren Bearstar says from nearby, and past the ringing in my ears, I hear other voices of fear and wonder and curiosity.

“Rag me,” Loki says in a nasty young voice. “Curse you, Bearstar, we were fine.” The god slides his hands down to my neck, to my shoulders, lifting me into a sitting position. My head is cloudy, wispy thoughts stretched like cotton candy between my temples. It feels good to be so exhausted, so supported.

I manage to crack open my eyes, and though the sun is gone, enough light reflects through the dark purple clouds that I can see Loki, furious, and Soren studying the god of mischief narrowly. Craning my aching neck I see Sune Rask and Lydia Wolfdottir and a half-ten others, mostly in shadows at the top of the hill.

Soren’s familiar berserking energy pulses in the air. I wonder if anybody else can feel it.

“Oh,” I whisper.

Soren was the tornado. He was the airless black hole. He shut down my frenzy, the way Henry Halson could, as if I were a baby berserker out of control, needing a master to keep me in check. Rag me.

The way Loki’s glaring at him, the god must think Soren’s just a cock block.

It makes my throat tighten with giggles. I hold them back, like swallowing carbonation.

Higher up the hill, Sune Rask is shuffling the crowd away, firm and gentle, and I hiss as Loki’s fingers find the scrapes on my forearms, and there’s a pounding in my right hand where I hit him. I breathe deep, down to my guts, and feel the bruises on my back and neck, on my knees, my hip, my ribs. It’s a delicious kind of ache, forcing my body to feel and remember parts of myself I’ve ignored. I glance at the split in Loki’s lip, wondering why he hasn’t shape-shifted it gone, and what the crowd would do—what Soren would do—if I kissed the god now.

Shock at the idea has me thrusting away, up on my feet and into Soren, who catches me as I stumble. The prairie spins lazily under my feet. I sway, curse at Soren. Deep inside me, my frenzy folds her wings tight, twisting wearily around my spine. “Get…” I say breathlessly, “get away…both of you.”

Soren mumbles an apology. Loki looks twenty or twenty-five now, cuing more strongly masculine despite the slender shoulders and curling eyelashes, no doubt because he’s right next to the berserker. The god’s irises are a solid, unreal green, like recycling bins or costume jewelry. “Vider,” he says, “eat it.”

“I will not,” I slur, tugging free of Soren’s grip to stand on my own. “Good. Night.”

Carefully, I take a steady step at a time up the hill, ignoring Loki’s frustrated groan and Soren’s worried glance, ignoring Sune Rask ignoring me, and the stragglers from the crowd, the pain in my whole body.

As night falls, I’m a dizzy, woozy mess, but somehow, the more distance I gain, the more perfectly satisfied I feel.

I punched the god of liars in the mouth; his blood stains my hand. I let loose my dragon. I went full berserk and survived, and so did he.

When I reach my tent and my fingers fumble for the flap, I’m tempted for a moment to say his name.

But if he comes now, when I only want to tell him about the dragon inside me, about the real reasons I don’t want an apple of immortality and why I’m here, when I want to snuggle against him on that narrow metal cot and listen to the caravan sounds and the buzzing grasshopper sounds, the grass and the—if he comes now, when he did not come before, when I screamed and begged as a little girl, I’ll hate him.

I think it and my stomach drops, because I realize it means I don’t hate him now.

Maybe I haven’t in a long time.

FOUR.

In the morning, the wizened ragging apple is perched on the toe of my boot.

I pocket it, stretching out the bruises and aches covering me temple to toe. My body’s better than it rightly should be; berserking fever makes us heal faster, especially if we manage to sleep. I did—that hasn’t been an issue for me, though insomnia is sometimes called the berserker’s plague. The only downside of the fire healing me faster is that I’m a sweaty, ragging mess, and I’m starving.

After grabbing my toothbrush and toilet kit, I make quick work of washing in the temporary shower tent, open on one side to the prairie, with partitions for individuals and a line of Porta-Potties. I strip to bra and underpants before scrubbing down, taking care of body and teeth under the splash of cool water.

Nor do I waste energy drying off. I’ll only be sweating in ten minutes, and the water will keep me cool longer. I slick my wet hair back, dress and slap Henry’s black cowboy hat atop my head, tuck my toothbrush into my boot, and dash for the mess tent.

Visby Larue is there, a pile of eggs and skitty-looking bacon before him. I fill up my plate with more of the same plus a pancake to make a burrito with and join him. “Is that actually a shirt?” I mock before stuffing surprisingly fluffy eggs in my mouth.

He grins. In fact, it’s barely a shirt, but technically, it counts: white, ribbed, A-line, shows off his collarbone and shoulders and bronzy skin really well. The scars, too, are easy to read this close: thin, barely visible lines on his shoulder, vanishing into the shirt like a road to follow.

I’m staring. Visby’s grin has curled deeper on one side, his posture tilted into lazy arrogance. Rag me. I’m just jumping for some contact, apparently, after last night.

Huffing slightly, I turn my full attention to my food. Filling the belly will help with the other hunger, though I’m not convinced it would be a terrible thing to carve out some time to see if there are scars under Visby Larue’s pants, too.

It’s about time I ragged somebody all the way.

I recognize my own bravado speaking, and that I’m pounding food away a little too fast. There’s a huge link between berserkers and sex—and madness and death and poetry, of course. I’ve never done anything more than some amazing kissing, and once when I was fourteen, I let a visiting Matria’s daughter take off my bra. Plenty of the Devil Bears are willing, but a couple of them think that’s all a lady berserker is good for, so I just can’t. And there’s been nobody else. Berserker bands are like families, and I’ve been working harder than most to learn, to hold my own, to survive. Sometimes I’ve even wished Henry would break that boundary, for all he’s delicately implied the frenzy can overtake an unprepared berserker during sex, same as it can overtake an unprepared berserker during an argument or in a too-loud movie or caught in a swell of ecstasy when your team scores at Stoneball.

“Heard you were rolling around with a god last night,” Visby says when I’ve cleared half my plate, turning on his bench to plant one foot on either side.

I grunt an affirmative and avoiding looking, because he’s straddling the gods-cursed thing.

“Loki Changer, it was?”

“Yes.”

“He piss you off?”

I shrug, glad there’s food in my mouth and that others are coming in all around us. This early, it’s been cool enough in the mess tent, what with giant fans blowing lazily and barely any bodies.

Visby waits, hands on thighs. His hair is loose around his face, falling straight and black halfway down his chest.

“I’ve known him awhile,” I finally say. “Know Loki long enough, he’s bound to get hit in the face.”

The cowboy laughs a sinuous, conspiratorial little chuckle that sinks straight to my rocks.

Rag me and daddy-ragging Loki.

“I’m here for a dragon,” I say sharply, as if Visby’s the one to blame for my state.

His rust-brown eyes pin mine, and he says, “Me, too, honey.”

I toss the eggs off my fork into his face.

He wipes them from his nose and cheek and eats them, which is completely disgusting. I laugh in disbelief.

“I’m still a bit hungered,” he says in some sort of quiet northerly drawl.

Standing up, I fish in my pocket and pull out the crinkled apple of immortality and set it on the table. “A gift, then.”

Visby stares at it as if he knows what it is, but he can’t possibly, so it must be well-disguised horror at the ugly ragging thing. He hesitates, then plucks it off the plastic tabletop. “Thanks,” he says.

Without a backward glance, I get out.

As I make my way through camp, I notice a rag-load of side glances and outright staring. It was too much to hope that my tussle with the god of mischief would go unnoticed or without gossip. I have about three seconds to decide what to do about it.

One:

Hard pride and arrogance; make them afraid.

Two:

Pretend nothing happened; ignore it.

Three:

I smile as brightly as I can at a cluster of about five people, reporters and two uniformed wranglers, staring at me with open uncertainty. I saunter over. One man ducks away, and another grabs the rope to keep himself in place. The others hold their ground. A woman in full makeup, suggesting she’s a journalist, asks, “Vider, can you confirm the rumors Loki Changer was in camp last night?”

“I can, ma’am. We had a nice spar, the two of us.”

“Is he still here? Will he help find the dragon?”

Leaning in, I say, “When has Loki Changer ever helped with anything when he could interfere instead?”

It works, and they laugh lightly with me. I excuse myself to get ready for the start of the hunt, turn, and nearly slam into Soren’s chest. “Can I have a moment?” he asks low, standing right where I ran into him, so I either have to step backwards or remain inside his personal space.

“Sure,” I whisper, surprised.

I take him back to my tent.

Plopping onto the cot, I set the cowboy hat aside and tilt my head up to watch him as I wait. He’s looking around at my lack of possessions, which makes the tent seem even bigger. Soren’s shoulders press at the sleeves of his red T-shirt; he wears nothing to mark him as a berserker other than the spear tattoo, with its strange blade shape, on his cheek. There’s the outline of a beautiful tree tattoo on his right forearm. An apple tree, I think. For his goddess of youth, Idun, whose apples Loki keeps trying to foist on me.

“You don’t have your mentor with you,” he says finally.

“I’m a full berserker, Soren.” I touch the iron collar around my neck. Water’s caught under it, which will make the weight rub me raw, but sweat’ll do the same. Soon I’ll have the ring-scar so many berserkers have, so you can tell we’re part of a band no matter if we’re wearing the collar or not. Soren never has been in a band, officially.

I wonder if I should take mine off, since I left the Devil Bears to meet this dragon.

Soren hunkers down to balance on his toes, arms against his knees, and now his face is just lower than mine. Polite of him. A familiar feeling of longing drains my frown away. I’d thought we understood each other so well, when we rescued Baldur together, when I saved them by spending the night in a den of cat wights, when Soren saved me by fighting ritual combat against the berserker who murdered Baldur. Then at Bright Home, the palace of the gods here in the middle world, after I got my tattoo, Soren stopped smiling at me. He flinched when I touched his hand and struggled to tell our simple story to the TV cameras, to the gods, to everybody in the country who mattered at all.

“I know you’re a full berserker,” Soren says. “I only expected them to send somebody with you, like Henry.”

I wince. “They didn’t send me.”

His dark eyes widen. “They don’t know where you are?”

“Oh, they know. They just…well, you know how good I am at getting in or out of prisons.” I shrug.

Soren rocks back onto his heels. “You’re wulfheart?”

“I imagine so, unless I bag a dragon, which will probably convince the Hangadrottin to give me a medal and my own band.”

“They could lock you up in a deep hole for that, Vider, or put you down.” His frown is immense.

I stand up. “Is this what you wanted? To come in here and tell me what I already know? If you were worried about me, why didn’t you ask to be my mentor? Why didn’t you let me go with you instead of with Henry?”

“I follow Baldur, not Odin.”

“I’m just a berserker, not a ragging Odinist!”

“That’s what it means to be a berserker, Vider,” he says, still crouched on the floor of the tent.

“Is it?” I lean over him, letting my power grow again. “I thought being a berserker was about being the mountain, about holding this massive, dangerous fever inside my chest, and nothing else.”

“Odin created the berserkers; he has power over that fever.”

“You left him.”

“But you haven’t.” He stands, too, close enough our frenzies tease and spike around each other. Soren used to be scared of nothing so much as his own frenzy. I think of Loki, of his shifty energy, of wrestling with him and being free, not having to worry about keeping the madness inside my chest.

“I never belonged to him,” I say. “I haven’t belonged to a god since I was thirteen years old and the one I loved let my mom and my sister die in front of me. Odin made me a berserker and took my motherhood away, but he did not ask for my dedication. He did not ask for anything. In fact, Odin pointed at Loki and said, That will be your burden, too.”

Soren’s jaw muscles flex and he studies me under a glower. “Is that why you were battling with him last night?”

“I fought Loki because I could!” I smile. “You don’t see at all, do you, even after all you’ve been through, that berserking is amazing. It means I can hit Loki in the face and let loose, I can fly and be free, because he is a god and I can’t hurt him. And nobody less than Loki ragging Changer can hurt me.”

“It’s so dangerous.”

“Life is dangerous, Soren! Did you forget the dragon, did you forget the trolls? And skit, people are dangerous, driving cars is dangerous, there is so much power all around us all the time. I’m part of the power now, and I know it’s dangerous. I am dangerous. I’ll die or get hurt or a million things, but that’s not any different from before I had this frenzy in me—I’m only playing on a different field now. I leveled up!” I grasp his face, unable to contain the fizzing energy crackling in my bones. I leveled up, and the level is frenetic.

He remains still under my onslaught, under my touch. His skin is cold in my frenzy-spiked hands.

“You don’t have to like it,” I say. “I like it.”

“I just don’t see it,” he says quietly. “What you see. What everyone sees in this berserker fire.”

I slide my hands off his face, and they fall hard against my thighs. “I don’t know how you can’t, how it can be in you and you don’t love it.”

“Fire isn’t meant to be loved, Vider. That’s what people are for.”

“You love people?” I ask softly.

“Very much, some of them.”

“Baldur and Idun the Young aren’t people.”

Soren shrugs. “Do you want a list? I could give you one, of the friends I’ve come to love in the last two years. Some of them are even berserkers,” he adds almost sourly.

“Oh.” I back away, recalling the lonely ache I felt last night, before I found the apple on my pillow, how I relished it, how I told myself I liked being alone.

Vider No-Name.

“I’m glad for you,” I say abruptly. I give Soren a smile. “You deserve it, and…and I loved you, even though I only knew you for a week.”

“But not anymore?” he says in a teasing way.

The tone is a welcome surprise. I sniff. “I’m sure I still do, somewhere deep down, where I’m not thinking about how you made me pass out twice in less than three hours last night.”

His laugh sounds distinctly embarrassed. “There were ants in my boots this morning, and all my underwear was shredded inside my backpack, if it makes you feel better.”

Loki. I wrinkle my nose, try to screw my expression away from pleased. But it does delight me.

Soren holds out his hand. “I’ll stop trying to babysit you. You’re not a kid; I keep forgetting it’s been two years since you hitched along that week with us and—with us. You’re as old as I was then, and just because I still had to learn who I really was, it’s not fair to assume you didn’t figure it out for yourself a long time ago.”

I take a deep breath and put my hand in his. “I’ll call off my god if I see him again.”

The Sun’s Berserk lifts his eyebrows. “If?” He clearly has my number.

But it isn’t the if that worries me. It’s the possessive ragging pronoun.

FIVE.

I’m assigned to an off-road truck with Lydia Wolfdottir and Sune Rask. Sean, Visby, and Soren go in another. They’re keeping us berserkers separated just in case, and I was right that Soren didn’t sign their ragging model-release form. If Soren and I ride together, the third in our party won’t have anybody to talk to onscreen for the journalists with us. It delights me to be such a thorn, but I can tell Soren almost regrets causing the organizers to rethink anything for even two minutes.

We’ll always have several support trucks full of gear and weapons and water and snacks with us, plus camera crews, while the rest of the procession keeps back a few miles. Sune points out how inefficient this entire hunt will be with such a massive entourage. He had me plug a massive antenna onto the hood of our truck; it supposedly has a satellite link, so he can download real-time footage to his laptop in the passenger seat. I lounge behind him and roll my window down, preferring to hang half out like a dog, even though it lets the sticky wind inside. Lydia is driving, and our camera guy sits next to me, fiddling with his microphone.

The Flint Hills take up like a fourth of the entire landmass of the kingstate of Kansa, and Lydia tells us Kansa has the largest tallgrass prairie surviving in the country. Sune asks her a string of questions about bison and cattle ranches and visible effects on blah blah blah, and I tune them out. There are bigger items on my mind.

This morning on my way to the trucks, fifteen minutes before the hunt officially got under way, I’d seen Sean Hardy with his daughter back by the mess tent, tucked around the corner where few could see them. He’d been on the grass with his legs crossed into a basket for her to sit inside while he braided her hair. Her little pink mouth had been chattering fast, and every once in a while Sean nodded and replied, concentrating too hard on keeping his thick fingers slotted through the right strands in the braid to speak in complete sentences. I’d stared and stared, frozen in place, because I remembered my dad pulling all my hair back into a tail, and it being full of bumps and tangles.

I should have saved that apple of immortality for Sean ragging Hardy.

The monumental nature of my disrespect hit me beneath the frenzy, low in my guts where shame lives. I threw away a precious thing that people have been murdered for. Stories have been sung for centuries about those apples, about stealing Idun the Young, about giants and gods and war over the orchard. I even stood beneath those trees myself, I smelled the honey-scent of their fruit, and still I’d been so stupid and selfish.

Even if I wouldn’t eat it, that didn’t make the apple worthless. But I’d tossed it at Visby Larue, who certainly wouldn’t have eaten such an ugly thing. It probably was rotting inside some industrial garbage bag right now.

Then Sean Hardy had tied off his daughter’s braid and set her up on her feet. She’d spun gleefully and hugged his thigh. I watched his eyes fall shut and one hand cup her skull as she bounced and talked. And I watched him shudder before lifting her up and walking away.

I stare out the window of the all-terrain truck, at the massive blue sky and rolling green and yellow hills. I have to find that dragon first, so he doesn’t eat Sean Hardy, who should’ve had immortality in his stomach.

Too bad nobody knows where the creature is.

“How are we really going to do this?” I demand, interrupting Lydia and Sune. “What should I be looking for? Are there signs, like for trolls?”

Lydia Wolfdottir purses her lips, but doesn’t look away from the dirt road. “There would be signs, if this were a normal dragon hunt.”

“There are normal dragon hunts?”

“Centuries ago. Elisa of the Prairie has several illuminated manuscripts describing such things, when they involved multiple kingdoms and cavalries and, occasionally, modified siege weapons.”

Sune pokes his nose over the passenger seat. “Siege weapons, really!”

The wolf guard inclines her head. “Truthfully, siege weapons were developed from dragon-hunting machines. It was better to attack from a distance, and to be able to shoot toward the sky.”

I interrupt again. “Great, but what is relevant to us now? You said there would be signs, so what am I looking for?”

Sune stares at me as if I’m a puzzle, and Lydia spares a disdainful glance from the road. Thank gods the camera guy still has his camera pointed forward, at Sune. I wait, smiling as innocently as I can.

Finally, Lydia says, “Fire and screaming villagers and piles of skit.”

“Oh.”

“This dragon doesn’t want to be found,” Sune says. “Which is why the normal signs are useless, and we have to use satellites and herd tracking and comparative images of the geography.”

That sounds so boring, I make a face at the camera guy. He automatically starts to swing the camera toward me, but stops with a jerk when he remembers he can’t. The rush of satisfaction buoys me into my next question. “Why do you think Thor or Fenris or somebody hasn’t just located the dragon, in order to airlift Sean Hardy and us there for the final battle?”

Sune glances at the camera like he knows but won’t say, but in the rear-view mirror, Lydia hits the camera with a scathing look and says, “Money.”

“Money!”

Sune reluctantly nods. “Sponsorships, advertisements—the more the government can get out of this adventure, the better.”

I laugh. For a long time. Longer than it’s funny, really, but the camera guy’s face stretches tighter and tighter, and soon I’m laughing at him, and at myself. If we need satellites and technology and big-picture patterns to find the dragon, there’s not much chance I’ll find it first unless it chooses to dive out of the sky near my tent just for kicks.

For a while, I try to listen to Sune and Lydia discuss the last ten years of Kansa political history. Sune has some kind of vested interest, because he’s involved with somebody who crosses a lot of kingstate borders for trade and dissemination of a variety of questionably legal substances, and Kansa was a hub of production of troll dust twenty years ago, until a militia crackdown that involved the use of…. I lose focus. I ask what his girlfriend’s name is, and Sune only offers a Mona Lisa smile.

We stop for lunch. There’s a meeting over cold chicken and yams where we talk about all the nothing we’ve found, and Sune lays out where we are on his map. Sean Hardy narrates a few things for the cameras, about our location and the temperature, and asks the members of our party who did sign the waiver to take a few minutes to talk about how they’re doing. Soren projects intense relief that he won’t have to talk. I imagine him in a silent stare-off with the camera.

The afternoon is much the same as the morning: a ragging waste dressed up with machinery and talking to make it seem like progress is being made. The landscape is dramatic but pretty much the same hour by hour, as we drive along a predetermined grid. Sune corrects our course a few times, back and forth on the radio with Sean Hardy and some gruff-sounding guy in one of the support trucks behind us. Once Sune veers us off-road to investigate a recent landslide that as far as anybody can tell is evidence of nothing but erosion.

If there weren’t a dragon at the end of the rainbow, I’d be completely regretting my life choices. As it is, I can’t wait for sunset. Surely they won’t let us wander aimlessly for too many days before stirring up the dragon. And by they, I suppose I mean Fate and the television networks.

I was never bored before I became a berserker, which seems like it should be the opposite of truth. But in the caravans, there were always chores and games, whether we were on the move or camped for weeks to trade or celebrate festivals. Here, I have nothing to do, and these people don’t have answers for me. There aren’t any billboards out here to base games on, or license plates to count. We have no music, and the only radios are the the truck transceivers.

I poke at Sune and Lydia a few times, asking about their families and their lives. They answer some questions, asking me in turn, but the camera keeps both of them distant. The third time I go after Sune’s girlfriend’s name, in a roundabout way, he point-blank asks me if I’d started the fight with Loki Changer or the god had.

It shuts me up well enough, and then I’ve only got my thoughts. Which circle around and around the god of mischief, the apple he brought me, the way I felt when I let go of my frenzy and we battled. I know I’ll see him again, and soon, know I want to, and know that it isn’t only because I can hit him in the face or lose control or spin and spin with my frenzy and never hurt him. I miss him. I wonder if I never hated him at all, even when I thought I did, or if this frenzy changed me so much when it made me strong that I accidentally forgave him.

The last couple of hours are tragically long. The rumble of the engine, the rough bounce of the shocks on rutted gravel and wild prairie hills, the thick air crawling along my skin, the relentless yellow sunlight—all of it enough to make me feel trapped in a cocoon. And feeling trapped angers my frenzy, which heats up the whole truck until the camera guy, Simon from Westport City, is sweating. I shut my eyes and practice the breathing techniques Henry Halson taught me, the kind that are quiet, that you can practice in a dark movie theater or the dingy bathroom of a bar, when you don’t want anybody to be worried you’re about to lose control and massacre them. Sune notices, but instead of saying anything, he tells Simon to dig out a water bottle from the bottom of the cooler bag for me.

When we stop to camp for the night, I spill out before the truck has completely halted, leaving the door thrown open. This prairie is all gold and green and hills and rocks no matter where you turn during the day, but twilight sets the entire place on fire.

Standing under a sky like this feels like being in the hugest fish tank the middle world has ever seen. The sky’s a dome of endless blue, but in the west where the sun is tarnished silver fire, broad strips of brutal pink and pulpy orange tear across the horizon.

A good sky to die under.

Especially if you have an apple of immortality. Which I no longer do. I glance toward the rest of the convoy and spy Visby Larue stripping off his shirt, right where the sunset can caress his muscles to best advantage. It’s funny how finding ourselves humor allies makes me so much more tolerant of his preening. Could I ask after the apple without explaining why?

I laugh at the thought, and Lydia Wolfdottir shoots me a frown from where she’s unloading equipment from our truck. I suppose it seems like I’m laughing at the sunset.

The convoy of trucks has nearly encircled me and everybody’s unloading, listening to a man with a curly beard I was introduced to but don’t remember, except that he’s the technical director and camp manager. He lumbers through the tall grass, pointing at spots to place various equipment, and I consider marching over to offer my services, or joining Lydia or Sune or Soren. Instead, I take off along the crest of this massive hill toward the sun, letting my legs stretch.

I jog easily. My hair, mostly loosened from the pins that held it back this morning, flops around my face. The wind blows even and strong, pushing me gently south. The sun is hot, near blinding me with great bloody spots blinking in my eyes. At the top of the hill, the grass is shorter. There are tiny cliffs of limestone and chert, so many flat stones, and the soil is thin and pale. I skid down the slope toward a long valley, at the end of which are actual trees. Down here, the grass scrapes up to my knees; tiny seeds scatter or cling to my pants. Grasshoppers flash across my path when I startle them. There are clumps of orange flowers with ugly dark leaves, spiky thistles, and spindly bushes with miniscule white blossoms, crazy ragging sunflowers with droopy pink petals and orange eyes that press up to the light. The hills block the setting sun itself, but all that fuchsia bleeds across the sky. And the trees tucked in the joints of the hills ahead ripple in the wind, tall and stately, with thousands of leaves flickering emerald and gray-green.

There is so much vivid color—every color that exists is here.

If I were a dragon, maybe I’d have picked this place, too. Especially in summertime.

I slow to pace through the prairie grasses toward the little copse of trees. There’s no stream at the base of this valley, maybe because it’s such a wide one, not a gully like where I fought Loki last night. If it were two years ago, I’d have my eyes sharp and my ears alert for troll sign, but there are almost none left. It’s something to think about, though, instead of him, and the aggressively annoying voice chanting his name in my mind, as if to catch my mouth off-guard so I’ll inadvertently say it.

My frenzy dances lazily in my chest, all pirouettes and somersaults and arching wings, and I bend my knees, standing in Soren’s mountain pose, with my legs wide, my chest open, shoulders back, chin raised. I breathe in and out and imagine my breath is the silent, eager partner to the frenzy.

Heat fills my blood and loosens my bones, all the cramped muscles from sitting eight hours in a truck, all the tense thoughts and ragged longing from being trapped and bored and quietly anxious. My worry melts and my tension pops into fluffy clouds that float away like cottonwood seeds drifting through the wind.

As if the prairie itself senses me, energy swells in the land beneath my feet. I take off my boots and touch toes to the sharp grass, to the hot earth and crumbling dirt. Energy passes between me and the world, and my fire is a fire that connects earth and sky; it is the ligament tying one element to another, the connective tissue of the nine worlds.

And then I feel hands on my shoulders and a cooler fire behind me, tugging gently at me to turn to him. I do, because I want to.

I hold my eyes closed, though, as he puts a hand to my waist and takes my hand in the other. I touch his shoulder, and Loki Changer lifts me into a strange dance, not a waltz, not a two-step or tango, but something I don’t know, something that has three beats and suddenly two, has seven odd beats and then three again, as if it’s every dance and none, a dance that slips through music and shapes just like he does.

My bare feet follow his lead with an ease that I don’t think about lest I destroy it, and I lean in until I’m against him, in his arms, and I don’t know if I am the frenzy and he is the wind, or he is the fire and I am air and breath and song.

He ruins it, not me: “Did you eat it?” he whispers into my ear.

“No.”

His body goes rigid, not like flesh but like hardwood. “Vider. There is a dragon out here, and she could eat you.”

“She?” I open my eyes.

Loki is my height, as if we were carved from the same tree. He mirrors me in other ways, too: white-blond hair spiky around his face, sun-raw white skin, eyes like grass and young leaves, skinny, a pretty enough face with pointed chin, and he’s even wearing a black tank top a bit like my berserker vest. A Loki version of me, as if I had a fraternal twin. It’s cute and obnoxious and weird and sexy all at once.

The golden-pink sunset colors his cheekbones and puts sparks in his eyes.

“She,” the god repeats.

Excitement pumps my heart and I smile. “She. I like the thought of that.”

Loki presses his lips together, and a tiny wrinkle forms between his pale brows. “You would,” he mutters.

“You could stop me from meeting her. You could steal me away right now, or you could kill the dragon yourself or lure her away—there are a hundred tricks you could play, oh, god of tricks. But your only plan is this apple?”

“You have to choose to eat the apple,” he says bitterly.

“Ah!” I lift my eyebrows, let my lips hang open in mocking surprise.

“I do not allow people to make fun of me, Vider.”

I jut out my chin, inviting retaliation. Our mouths are so close together, my knee exactly near enough for a solid kick to his rocks. Start something, Loki, start it, I think. My breath and my heart speed up, but I do not glance away.

Nothing happens. Loki Changer does not change, does not act. He waits—he waits for me to move again.

And I want to. I want to slide my arms around him and dance, or I want to grab his hand and run as far as I can with the frenzy fueling me and his laughter in my ear, or I want to kiss him like I did when I was ten years old, before I knew what kisses could really mean.

But there’s a question in the way. A need that slows my heart back down, that cools my skin and makes rain inside my stomach.

“Why didn’t you save my mother?” I whisper.

The words hang bright and desperate on the last golden rays of sunset.

Loki says, “I am not supposed to so directly interfere. None of us are. I had not caused the fire, I could not stop it.”

My face curls into a scowl, my fingers drag into fists. I shake my head at that skitty ragging answer. “If I’d been inside the fire, you’d have come.”

“But I love you.”

The words are like trick daggers: aimed for the heart, sharp-seeming, but with no capacity to break the skin. “I loved my mother.”

He shrugs, helplessly, unconcernedly.

“You were pissed off at me,” I say. “You didn’t come because I prayed to you like you were a god, not like you were my friend. Admit it.” I shove angrily at him.

Loki stumbles back under my onslaught. He spreads his arms. “Fine, yes. I hated that you elevated me away from you, that you lowered yourself to begging. In one moment, you ended our equality. We were friends. Then you made me back into your god and put yourself on your knees. I don’t love worshippers.”

“I was thirteen years old! I needed you and everything you were—not just a boy, not just my best friend. I needed my god.”

“I didn’t want to be your god,” he says, and it isn’t only his voice that darkens. The tips of his hair catch fire, burning up the length of it and leaving black behind. His eyes burn, too, white-hot in the black center, and his eyelids redden, but there are no tears. “Then you spurned even that, Vider! You didn’t even want me to be your god. You looked at my cousin’s mad, hectic, spinning eye, and you gave me up. You got me back, didn’t you?”

His skin crisps and blackens, turning into a shimmer of scales along his cheeks and jaw.

I shake my head, staring at the transformation, at the beautiful oily radiance of his snake skin.

“You did,” he hisses.

Sorrow dampens my frenzy even more. “I’m going back to camp,” I say dully.

Halfway back, along the crest of the massive hill, he’s walking beside me. I head for the even and warm glow of camp. They’re mostly battery-powered lanterns and a few electric lights from the mess tent’s portable generator. Welcome against the deepening blue of twilight.

Loki says, “You look good, I meant to say.”

I slide him an impressive side-eye. He’s back to his imitation of me but bulked up and aged slightly, with even a berserker’s tattoo on the cheek nearest me. “Wrong side,” I say.

“You couldn’t have seen it otherwise.” He shrugs. “Stay out with me. Like you said: I’ll take you away from here, spirit you off, far from dragons and berserkers and television cameras.” Loki stops walking. “I’ll be anything you want me to be. Beautiful or young or monstrous or anything. Shape me, Vider. I’ll be a coyote mutt, if you ask.”

“That isn’t what I want,” I whisper, tears abruptly attacking my eyes. And I dash away, leaving him again in the darkening prairie.

SIX.

In the morning, I make Soren switch trucks with me so I can ride with Sean Hardy and Visby Larue.

I got a bit of skit last night for taking off, so I made myself useful cleaning up in the mess tent, telling jokes to my fellow workers and answering questions about Baldur and Bright Home and berserking. I know Soren doesn’t tend to get along with strangers; most berserkers have this attitude that they’re unwelcome among the non-berserking populace, but that hasn’t been my experience—because I’m sort of famous, or because I’m a girl, or because I’ve got the charm of a caravan rat, I don’t know. But I fell asleep full of smiles and at least three interesting new jokes.

I didn’t stay asleep, though. It was like I wasn’t tired enough to sleep, and I tossed, turned, stared at the top of my tent. Finally got up a couple hours before dawn and ran laps around the camp. Soren joined me, unsurprisingly, and we did some boxing and weight training and yoga until the rest of the caravan rose. I taught him a frenzy game Henry and I played to help me hone my control. Soren seemed fascinated by it.

Now we’re taking off for what promises to be another day of absolute boredom. Sean is driving, explaining to the camera guy, who’s in the passenger seat, that we’re going to finish the entire grid over the next two days, so we’ll have seen with our own eyes the basics of the Flint Hills and have a feel for the land. I throw my head back against my seat in despair. But it isn’t as if I have any better ideas. Not any, at least, that don’t involve Loki Changer.

Sean seems calm, though, and now that I’m stuck two feet behind him, I notice he’s got a little valknot tattooed on his earlobe. An Odinist trefoil. There’s a dark splash of color cutting through it, though, a slash across the design the way you tie a green ribbon across portraits or around your arm when somebody dies to show mourning. That’s what it reminds me of, and I immediately assume the dead person is his daughter’s mother. I could be wrong, but I don’t think so, and the ragging weight of it settles in my stomach again. As long as this pencil-neck camera guy is here, I won’t give him the satisfaction of making Sean admit to anything on television. Probably the whole world knows already anyway.

But ragging rut. He needed that apple.

Unlocking my seatbelt, I slide across the bench and easily straddle Visby’s lap. He’s so surprised, he puts up no fight, and of course, when he realizes what I’m about, he doesn’t argue. He steadies me by my thighs as I bend my neck only a little awkwardly to fit under the roof. Good to be tiny sometimes.

“What are you…?” Sean asks as I jostle the front seat, and the camera guy makes an excited, strangling sound.

Visby holds one hand out to block the camera. “She didn’t sign the release,” he says in that northern drawl of his.

I smile, inches from his mouth, and turn my face to tell both the camera guy and Sean, “Lokiskin business, kids.”

“Aren’t you a berserker?” camera guy asks in a squeaky voice, like his rocks haven’t dropped yet.

Visby goes tense under me, as if suddenly nervous what I might do, me and my raging power.

More to him than the others, I say, “I was born a sneaky Lokiskin, and I don’t think any fever could burn that away.”

The cowboy’s eyes widen, and he suddenly looks so happy. I lean in, scooting as close as possible, because I cannot have the camera recording any of this, or Sean hearing. “Did you eat that apple I gave you?” I whisper against his skin.

Surprise jolts through his body to mine. My frenzy is heating up, for sure. “Yeah,” he says almost as softly, angling his head to try and meet my eyes. “Tasted like dust, kitten.”

I suppose I asked for that endearment when I slunk into his lap. Still, I narrow my eyes threateningly, and he flashes a wicked smile.

“You’re in luck then,” I say, shoving down the regret that I can’t save Sean Hardy’s life.

“Luck?” He shifts his hips, and I catch my breath before I can stop myself. Visby is wearing a T-shirt for the drive today, his charm necklace tucked underneath, his black hair loose and silky. That scar on his upper lip just dares me. I might as well like him more than a little, if he’s the only one of us guaranteed not to die.

Before answering, I kiss him. A teasing taste of a kiss, off-center, where I can feel the ridges of scar against my lips. He tastes like smoke and bacon, which is about the best combination I could ever imagine.

From the front of the car, I hear some grumbling and the sharp static of the radio.

I murmur, “It was an apple of immortality, Visby.”

He honest-to-Tyr gasps the air right out of my mouth. Leaning back on his lap, my knees folded tight and my hands on his shoulders for balance, I study his reaction. Surprise, wonder, maybe a slight undercurrent of fear. “How did you…?” he whispers. “Are you…?”

It’s not so satisfying a response as I’d expected. I shrug a shoulder. “Don’t worry about it. Only means you’re safe.”

Keeping his voice low, he says, “Hot skit, girl, you are something else. Tricky, for sure.”

“I told you: Lokiskin to the core, no matter the heat.”

His mouth widens into a great skit-eating lion smile. He puts his hands on my waist and tugs me close again, so I’m curled over him. I grip the back of the seat bench and kiss him for a while. It’s a better way to pass the time than I had yesterday.

When we stop for lunch, my mouth is rather numb and my knees cramped, and I’m starving. We tumble out into a lovely grove of birch trees, with their stripping bark and thin, droopy branches. There are picnic tables here and a really nice-size stream, with plenty of shade for relief from the scorching sun.

Turns out Lydia and Soren have been having what most people would consider an argument, although, as we watch Lydia jerk back the buttoned tarp covering the bed of her truck to dig around for a weapon, Sune Rask gently characterizes it as a philosophical debate. Soren stands alone, eyes on Lydia, weaponless other than the white-hot weapon that lives in his heart. The wolf guard pulls out four long pieces of wood and steel, two with sharp ends. She snaps them together with deft twists of her wrists to make two long spears. They’re about two feet taller than she is and as thick as my ankles, which is not actually very thick.

“What’s going on?” Sean Hardy asks, seeming to just notice that two of his heroes are about to go into battle. Cameras are aimed and ready, and all the rest of the convoy crowds around for a view.

When she reaches Soren, Lydia strips off her lightweight shirt to a basic white fighting bra, revealing really impressive ragging muscles in her back and shoulders and arms. I hadn’t guessed she was so ripped but probably should have, since she’s here.

“Troll spears?” I ask, having used such things when I was in the Great Canyon, though these are longer, and the point is longer and thinner, too. Beside me, Sean crosses his arms and says, “Dragon. They’re lighter and meant to be used astride or shot into the air with an atlatl.”

“I don’t think she’s gonna throw them right now,” I say.

I’m right.

Their sparring begins when Lydia charges, a dragon spear in each hand. Soren dodges and moves around her but can’t get close. She’s graceful and can swing both spears in impossible-looking ways. Lydia doesn’t stop moving at all; momentum becomes her ally. Soren is strong and steadfast and can take her hits without flinching. They dance around each other, Soren trying to get in to grapple with her, and Lydia holding him back like he’s a bull and she’s got electric prods.

I feel his frenzy, but it’s churning slow, like a grandfather clock.

Around me, people are taking bets, and Visby slides his hands around my waist from behind. He says, “Any chance your fellow will lose?”

“If he doesn’t stop playing half-game, he might,” I say.

Sune Rask is crouched on Sean’s other side, in the dappled shade of a tree, his blue Army jacket flared around his thighs and his tattooed scalp glistening. “They were arguing over who should hold back when we do find the dragon. Strategizing which of us is the most dangerous and the least, who needs protection. Lydia didn’t like where Soren ranked her.”

I wince as she knocks Soren in the shoulder hard enough for us to hear the smack from fifty feet. But she was aiming for his head. “Fourth?” I guess.

The major shakes his head. “Fifth. Larue was sixth.”

Visby grunts.

“She told him he was sexist, and her strength and spears could beat my strength and axes,” Sune says.

“Then why aren’t you two sparring?” Sean asks. The harassed look is back on his face, and he’s tugging at his yellow beard.

I laugh. “Soren wants to experience for himself, not watch.”

“Who put him in charge of ranking us, anyway?” Visby asks, suddenly sounding peeved.

None of us answers. Seems obvious enough to me: Berserkers are the ultimate weapons, and Soren’s definitely better than me.

Suddenly, Soren grabs one of the spears and thrusts back with it, knocking Lydia off balance. She goes down, but rolls and comes back up with the other spear still in her hand. Soren holds his captured spear in both hands and squeezes, but instead of breaking it, he tosses it away. He only wanted to prove he could.

Lydia attacks again. Sweat sticks her bra tight against her skin, and Soren’s sweating, too, both of them breathing deep and hard and even. I’m impressed, though I can still feel Soren’s frenzy clicking and clacking instead of burning.

“She’s excellent,” Sune says. “Her patience.”

“Her ass,” Visby adds. I narrow my eyes, though he can’t see it.

Sean nods. “I wonder how her accuracy is, throwing those.”

“How’s yours?” I growl, pushing away from Visby, irritated at all these men, including Soren.

Sensing all three men staring at the back of my head, I stomp nearer the battle. “End it, Soren!” I yell.

That distracts Lydia, too, but she darts away, into a really cool move that flips the spear in a gorgeous arc so it’s like she’s coming at him with the butt. Except it’s a fake-out. She thrusts the point back around, twisting her entire body for leverage, and has the sharp end slashed through Soren’s T-shirt and side before he can change up his dodge.

I freeze. It was a great trick.

She slams the butt into the dust and glares at Soren in victory. Soren nods. “Good,” he says.

Her shoulders are heaving, and they stare at each other for a few moments, calming down. There’s cheering and grumbles from the crowd, and I hear the camp manager’s voice ring out, calling for some ragging help with the ragging food.

“I could take down a berserker with these,” Lydia says, calm and even despite the hitch of hard breathing.

It shouldn’t, but it makes me laugh.

The wolf guard swings to face me. “You’d like your chance?”

“You don’t want to fight me; I don’t have his control.”

“I felt his frenzy,” she says. “I felt it buzzing in the air and in his eyes.”

Soren stretches his neck in a slow circle.

I say, “You know if he had gone berserk, he’d let you stab that thing straight through his stomach and pull himself up the shaft to crush your throat in his bare hands, right?”

“Is that the plan?” she asks coolly. “The two of you go berserk and tear the dragon to pieces?”

A smile shows her my eagerness. “I hope so. You aim us, we explode.”

Soren nods. “That’s what we are, that is the point.”

“WMDs,” I say. It was a thing Bram Oakson said to me the night I joined the Devil Bears.

Lydia looks from me to him, and the two of them share a moment of something. She says, “I do not need your protection, Soren Bearstar.”

His eyes squint as he glances past us to the rest of the convoy. “But he does.” Soren’s looking right at Visby Larue.

Rag. I guess I’ll have to tell him not to worry about that.

“We’re here to hunt and kill a dragon,” Lydia says. “Not to keep each other alive.”

Soren refuses to answer, glancing up at the offensively blue sky, and his expression makes me wonder why he is here.

Over cold cuts and cheese and bread and olives, we discuss battle strategy. Or rather, everybody but Visby and me discusses battle strategy. We sit together on top of a second picnic table, listening, eyeing each other, mouthing asides, generally spitting off.

But as the tactic talk is winding down—and the plan is essentially what Soren and I said: find the dragon and keep its attention while the two of us go for the heart with our blades and fire—Visby clears his throat. He hops off the table and stands with his hands on his waist, hips thrust forward. “We’re going the wrong way,” he says.

“We’re following the grid,” Sean tells him.

Sune adds, “Marking our progress and map-checking.”

“But it’s the wrong way,” Visby insists. He pulls a smoke out of his back pocket and rolls it between finger and thumb. There’s a lighter in his front pocket, and he lights up while everybody stares at him; me, too. Me for slightly less academic reasons.

“Enlighten us?” Lydia says dryly. She dunked her head under some water, and now her heap of black hair is slicked wetly back into a tail.

Visby shrugs and takes a long, almost too long, drag. “She’s south of us,” he says, smoke spilling out alongside his words.

Sean clumps his elbows on the table, eyes pinched. “Excuse you?”

It’s endearingly polite.

I hop down and knock my boot into Visby’s butt, shaking his elegant pose. “Just tell us what the rag you’re talking about.”

Flicking cigarette ash at me, he says, “I can feel her. The dragon.”

“Feel the dragon.” Sune Rask doesn’t sound as skeptical as I think he should. “How?”

“Loki Changer was my great-great-great-great grandma.”

That’s a ragging gut punch. I throw up my hands and stalk away, torn between laughing and scrubbing my mouth with bleach.

Soren asks, “How does that give you dragon-sense?”

“Just does, I guess. It’s a pull when I think about the dragon, a gut feeling.”

Lydia says, “Are you sure your gut feeling isn’t anchored to Vider?”

I whirl back around. “Wait, Visby, you said she.”

Discomfort ripples across his mouth.

Lydia laughs. “Doubt Visby hunts anything male, no matter the species.”

“Truth,” he says, recovering his cool. “But in this case, it’s just a fact.”

“How do you know?” Sean asks.

“I just do. It’s part of the feeling. And size, yeah? Aren’t the lady dragons usually bigger?”

“No, that’s trolls, and a couple of the extinct dragon species.” The dragon slayer glances at Soren, and they share a look. They really are co-leading this hunt.

Soren says, “We should finish out the grid, and then if we don’t find anything, let Visby try to lead us.”

Sean nods, Sune nods, Lydia flips her hands carelessly. Visby sighs. “I’ll just go stretch for a while before another useless few hours in the truck then.” Lobbing an inviting glance my way. I tell him I’ll catch up.

The cowboy grabs his hat from the picnic table and saunters toward the stream. I ask Soren for a moment, and he goes with me, bringing a fresh can of honey soda. He’s hotter than I am, giving off little waves of frenzy like high-tide ripples—a natural thing, not a sign of danger. I touch his shoulder and smooth some of them. After a second of surprise, Soren leans in just slightly. I pull at the energy, a version of the give-and-take frenzy game we played before dawn this morning.

“I’m all right,” he says when we’re far enough from the camp and hidden in a grove of birches.

“I know. I wanted to tell you something about Visby.” I strip a dark piece of papery bark off the birch. Below is smoother, paler skin.

Soren pops the top of his soda and takes a long drink.

“How do the apples of immortality work?” I ask abruptly.

He coughs and lowers the can.

I wait.

“Ah, if you eat one and die within a year, you can resurrect.”

“Can?”

“Do?” He shakes his head. “I don’t understand the magic exactly, but it’s made for the gods. It’s part of what they are, which isn’t human. Why?”

“Does Idun just give them out?”

“One to every god every year.”

“Only one?” I frown.

“That’s the rule. There are…ways around it, depending on Idun, but it’s only supposed to be one. They only need one. It sustains them against death for the whole year.”

My lips peel apart as a cold realization lodges in my throat. Loki gave me an apple. Was it his apple? No, I think, and shake my head at Soren, though he can have no idea why. It is not possible. I couldn’t take the implication if it were. But it’s not.

“Why?” Soren says again.

“Oh!” I press my hands to my eyes. “Ah…well, I…you don’t have to worry about protecting Visby.”

There’s no answer, and I drop my hands to see Soren watching me charily. I try to smile, but it feels wavering even to me. So I go bigger: shoulders shrugged, eyebrows up, great big grin like it’s all a huge joke. “He ate the apple of immortality Loki gave me. So…!”

Heat snaps through the air, and I feel the pressure of Soren’s suddenly loose fever before he drops the honey soda, clenches his fists, closes his eyes, and reins it in.

I really ragging surprised him.

“Sorry,” I whisper.

“Loki…gave you an apple.” Soren opens his eyes, frowning under his drawn, heavy brow.

I nod.

He studies me for a full minute. I don’t know how to act, what face to put on, so I just stand there, letting myself feel helplessly lost regarding my own opinion of the situation. Loki Changer gave me an apple—in fact, he’s tried to give me several over the years—and it might even be his own immortality at stake this year. I took it and flung it at Visby without thinking. I’m glad the cowboy’s guaranteed life, but I don’t want anybody else to find out, especially Sean Hardy, especially Loki himself.

“Odd-eye, Vider,” Soren says finally, shoulders falling. He puts his hand on my collarbone, just higher than my heart.

“Yeah,” I say, and cover his big hand with my little one.

SEVEN.

After an uneventful afternoon plotting the middle third of the grid, I know I can’t take another day of this. I spent it curled on my side of the back seat, mostly ignoring Sean and Visby, completely ignoring Camera Guy. Stared out the window at buzzards circling high and lazy overhead.

When we stop to make camp two hours before dark—it stays light out here hours past when it should, thanks to the summer sun and expansive sky—I help set up tents and the fire pit, then grab a stash of protein bars from the mess van and one of the camel-back water pouches. Secreting it all in my pack is easy, and then I put my axes on, a fresh set of berserker blacks and Henry’s hat, take my toothbrush and a change of underwear. I don’t expect to be gone long.

Leaving the water pouch empty for now, I pull the hat low and walk casually toward Visby’s tent. The flap’s tied open, and through the shadowy triangle I see him sitting cross-legged in the center, shirtless, rolling a bunch of cigarettes. Gross. It’s sexy to look at, but hot skit, what a dumb habit.

Maybe this is a mistake.

But he turns at the scrape of my boot on the grass and smiles. The little scar on his lip glints.

I duck inside and drop my little pack. It thuds to the dusty floor of his tent. “Do you want to kill her?”

His brows wing up. “The dragon?”

I put my hands on my hips.

Sliding to his feet, Visby says, “I’m here for the glory, I told ya, so I want whatever gets me that.”

“Not driving around in a grid pattern, for sure.”

“For sure.” The cowboy angles nearer to me, hips first, like always.

I pick the world-snake charm off his chest. Rub my thumb along the rough iron scales. It’s not a finely made piece, but most Lokiskin charms are forged in a caravan, hammered and stamped and cut and carved in wagons and behind makeshift booths. “I don’t want to kill her,” I say, lifting my eyes to his.

“Sure,” he says, all husky.

Makes me laugh a little, under my breath. It’s so obvious, and also, I like it. “So let’s go. Right now.”

“Go?” He dances his fingers down my bare arms. My frenzy stretches her wings so the tips graze the inside of my ribs, tickling and burning. Visby cups my elbows. “You sure you wanna go someplace?”

“Yeah.” I tilt my chin up to his mouth. “I do. Just you and me, though, so stop complaining. We’re going dragon hunting on our own.”

He laughs. “Just us?”

“You said you can find her.”

Visby’s dark, tapered eyes flick all over my face. There’s some fire in them, more visible now in the shadowy tent, and me so near him, and his eyes narrowed like that, like the fire burns brighter in less space. The familiar smile curves slowly across his mouth. “I’ll just grab a bag,” he says.

I back up to the flap and wait, and five minutes later the two of us are sneaking out of camp, down toward the little stream that cuts through here. Loki’s luck, the camp manager always picks a spot with good water. Probably—definitely—we should be careful about drinking it, but skit, I’m a berserker and the frenzy burns away most sickness, and Visby ate that apple, so we’ll be fine in the long run. We move fast at first, to put as much distance as possible between us and the camp. Once darkness falls, I bet we’ll have until morning before Soren realizes what I’ve done, then a few hours before they find us, assuming they bother to try. Tonight when we don’t show up at dinner, I hope they think we’re off someplace having sex.

We splash through the shallow, rocky creek, which is easier to maneuver than the crest of the hills would be, and we can climb around or over about half the obstacles: snarls of blackberries and clusters of sunflowers as tall as I am and ugly little trees and cattails and swarms of mosquitoes. As the sun drops low and lower, the world seems to grow louder. Birds make their twilight calls, high and sharp and sweet, grasshoppers and frogs buzz and zip, flies are everywhere.

Clouds slip in, covering the sky with thin, rippling, gray-tinged silver and peach in the west. No blazing, dramatic sunset tonight, but a quiet lullaby of color. I breathe more deeply for it, and wonder if the clouds will dampen the moonlight too much for us to see where to step.

Visby doesn’t ruin it with talking, though he watches me almost as much as he watches where he’s going. Once or twice, he says we’re on the right path, heading in the right direction, but it isn’t until the sun is totally vanished and purple darkness covers the prairie that he says, “How far do you want to go tonight?”

“As far as we can.”

“You really believe I can feel her?”

“You know it’s a her.”

“That convinced you?”

“The god of orphans said the same thing.”

Visby stops walking.

After a few steps, I turn, annoyed. “What?” I can barely make out his expression in the hazy shadows.

“You’re close to the Changer?”

“Does it matter?”

His shoulders shift. “Do you think he’ll…come here tonight, too?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. But no, not with you here.” It’s too bad, I think, heart squeezing. I want to ask him about the apple. I want to ask how much a sacrifice it was to hand it to me. “Come on, let’s keep moving.”

“Maybe we should wait for moonrise.”

I peer around. It is dark. Would do us no good if either of us broke a leg. But we’ve only come ten miles or less, if I’m estimating correctly.

“Want me to distract you?” Visby suggests, holding out his hand. He’s all dusk and shadows now, his hat casting darkness across his face but for his mouth again. His teeth flash white when he smiles.

I do want him to distract me.

I only touch my fingers to his palm before he snatches me close and kisses me, hands groping the straps of my axe harness. I hold onto his shoulders, kissing, trying to push thoughts of dragons and apples and the god of mischief out of my head.

The axes jerk off one side of my back, and I hurriedly divest myself of the other strap, setting them down as carefully as I can with Visby’s hands all over me.

My frenzy is hot, clawing to get out, and I groan through pressed lips; it sounds like a song. Visby’s mouth does great work, directing my skin’s attention exactly where he wants it, and I think I’ll spontaneously burst out of my clothes. Our knees bend and we sink against the hill. I clutch at him when he opens the vest over my stomach and sucks gently. He’s right over my dragon’s whipping tail and I gasp again and again, realizing I have to calm down, I have to breathe evenly.

In and out.

In
and
out
but my back arches when his teeth find my hip, and I shove him away.

Rolling over, I hug the dry, cool, scratchy hillside. My spine is on fire, my palms and the soles of my feet begging to run and hit, my whole body aching, because the frenzy, the passion, is burning me up. My eyes hurt, my teeth hurt; I bite my tongue so it hurts instead.

“Vider?” he whispers.

I shake my head, turning to my side and pulling my legs up to my chest, hugging myself as tight and small as I can. In and out. Mountain. The frenzy is a ball of fire, contained by your breath and bones. In and out, I tell myself.

It’s possible to do this, to channel it safely, to be alive and passionate and full of desire. To have sex and last forever, to burn and rage and not hurt your partner. I know it because berserkers have been doing it for centuries. I know it because Henry awkwardly promised it was true.

A hand touches my temple, gentle as a mother’s kiss. He smoothes my hair, stroking to soothe, not to turn me on again.

I shudder and shake as my dragon scrapes and roars with frustration. I don’t want to tame her, I don’t want her channeled or leashed.

Not when I remember what it felt like to hit Loki Changer in the mouth, to fight him and let go, to dance with him and be free of danger and fear for those moments. I want Loki, curse it.

I’ve tasted flight; how can I breathe myself into the ground? That cursed god has ruined me for anything else.

“I’m sorry,” Visby says.

I just start to laugh. I roll over and shove him away. “Don’t be sorry,” I say, angry and laughing, “you didn’t do anything wrong.”

He lies down next to me and props his head on his hand. “I’d really like to get back to what we were doing then. Otherwise, this grass is too spiky to lie on, and it’s hot, and we’re in the prairie in the dark with nothing else to do.”

“Oh, that’s a real compliment there, cowboy.”

Shrugging, he rolls onto his back. “About another hour till moonrise, I think?”

I sit beside him and pull the ends of his hair against my thigh. It’s even darker than the black of my pants. And silky. I stroke it, teasing the ends on my fingers, even though he surely can’t feel anything. His chest rises and falls under the simple T-shirt he put on before we left our tents. He keeps his eyes on the sky. Gods-curse, he’s so sexy and languid. I’d kiss him again, but the outcome will be the same.

Tiny bugs dart around us; the wind moves low through the grass, creating a constant, rhythmic hiss like the sound of the sea.

My heart is so heavy, and I don’t know why.

“What do you want, Visby?” I whisper.

He takes a moment to react, as if he’d been lost in the quick-moving clouds overhead. “From you?”

“From…everything.”

Without taking his gaze off the sky, he shifts against the ground and says, “Do you really care what I want, or is this because you don’t know what you want?”

I kick him lightly in the side of the leg with my booted foot. “Both, rockbrains.”

“Well then, flowerlips, I want freedom to wander, to interfere with what I want and ignore what I don’t. I want to…be loved.”

“You act like you want to be worshipped. At least, your abs and smile do.”

He laughs once. “Gotta be loved for who I am.”

Tears tickle my eyes as I smile, for no cursed-good reason. “Yeah,” I manage thickly. “Well.”

We’re quiet again for a long time, listening to the prairie wind. I breathe with it, breathing as deep as I can, holding it as long as I can.

Visby says, “Why do you want to meet the dragon, really?”

“To see if I’m like her at all,” I say before I can stop the thought.

“Like her.”

I nod, even though he probably can’t see it. “My frenzy is a dragon,” I whisper. “She stretches and roars in my chest, nested in my heart and caged by my ribs. She wants to fly, she burns all the time. I love her, I love this power, but I can’t share it or explain it to the berserkers. Not completely. They love their frenzy differently, the ones who love it at all. It connects them, it maddens them, it makes them into brilliant stars; but mine…the Alfather woke her up in me, but I think she was born of something I always had.”

Visby makes a strangled sort of sound, and I glance at him, flushing with embarrassment that I said so much. He stares at me with eyes wide, an expression like he’s been gutted.

“Forget it,” I say kind of harshly, standing up. “You’re not the one I should have told. Rag.” I start away, stumbling in the dark toward the stream, because at least it’s a path. Rag and rag and rag me.

“Vider!” he calls after me, voice higher and almost desperate-sounding. “Wait. Who should you have told? Who should you have told?”

I stop, fists clenched. I have to go back anyway, because my axes are there. I spin around, and he’s standing directly upstream from me, legs wide, hands at his sides, palms out, expression eager and visible even in the bare starlight. His hat is on the ground; his black hair gleams.

“Who?” he asks again, nearly begging.

“Loki,” I say, out loud for the first time in four years. “I should have told it to Loki Changer, because he deserves to know.”

My words release something in his posture, and Visby relaxes, wilts almost, and nods.

I take a single step toward him, nervous suddenly, feeling like my hackles are up, my ears perked. Before I can even consciously think what I suspect is happening, I’m running at him.

His eyes widen, going bright green.

Crying out wordlessly—with fury, glee, laughter, I don’t know how to contain it all—I throw myself at him.

Loki catches me easily, and I shut my eyes like that will help me hug him harder.

His arms around my back, my toes an inch off the ground, I wind around him, chest to chest, cheek to cheek, digging my hands in his thick, short, white-blond hair. “You ragger,” I whisper.

“I love you,” he whispers back.

My hands fist up; I squeeze with all my substantial, tiny pit bull strength. “Why?” I beg.

He drops me, but I’ve got too great a hold and slide slowly down his chest. The Loki looking at me is part me, part young god: androgynous features, solid shoulders, flawless-plastic-green eyes, but my mouth, his hair thin and jagged like mine but red as the strips of freckles slashing over his longer nose. Part me, part him.

“Why?” he repeats, incredulous.

I shrug and snatch my hands off his chest.

“Why shouldn’t I?” he asks. “What reason is there not to love you?”

“You’d have to ask all the people who don’t.” My voice is haggard.

“It’s my fault you think like that, isn’t it?” he snarls.

I just shake my head. I don’t know.

Loki stomps away, then whirls around. “Do you know why I love young people? Children and teenagers? I could spend time with anyone, anything I wish, and everyone knows I prefer the young.”

Swallowing hard, I shrug. “They say you like our lack of responsibility. You like taking care of kids, and kids need the most from you. You’re the god of orphans and mothers; of course you like kids.”

“No.”

“I don’t know then.”

The god spreads his arms invitingly and waits. It’s brighter around us now somehow, maybe a hidden moon, maybe a subtle magic. He looks like the angel I thought he was when he helped me climb that tree, a decade ago, to get away from my dad.

He seems so different to me, and also the same. I know I’m different now, but am I still the same Vider he loved as a little girl?

“You change,” Loki says, not in answer to my thoughts but to his own question. “The process of childhood is change. Growth. New patterns. Forming bonds, breaking them. Some people never stop changing, growing, and those people are always young, Vider. But when you are a little girl, when you are a teenager,” he pauses, takes a deep breath, and, with reverence coating his voice, says, “the entire purpose of your existence is to become.”

I feel my dragon, my seed of fire, spreading her wings.

“Look at you,” he goes on. “Look what you’re doing to yourself, no, for yourself. You want to meet a dragon just to—what did you say? See if the dragon smiles back?” Loki laughs. Uproariously. High and full of delight. “Not to challenge her! Or kill her, not for glory or honor or money or anything outside yourself! You aren’t proving yourself to yourself, or sacrificing; you aren’t doing it for somebody else. You just want to find out what will happen! You want to know. To become whatever the experience will forge you into. And you barely even see it. There’s no pride or false modesty. Just you.”

My hands find my chest. I press hard against the blossoming hot wind, against the awful, awesome swelling there.

“Vider, the real question is, how could I not love you?”

His smile is so familiar, hooked up and curled wickedly, tenderly.

I nod a little, still aching inside.

“All right, fire girl.” Loki Changer’s hair sparks at the ends again, flicking into flames as if struck by a match. The red glow shimmers in his black-black eyes. “I’ll introduce you to a dragon you can smile at.”

EIGHT.

The road we travel now is a road of light. A rainbow bridge, a swirling, windy path of magic between worlds. Loki tucks me against him and whispers I should hide my face and hold tight to his neck. I press my cheek there but leave my eyes wide open. His arm is around me, anchoring me. All I see is the world dissolved into colors: a melted painting, chalk on a sidewalk dripping with rain. My frenzy churns, beats with my heart—there is no earth beneath my feet, and I gasp, holding onto Loki.

Images, shapes, colors, darting at me and all around, changing and flickering and solid or none of those things. I can’t name the sounds I hear or think I hear; I can’t say what I see, though I know it all. And none of it. Both, neither, all, none, unfocused and aching.

I close my eyes.

Now there is only a rush of wind, my heartbeat. In and out, I breathe. In and out. I am a ball of fire, my bones are the mountain, and Loki’s arm around me is like a binding spell, holding me together in this place of light and nothingness.

Then my toes touch down, and we’re standing on the earth again—my middle world, I can only hope.

“Here, Vider,” the god of mischief murmurs. “Be quiet if you can manage it. We’ll wake her gently.”

“Wait.” I keep my eyes shut, my face against his neck and arms holding tight. Wind knocks into us, a humid nighttime wind, dragging the whisper of prairie grass behind.

Loki waits. He holds me patiently, no words, only an arm around my back, a hand on my neck, playing with the ends of my hair.

I say, “You’re only supposed to get one apple a year. Are you in danger because you haven’t eaten yours?”

His fingers still in my hair, he tugs a strand once, quick and sharp. “I am not in danger, no. I ate mine. The one I offered you was an extra that I won.”

It is sheer relief that blows out with my breath. I nod, stepping away. “Good. I wouldn’t…I don’t want that sort of pressure.”

“You should eat it, so I can relax, too.” He produces the little ugly thing from some invisible pocket. In the moonlight, it looks less horrific but remains unappealing.

I pluck it from his hand. “I gave this to you when I thought I gave it to Visby. Did I ever even meet the real Visby Larue?”

“No. My daughter Fenris waylaid him on his way to the hunt. She’s been entertaining him for the past week.” There’s the pride of a trick well pulled in Loki’s voice.

“You’re terrible,” I say.

The god smiles in agreement. “Eat the apple.”

“Nope.”

“Why not?”

“If I die, I die, Loki. And I go to Hel and hope my name is remembered here. You’ll remember it, at least.”

“I don’t understand you.” His face is less him now, more me, but smoothed like a marble statue’s and just as pale. But his eyes are black and starry.

I look into them and then kiss him very lightly on the lips. He doesn’t close his eyes and neither do I, and all I see are the stars inside him.

When I step away, I say, “Good” again and smile my own most mischievous smile. I tuck the apple into my pocket.

Shaking his head, Loki takes my hand and pulls me up a steep hill. At the crest, wind slams into us, and I gasp as it knocks me back a step. I spread my free hand, fingers splayed, and let my dragon-frenzy unfurl her wings, as if she could catch the wind, too, and send us aloft.

“Here she is,” Loki whispers.

Before us, the prairie stretches miles and miles in every direction; gray, brown and shadowed green, toward the black horizon. The hills dip and flow, and the wind presses the tall grass into waves that flicker silver and blond. The moon is low in the east, oblong and burnished, casting thin light over the world. I hear nothing but the wind, smell only dust and hot grass, and see no dragon at all.

“Where?” I ask.

“Sleeping here, part of the hills.” He stands close to me, words almost carried away by the hissing, powerful wind.

“I don’t see her.” I stare and stare, but it is a world cast in silver and bronze, metallic waves of grass, iron-black sky, thousand-eye gaze of heaven.

“She is good at hiding, Vider. And has been for longer than I’ve been alive.”

Longer than he’s been alive. It makes me cold, makes the ground spin, to imagine so many years. I shiver, urged by instinct to pull away from him, but I swallow it down. I want this. I am going to meet this dragon. “Will she appear?”

“For me,” he says, cocky and regal. Turning his attention from me, he strides a few paces away and says, not loudly or softly, not with urgency, but as if he’s speaking to someone waiting just before him, “Mother.”

I dart forward and smack his shoulder. “You’re ragging with me,” I say, but my voice is soft and urgent, shaking with disbelief. He smiles over his shoulder, teeth glinting, and his mouth stretching too wide to be natural.

My frenzy staggers. I twist my fingers into his T-shirt, so tightly the material stretches and tears. I can’t breathe; I can’t even shut my mouth, staring at him and past him at the undulating prairie.

Loki Changer’s mother!

Said to be a giant, said to be long dead: Laufey the Needle is not supposed to be a dragon. Not supposed to be sleeping in the center of the United States of Asgard.

I shake my head. I still can’t close my mouth, and the wind tastes like sticky panic.

Because I am alone here with a god, I welcome the hot strength of my frenzy. It will protect me, make me powerful, make me fast, and, in the end, make me numb to pain and fear and the agony of death.

“You don’t need that,” Loki says. My fist pulls at his T-shirt again, and Loki curls a hand around my wrist. He draws me along the broad back of the hill. His eyes are looking forward, seeking, and he pulls me along one step at a time.

“What—what is she doing here?” I gasp.

“Stretching her wings.”

I grunt high-pitched in disbelief. My breath comes in shallow pants. I am about to leap off a cliff, I think, dive out of a heliplane with no parachute.

“Mother!” Loki calls again, louder this time.

The entire world trembles.

Loki laughs. “This way!” He dances to the side with me, turns us in a wide circle, and then tugs north again, like he has no real clue what he’s doing. But his laughter is contagious. I force my mouth into a smile, so my panting starts to sound like breathless giggles, and three steps later, it is.

“Mother!” I yell. Loki’s head snaps around and his wide, shocked eyes find mine. Then together, we cry for her again.

Mother!

Our hands together, we race along the crest of the hill. The ground trembles.

Loki skids to a stop. He jerks me back. “There!” He points at the next hill to the west, to the earth falling away like shedding skin, layers of grass and flowers and dirt tumbling down. It is silver-copper-gold rain in the moonlight.

There is so much of her. The prairie hills arc around us, a curve of land risen up and churning, loosening itself. She must be massive, buried here or burrowed like a hibernating snake.

“Loki,” I whisper, groping for his hand. He opens his arm, and I lean in and grab the waistband of his jeans.

“Vider,” he whispers back, hugging my shoulders.

Slowly, slowly, she rises.

The moonlight casts her in molten silver, a great winged serpent, too long and perfect for me to bear. Her wings stretch in fringed arcs, blocking out the stars. Her neck arches, and she sits up on her hind legs, claws gouging the earth. She is as white as pearls and moonlight, bearded with tangled vines and long crests of grass; her skin gleams with crystalline spikes, not scales, and her scars are like granite pushed up through the earth. Her tail whips and curls, her forelegs are longer than her rear legs, so her shoulders are mountain peaks and her haunches the foothills, and those forelegs end in hands, great clawed hands with thumbs as huge as minivans. Her neck is a graceful S, and her face elegant and long as an antelope’s. Curved horns grow behind her eyes, twisted silver and white.

And her eyes are green-blue and swirling, cloudy and streaked with inky black. They are globes of the middle world, spinning slow and easy.

Screamer.

The word roars through my skull.

Not spoken, not heard, only understood.

“Mother,” Loki says.

When she lowers her head, I’m pushed back by the rush of air. Angling sideways, she puts her left eye level with us, head tilted. Dirt clings to the cracks in her skin, to her thick wrinkles; flowers are rooted there, and baby trees with thin, electric-green leaves. Her planet eye has no center, no pupil I can see, but I understand she is staring at her son.

“Her name is Vider,” Loki says.

All her glorious, grave attention focuses on me.

I feel it, a weight cracking my ribs. It’s painful and heavy. I fist my hands and try to spark my frenzy.

Berserker, she says.

I fall to my knees, and when Loki grabs at my arm, I bat him away and stare back into her terrifying eye. There is a flicker in it, a tiny red-yellow glow like fire, like me.

My madness flashes, turning over like an old car engine, and I cry out wordlessly to ignite it.

The dragon in my heart rears up and thrusts her wings out. I throw out my arms, too.

And I smile at Laufey the Needle.

I smile even though I am afraid; I smile even though my frenzy is nothing compared to her. It is a helpless, tiny star, and she is the universe.

But I smile.

I am the oldest, she tells me, I am the beginning. And you are a moment on the path to the end.

“Okay,” I say harshly, because my throat feels burnt out. “Seems like an all right thing to be.”

The dragon opens her mouth like a great canyon splitting apart; chunks of rock and dirt tumble free, leathery skin stretches, strings of blood and amber-colored saliva connect her hard lips. Her teeth are iron and diamond spikes. Bones are caught between some of them, but curled around one lower fang are blooming white-rose vines.

A rush of wind that is a sigh blows over us, smelling sweet and hot, like rust and ocean water and summertime.

“Is that a smile?” I ask, unable to take my eyes off the dragon to glance at Loki.

He laughs.

I laugh, too, because I am amazed and afraid and my frenzy is a burning, blazing thing.

“She hasn’t eaten you,” the god suggests, still laughing.

What is it you want, fire girl?

“Fire girl,” I whisper, and Loki laughs all the more, high and delighted, like a child, choking and catching his breath. I knock him over with a firm shove, and Loki Changer goes tumbling, laughing and cursing and laughing again, down the prairie hill.

“I want to fly, Laufey the First,” I say, holding my hands out again, palms toward her. They are hot; my frenzy burns.

I cannot help you to fly.

That doesn’t hurt me or surprise me, because I know the reply: “I already can.”

She doesn’t respond but tilts her head in a way I know means accord.

“They want to hunt you—there are hunters, I mean, here on the prairie.” I wipe my sweating hands on my shirt; I breathe deeply but do not rein my dragon in, only focus, only channel her brilliant fire into strength. I am the mountain; I am a great earth-and-diamond dragon. My frenzy is a flower, too, and a crystal star, everything Laufey is.

I know.

“They will find you, eventually. You let yourself be seen.”

I went a-hunting myself, in the deep black sea where my granddaughter lives.

Unsure that’s an answer, I suddenly see her flying high in the clouds, over the ocean, only to dive and dive and dive, into cold, saltwater shadows, and I see her dance with a sea dragon, longer than she is, a flash of scales and slinking tails entwined together.

I blink, rocking with vertigo. “Oh,” I say, stumbling backward. I catch myself on hands and butt and lean back to look up, higher and higher as she raises her head again. The moonlight is nothing compared to her, but it makes her into a monster of crystal and bone and prairie again.

Goodbye, fire girl, she tells me.

“Goodbye,” I whisper.

The prairie shakes as she shoves into the sky, a leap that takes her up a thousand feet. Her wings snap; dirt and grass and flower petals rain down. I cover my head with my arm, peering still, but she is a blur of clouds, a smear of starlight in the night sky.

I wonder how she would glow under the sun.

And then she is gone.

Falling onto my back, I let myself sink down, let my frenzy burn through my spine and into the earth below. I gape, mouth open, eyes wide, fingers dug into the grass. I am itchy and loose from heat and shock. I am starving. I throb with a headache and an empty, scoured heart.

But oh, what a dragon.

I suck in a deep breath and yell, “Loki Changer!”

Nothing.

The world turns under me, and I don’t feel it, of course; the moon rises, the stars burn cold and silent.

“Loki?” I say again.

“I’m right here.” He lounges nearby on his side, head resting on his hand. “Fire girl.”

I grab the front of his shirt and pull him close. He is like me again, blond and delicate, my fraternal twin in a black T-shirt; but instead of a spear tattoo, it’s a starburst, dark on his pale cheek. “I want you to do something for me.”

“I might.” He grins.

“Let’s give them a dragon to hunt, and have some real fun.”

Pale smoke slips out between his teeth, and his eyes transform green-blue and begin to spin like a planet.

NINE.

As the sun rises, we soar so high I’m really ragging cold; without my frenzy, I might not be breathing. Clouds stretch below us, layers of thin moisture distorting the golden prairie, flashing across my face and Loki’s dragon-scale skin. I straddle his neck, and the muscles under my butt and thighs work slow and strong as he maneuvers across the sky with broad wings. Though I wish to spread my arms, too, I hold tight to the curved horns growing out of his spine, squint my eyes against tears and the cold. My frenzy rumbles and spins in rhythm with Loki’s lazy wings.

My skin is afire from the crisp, biting wind, and my stomach is someplace behind us on the ground.

Loki transformed into a dragon that looks like you expect them to look, based on picture books and movies: spiny, dangerous head and sinuous neck, four strong legs ending in wicked claws, huge wings—clawed, too, like a bat’s—with horns and ridges and spikes down his tail, and golden-orange-red scales like chunks of flame frozen in time, like rubies and amber resin, like the silent, vicious hot coals in the heart of a fire. His eyes are slit-pupiled and narrow, and when he opens his mouth, his tongue slides out thin as a snake, curling around curved, sickle-sided fangs.

He crooked the knee of his foreleg for me to climb onto his shoulders. As I settled down, he shifted shape to accommodate me, re-angling his wing bones, growing perfect handholds for me. He stretched and twisted his neck to look at me upside-down. I smiled, I rubbed the smooth, warm scales, I leaned over and kissed his neck while he could see me, because I doubted he would feel it.

Loki Changer is a dragon for me, large as a barn, with the wingspan of a 747.

The sun edges over the horizon, and Loki soars. He tilts his wings so our long spiral descent takes us down gently. We dip only as fast as the sun rises, parting the wispy clouds with the wind off his wings.

I wonder who will spot us first. If Loki could hear me, I would bet him it’ll be Soren, because the berserker has an advantage: me. He’ll feel my frenzy coming, no matter how silent Loki the Dragon flies.

And I cannot tamp it down. I am flying.

We dip entirely below the clouds.

Under the pastel dawn, the prairie awakens like fire: yellow grasses are gilded with orange, and green is made electric with pink shadows. The hunting party’s camp is tucked between two shallow, wide hills, clustered around the creek, half in the shade of trees. The canvas tents are dull and plain amid the riot of summer all around them.

Loki curls his claws together, clicking them to get my attention. He gestures at the trucks with all the weapons, and I yell, “They can’t kill you, but they might feel bad about shooting down a god.”

A chuckle shakes his body.

Only a few people move among the tents, mostly near the mess, and I see someone jogging in a wide circle on the outskirts. That’ll be Soren, I guess.

This is going to be so much fun. We’ll tease them, scare them, and laugh until we land.

As Loki pulls around the eastern edge of the camp, our shadow falls against the prairie in full relief: a wavering black dragon mirroring us, a sleek dart of shade, and I take a deep breath. “Don’t kill Sean Hardy,” I yell, thumping Loki’s shoulder.

His response is only to bark: sharp, deep, loud. Like a crack of thunder.

I squeeze my thighs against him, hooking the toes of my boots around ridges on the underside of his neck, and let go of the horns.

Wind catches me and drags my arms back.

I hold them out like wings and let my frenzy free.

Loki drops under me.

Half floating, I scream in terror and in joy.

My heart bursts in fire, in frenzy and madness.

The world is red.

I am screaming.

I fly.

As an alarm goes up, I hear yells and screams to accompany mine, but

I
am
gone

TEN.

no Vider
no fire girl
nothing but
frenzy-fire
heat

A rush of battle, the exhilaration of motion, hot muscles beneath me, the flap of wings, dragon roaring, car engines, and my fingers
fingers grasping the wind

My core, my heart, my dragon is alive and all around me, manifest in wind and fire and screaming.

Screamer.

There is only air and the dragon and the cries, the crack of thunder—guns—and the laser-swift song of a blade.

I scream myself raw, and the dragon does, too, his roar reverberating through me and all around me. We are a scream, we are flight, we are dipping and climbing, twisting, laughing, burning red. We are

Blood in my face

Sudden bowing pain

Fury

My dragon-fire-heart transforms the pain into power

Raw fiery power

Hands fisted, desperate to lash and hit, to tear and bite and claw—

I am

Vider again

My eyes see his dangerous, fiery head, the blue sky, the camp a hundred feet below and in chaos.

I see my shaking hands, I see vicious red blood on my skin, and darker red splashed across Loki’s scales.

I see the hunters below, four of them. And they’ve finally seen me, too:

Sean Hardy with a spear in hand, blade to the earth as he holds the others back.

Lydia Wolfdottir crouched and panting, teeth bared at me like the wolf she is. There is blood on her, too. Not her blood.

Sune Rask, his Army jacket missing, blood striped down his chest and a gun in his hand.

And Soren. Soren Bearstar standing like a mountain, heat washing off him in waves; he is the oasis in this desert, shimmering like an illusion.

None of them attacks again.

Loki banks and I fall forward against him, exhaustion burying me for a moment. Horns and bony ridges cut up against me, but I hug tighter, I grip around his neck, I cling with my arms and legs. I feel every motion as he wheels around to land on the hill. My side hurts, a quiet, hot pain like I’ve cracked a rib.

But oh, am I alive.

My mouth curls into a smile before I know it, my teeth against his scales.

Gently, carefully, he lands.

Soren and Sean Hardy are speaking; I hear the tenor of their voices, though the words seem to escape my understanding. Too far into dragon I’ve gone; I barely comprehend my human tongue. It makes my smile wider.

Then Sune says something harsh and gasping, and I feel Loki shrug beneath me. Not for them but for me. To get my attention.

I push up, sliding off him at the same time, right into Lydia Wolfdottir’s arms.

She puts me on my feet with a little snarl, and I lean on Loki.

“Curse it, Vider,” Soren says. His frenzy swarms toward me and I shudder—too much, it’s too much for me.

My dragon throws up a wing for shade from the pressing sun, and I stroke him, foggy and blinking at Soren’s heavy presence. He looms, chiding me. Someone asks where Visby Larue is.

“Did you get it all on camera?” I ask, my words raw, because I’m hoarse from screaming.

Sean Hardy says, “Yes” in a long, bitter drawl.

Soren puts his fists on his hips. “Loki?”

I nod, but it’s not necessary. Loki Changer stands beside me wearing his most public face: fifteen years old, wild red hair, freckles, gangly adolescent arms and legs. He bows, smiles, and shakes his head like a dog. “Soren,” he says. “And Sune Rask.”

Sune’s face is in a permanent wince, the blood on his shirt slowly seeping from a lash across his collar and chest. His gun remains in his hand, a small pistol. He knocks it lightly against his thigh. “I shot her,” he says, about me but not to me.

I laugh, and it hurts. “I’m not shot. I would know if I was….”

But my side feels sticky and warm, something thicker than sweat and the slick remains of frenzy heat.

“I don’t miss,” the hunter says wearily.

Hidden by the black berserker vest is a patch of wetness now spreading down my hip. When I touch it, my fingers come away red. “Oh,” I say.

A hiss is all the warning I have before Loki snakes around me and has Sune by the throat. The hunter brings up his gun, hitting Loki in the face with the butt. The god grunts and shifts but doesn’t let go.

“Loki, stop!” I say.

He does, like a dog. It’s funny. I laugh, light-headed.

Soren curls his fingers around Loki’s and pries him off Sune, who collapses onto his knees.

“This is a disaster,” Sean Hardy says.

But Lydia is smiling, a twisty, wry smile. “I think it will make good television.”

“I’m blacking out!” I say, offended.

Loki is there to catch me.

ELEVEN.

In the end, the gathered hunters slay their dragon.

Not for three more days, once I’ve healed enough to move about on my own. The berserking fever is useful for that, and it wasn’t a terrible wound. Sune Rask does know what he’s doing.

He shot me because Soren yelled that the dragon was Loki, and Sune assumed it was just like before, when my frenzy was lost in the god’s fire, and nothing would stop us but dramatic action. Soren couldn’t latch onto my frenzy to suck it away, so Sune did the next best thing.

Put a bullet through my side. A glancing shot, mostly through muscle.

I deserved it, for the trick we played. What a grand trick it was, too.

Soren doesn’t appreciate that I’m still laughing.

For our next trick, Loki and I convince everyone to put on a show: Loki will transform into a dragon again, fly around roaring and threatening, then let us cut him down with a magnificent spear thrown by the dragon slayer with all the cameras on. The footage can be edited for, as Lydia said, really good television. The country will think the dragon is dead, and I won’t have to explain to the world about Laufey the Needle. Loki can take any heat from Thor Thunderer.

Sean Hardy is the easiest to persuade: He wants to survive. Lydia Wolfdottir doesn’t argue, because she wants to keep the peace and return to her own life. Sune and Soren are more troublesome: The former is a stickler for rules and honesty; the latter is a giant stick-in-the-mud who doesn’t know how to have fun. Loki himself ends up whispering some secret in Soren’s ear that has the berserker grinding his jaw and finally agreeing.

After them, it’s easy for Loki to cajol and threaten and tempt the entire rest of the crew into agreeing. We choose a cool morning with puffy, picturesque clouds and no rain in the forecast, and a long, relatively flat valley with a few fat cows grazing on the rough, rocky ground as bait.

From the earth, Loki the Dragon takes my breath away, and my frenzy leaps and soars, desperate to be with him again. His wings curve sharp and his scales reflect the sunlight and prairie, as if he were made of fiery glass. When he roars, it shakes me to my toes, and we all roar back for the cameras.

The fight is not choreographed, though we discussed techniques around the fire last night, the sort that will play well for an audience, that will allow us all to shine and allow Loki to dance and show off, nearly eat a cameraman, and make off with one of the poor cows in a rain of fur and blood. It’s gruesome; it’s wonderful. Soren and I grapple with him, Sune casts a magnificent bowshot, loosing an arrow into Loki’s eye—apparently, he can shoot anything.

But I lose myself then, when Loki is half-blinded and I’m unable to help. I stare and struggle with my frenzy, because if I let her loose now, it will be the people I attack: my colleagues, not the dragon. I’ll protect him to my death, even knowing he will be all right, and how will that play on television?

Together, Sean and Lydia load an old-fashioned spear hurler and deliver the killing blow.

The massive spear slices into Loki’s chest, and he rears back in the sky, shrieking.

He snarls and twists; he whips his sinuous neck and slashes with his tail.

It is a glorious death scene.

When the dragon crashes onto the prairie, everything trembles and then goes still.

We pant, all of us, staring as quietly and blankly as if we were cameras ourselves.

Loki’s blood runs red and dark from the wound at his heart. Blood seeps through his fangs and dribbles down his long dragon-cheek from his gory eye socket.

I can’t help it; I run to him.

I kneel at his head and touch him, petting and soothing. Tears fall, and I shake them away as I whisper, “I’m sorry, I know I shouldn’t, but…it’s hard to watch.”

No matter that he’ll live again because he ate his apple, no matter that he’s a god and a troublemaker and everything else to me; this must still hurt.

His body shudders. A few scales fall away.

The others walk up behind me, slow and reverent. Sean is speaking to the cameras, some arty Odinist words about monsters and beauty and respect for death and the sacrifices that make us what we are.

I lean against Loki’s neck, grip one of the twisted horns.

The sun beats down and the wind rushes through the prairie grass. Grasshoppers and bugs return to their daily buzzing refrain. There is dust in my nose and tears gumming my eyes, and the dragon inside me sighs in sorrow. “Come back,” I whisper, and I close my eyes so I do not see him die.

TWELVE.

I go home.

Not to the Devil Bears, or to the sprawling Tejas estate of the Lone Star Henrys where I’ve spent holidays for the past two years, nor to my father’s family in Colorada.

I drain my meager savings from my military pay, buy a rusty Kaiser with a decent engine, and drive out to Lakota. My old caravan, the Half-Serpent Trading Company, spent a lot of time skirting around the Black Hills, and it’s these pine trees and clear skies and this kind of dry sunshine I dream of when I dream of home. I camp in the car in the shade of forests, building pinecone fires and counting the stars through a thin layer of pine needles. I drive around, into Cheyenne, where there’s grassland a bit like the prairie Flint Hills but flatter and with less vivid green and fewer flowers, certainly in this part of the summer. But really, it’s the evergreen breath on the breeze that makes me feel clean.

It’s hard to talk to people, not because of them or this tattoo on my cheek, but because of me. I’ve gone a bit quiet inside, despite my burning frenzy, despite the laughter always waiting tucked up against my palate. I buy buttons and snow globes and decorated spoons in the tourist towns and rock shops that line these lonely highways; I leave them in restaurant bathrooms and crusty bars. I build miniature altars at the crossroads from tin cans and paper flowers, and I use ketchup and mustard to write jokes on the sides of buildings, jokes that will wash away in the rain. I mark them sometimes with a little smear that kind of looks like a dragon.

Wandering is the Lokiskin way, but it’s safer with a family, with a caravan. You have to take people with you so that when you die, there will be friends to know the places you’ve never been and lay your ashes there.

I don’t need family or friends for safety anymore, not with this spear tattooed on my cheek and the dragon in my heart. When I die, I guess my body will be burned with other berserkers’ and buried in the Hangadrottin barrow field.

Always in my life, I’ve gone with others. In the caravan with my mom, of course, with my dad, again with my mom, with Soren, with Henry Halson, with the hunters, and with Loki. Now I’m going only with myself.

And my dragon.

And this tiny dry apple of immortality in my back pocket.

Probably the Hangadrottin will be searching for me. Probably the Devil Bears, too, and Henry. I sent him a postcard from the Badlands. I’ll be named wulfheart, which is only a burden or punishment to berserkers who need their band. Being cast out of a brotherhood doesn’t matter if you never were part of one in the first place.

I drive north to where the dragon geyser blows every ninety minutes or so, then into Montania and across its tilting plains, leaving pieces of myself and random kitsch and painted fossils everywhere I stop. I curve up into Canadian troll country, ignoring the warning signs, because most of the trolls are gone now, and anyway, I have smiled at the oldest dragon.

Sometimes I pull the Kaiser off the road and run into the grassland, arms out to catch the wind, and let my frenzy free. She is no danger here, even if I lose myself, even if I black out. I fling myself to the earth and laugh as my dragon blazes; I dig fingers into dirt and grin at thunderclouds. When lightning flashes, so do I.

By the end of the summer, I think I’ll call myself Vider Firedottir.

But I miss having a family.

I’ve nowhere I have to go, which feels rather like having nowhere to go, but I decide that only means I make my own destination.

Laufey the Needle said, You are a moment on the path to the end.

Maybe I’ll be many moments.

THIRTEEN.

He finds me the day after I choose to head south and east again, to find work in a city I’ve never seen, the first one that welcomes me.

I’m eating waffles in a tacky all-night joint outside Minnehapolis where the lights buzz and the booths are curling plastic but the waitress’s heavy-lipstick smile is friendly. She recognizes me, which is what happens when you’re the only lady berserker in thirty years, and gets me a coffee on the house. “Looking forward to the dragon hunt,” she says as she sets the mug down, and a local paper, and recommends the waffles.

“When does it air?” I’m in jeans and a T-shirt, no uniform, and I left my iron collar in the ruins of a troll wall.

“Sunsday,” the waitress says.

As she leaves, I wonder if I can convince somebody to let me promote their goods in return for a nice paycheck, like Sean Hardy. It’s not a terrible idea to think I might inspire some little girls. I flip through the newspaper and eat my syrupy breakfast, relishing the pleasant burn of my frenzy as she wakes up to the heat of the coffee pouring down my throat.

The young man who slides in across the booth looks like my fraternal twin.

I hold my frenzy tight against the surge of excitement.

His glass-green eyes are sparkling, and his smile has a wicked curl. He leans his elbows onto the table so that his shoulder and arm muscles flex, pressing at the cotton of his T-shirt.

I grin.

He reaches out and with one finger drags my half-eaten plate of waffles nearer and rolls one up into a waffle burrito. Keeping his eyes on mine, he casually—too casually—eats it one slow bite at a time. Syrup squeezes out the back end, dripping against his pinkie and down his wrist in a dark, sticky line.

So gross, so ridiculous, so stupidly funny.

I laugh.

It’s like when I tossed eggs into Visby Larue’s face and he ate them anyway. Of course, that was Loki, too.

He swallows the last bite with an exaggerated gulp, then grimaces when the paper napkin he uses to wipe up the syrup sticks and tears. I laugh harder, tiny little snickers through my nose and teeth so I’m not cackling loud enough for everybody in the place to hear.

He dips a napkin into my glass of melting ice water and uses it to wash up.

Then he leans back in the booth and regards me quietly. Eyes unblinking. Mouth pink, like he’s been sucking on cherry candy. Delicate, smooth, pale marble statue. Beautiful. Alive again.

“I have something for you,” I say, suddenly nervous and breathless.

He raises his thin blond eyebrows.

Reaching into my jeans pocket, I pull out the apple. It’s been crushed and sat on for weeks and weeks, but shows no bruising or any more ugly wrinkles than before. I offer it balanced on the tips of my fingers.

Loki Changer stares at it, lips parting in surprise. Finally, he blinks.

“You did die for me once this year,” I whisper.

“It was a worthy trick for the god of tricks,” he says, just as softly.

I place the apple on the worn blue table, slip out of the booth, and dig a few notes from my front pocket to pay. Loki tilts his head back to keep watching me, his hands quiet against the table. I say, “I’m going. But you can go with me, if you feel like it.”

Before he can respond, I turn and go, with purpose but not speed, out to the parking lot, where the Kaiser sprawls rusty and glinting with dew in the bright summer morning. I hope he comes. I want him to.

Then his hands are at my waist and his mouth on my neck.

I put a hand in his hair—thin and white-blond, like mine—and I make a fist. He gasps and then laughs, digging his fingers into my hips. “Why do you keep looking this way?” I ask. “It’s strange and only sexy in a weird kind of way.”

He touches his cheek to my ear, slides his arms all the way around me. “Someone told me once that she thinks I change my shape because I want to be loved—and that is true. I do want to be loved. There’s no other reason to live forever. I change all the time, to be what the person I’m with might like best, searching again and again for the shape that fits their desire.”

I wrinkle my nose. “I don’t desire myself, that’s…very narcissistic and skitty. You were closer when you looked like Visby Larue.”

Loki smiles; I feel the shape of it against my ear. “It occurred to me for the first time in my life that I might try looking like the thing I love, and see if the desire shines through.”

Touched, I shove him away and put my butt to the door of the Kaiser. “That’s outrageous, Loki, and….”

He is beautiful, ridiculous, too, and sexy and sharp, with wild hair and shoes made for walking.

I guess that’s how he sees me.

My dragon-frenzy shrugs her shoulders, impatient. I grab the front of his shirt, jerk him forward, and tell him without words exactly how much we’re the same.

THE END

GLORY’S TEETH

By Tessa Gratton

For all the girls who hunger

I am the wolf who swallows the sun.

In the end, when the final battle begins and all this wretched world is dying, I will finally, finally eat him.

Baldur the Beautiful, god of light and hope. Symmetry learned its work from Baldur’s cheeks and nose. His laugh makes your heart wiggle and your hips jump. He is golden and perfect; shades of honey and vivid life, strong shoulders and a miracle of a bottom lip.

I imagine he will taste like apples.

Some mornings, I wake up and all that makes me rise is the promise of that first snap of skin, fresh gush of sweet blood, delicate crunch of bone.

• • •

Today is Sunsday, and he’s on the beach in Venice, risen with the sun to wander over the sand and flirt with the water. Even this early, everything is wildly colorful here: ruffled awnings and stacked, cube houses and mismatched shop fronts closed up with steel doors and chain curtains.

I can smell him through the sunscreen and sweat, seared concrete and salt-stained wind. Coconuts and coffee and fried food and exhaust. Urine and flaking paint, roasted almonds, shampoo, dusty seagull feathers…kelp and some sweet carcass caught in the foam, a dead ocean creature a mile away at least.

Baldur smells like Old Spice over the crisp god-apple blood. I wonder if his berserker boy is shopping for him these days.

Digging into the tight back pocket of my devastatingly short cutoff jeans, I unwrap a square of pink bubblegum and pop it into my mouth. The first bite is terrible: an explosion of tart cherry flavor and bitter chemicals that sticks to the roof of my mouth and the back of my throat, staining my sinuses, ruining my nose.

The second is bad.

The third, tolerable.

The gum masks ninety percent of the scents on the wind, keeps me from going crazy. The older I get, the better I can smell; the better I can smell, the more I can identify. And there are too many things to learn about a person or place through the layers of terrible smells.

This early, there are few people out, only determined walkers and those who’ve been up all night, wandering home now with shoes in hand. Some early surfers to the right of the pier. In my shorties and green halter, I don’t stand out here like I would in New Amsterdam or Westport City. My ankle-high motorcycle boots are hot, though, so I pull free of them before walking over the cool sand toward the god of light.

Sensing me, he turns.

He’s the first thing the rising sun glints against, before rooftops or the fringed palm trees or even the peaks of those mountains around the curve of the bay. It lights up his hair and makes his eyes into golden marbles, just for a flash. Then he smiles, and it finds his blunt, straight teeth. He’s in a white T-shirt and long swimming trunks and pink flip-flops. “Glory!” he calls, waving like a child.

Hunger purrs in my belly. I chew my gum slow and steady.

“Baldur,” I say, keeping my balance on the shifting white sand. I meet him where the beach darkens from the exiting tide. His feet are covered in foam. Mine force water out of the sand in tiny halos of pressure.

“Good to see you, cousin! It’ll be a glorious day.”

“Will it?” I roll the hunk of gum against the back of my teeth, giving my tongue a task.

He only smiles, because every day is glorious to him. He is the sun; he is hope.

I want to chew off his lips.

“Hungry?” he asks, noticing my look. The way his mouth forms the word, as if it is nothing at all, so sensuous and easy, makes my toes curl in the sand.

Ocean wind tugs at my hair, flinging it across my face, so I can hide the snarl I want to offer back. “I am always hungry,” I say, a half-wolf voice thrumming from the back of my throat.

Baldur claps a hand to my bare shoulder. “Let’s go get breakfast then, cos.”

On the way toward a street that’s all drooping cafes and arched coffee shops and hangover bars covered in last night’s streamers, we pass a filthy boy collapsed under an art installation, breathing but barely, reeking of blood and chemicals. Baldur doesn’t seem to notice.

We pass a car with a broken windshield. Baldur’s sky-mirror eyes are on the blushing dawn.

There is a girl climbing out of a taxi with bloodshot eyes. She clearly spent the night in a hospital, from the smells trapped in her hair.

And here is a streak of old vomit, along the stucco alley. Here, graffiti as bright as blood and miracles, all primary colors and rune signs. Here, a woman jogging in Spandex, her sweat smelling like anxiety. Here, a man snapping into a cell phone. Here, another man, older, with sorrow caught in the stains trailing down his hula shirt.

Baldur sighs brightly, his smile at ease.

He draws their attention. The jogger stumbles out of her pace, but a smile tugs at her mouth. The man on the phone trails off mid-word. The sad old man pats his hand over his heart without realizing it.

I stop on the sidewalk beside one of the smooth white pillars holding up a pink building. The god of light walks on a few paces before slowing down and turning with a comical expression of surprise on his face. “Glory?”

Sometimes I want to eat him because he will taste delicious. Sometimes it’s because he makes the world better for everybody, and the world doesn’t deserve to be better.

“See something superior to food?” he asks, spreading his arms to indicate his beautiful self, a golden eyebrow raised meaningfully. He isn’t stupid; he knows what I want from him. He plays with it occasionally, teasing me, daring me. Trusting me.

It’s that trust that tears. I snarl at him, my teeth elongating, my lips thinned out like a dog’s.

I spin on my toes and run.

• • •

It’s Sunsday, so I go to church.

Hardly anybody in all the United States of Asgard would believe that the Fenris Wolf attends church, and especially that her house of choice is a Risen Sun church.

The building rests at a busy intersection in Westport City, built of orange bricks, with a bell tower missing its bell. Cars rush past and people, too, shoppers and commuters, as a few worshippers head up the shallow steps into the atrium, with its plain walls and hollow organ music.

I slip in into the sanctuary to sit in the last pew, breathing hard and hot, glad for the rush of air conditioning raising goose bumps on my bare arms and thighs.

I left my shoes on Venice Beach.

Two thousand miles away from that ocean, in the center of the country, my toes rub the smooth tiled floor, and I tuck my hands between my knees to keep still.

The sanctuary is a great white clamshell: dais and altar of rich peach-colored wood, the pews fan out in seventeen rows full of people. Men and women and children, chatting softly, looking up the pages for the hymns listed beside the piano and the music stands, where the choir will be. Before the service, this organ music is canned, an old circle song I don’t remember the words to.

The air is clean here, smelling of vacuum bags and perfume and sweat and wood polish and brass and hollow bug legs…and I close my eyes tightly, sucking at the dulled gum in my mouth. It’s useless now. I swallow it.

I keep my eyes shut as the celebration begins with song.

The preacher is Jenny Calsdottir, whose mother was Lokiskin and father was Biblist; she dedicated to Baldur before joining up with the Risen Sun, a branch of the Unity church, to preach about the god in everybody and the healing power of prayer. I know this because it’s all on the church website, and I looked her up after my first visit here, a little over two years ago.

It was after Baldur’s infamous disappearance, after those terrible months of fear and suspicion, after the trolls got sick from the Stone Plague, after my mom got her temper in a huge twist and all I could do to relax was stalk boys who reminded me of Baldur. Stalk them and rag them or eat them, but never both, because I don’t rag where I eat.

One was a copper-haired boxer, called Erisk, with a body like Baldur’s and a smile even prettier, but the light in his heart was temper, not sunshine and hope. I found him in an underground match and followed him home, then followed him to his mechanic’s job, then followed him to his girlfriend’s, then home again and to job again and to his grandma’s house, where I decided I would definitely eat him. Then it was Sunsday and I followed him here, where he sang and prayed and stayed after to help move an ancient sofa out of the church basement using those bulging muscles.

Four hours later, I broke into his van and waited, wolflike and bristled and starving, and when he slid open the door, I growled and bit into his neck.

He tasted like beer and power and plastic mats, like hair gel and singing and light. I ate every part of him, no evidence left, nothing for the militia to use, nothing to give his girlfriend or grandma closure. His bones were brittle and hard, his heart hot, his flesh sweet. His copper hair was bright like Baldur’s, his blue eyes shone until I swallowed them.

And the next week, I went back to his church.

I sat among the congregants as Jenny Calsdottir spoke of the power of prayer. She said it does not change your circumstances and it does not change the world; it changes you. I wondered if she would taste good, and after the service, I went into the church basement, where more than half the worshippers had come to eat donuts and drink coffee and lemonade, to chat and laugh and let their kids rush around in chaos, as long as they stayed away from the food tables as they ran.

It smelled like sugar and hope. It was almost exactly like Baldur’s apple-blood scent.

I stared and felt hungry, and there was Jenny, brown curls laced with silver, quiet pink gloss on her mouth, eyes warm, and a donut with cherry sprinkles in her hand. She offered it to me and asked my name, if I was new, if I was hungry.

I said I was always hungry, and she told me maybe she could do something about that.

• • •

Everything is a test of my self-control.

Sunsdays, I go to church with three hundred people who think I’m just a girl with a spiritual void.

Moonsdays, I find a Friggan temple or a food bank or emergency clinic, because it is the Day of Charity in Frig’s honor. I stamp prayer cards or ladle soup or answer phones just steps away from spilled blood, because I can. I can.

Tyrsdays, I look up on the interweave what city the god of justice finds himself in for dispensing wisdom and law that week. I go there, too, and practice staying away from him—practice knowing exactly where he is but never turning my bike up that street, never shoving through lawspeakers and tyrs and plaintiffs and defendants and professional holmcourt advocates to get to Tyr the Just, with his silver hand.

Odinsdays are the worst: a day for meditation and sacrifice, and I cannot remain still inside a Death Hall or abide the piercing death incense, mint and frankincense and sandalwood and citrus to cut the stink of rot. I’d rather have the rot. And when I think of Odin Alfather, I remember the pain of his boot in my ribs; I remember the disdain of his tongue. On these days, I run and do not stop running, no matter the pinch of my lungs or the ache in my feet. I run as a girl, I run as a wolf, or I kick my motorcycle into gear and let its growl fill my ears and shake my bones.

Thorsdays, I let myself prowl. The Day of Strength is a day I challenge others, not myself, and though the Thunderer’s churches are built of massive rocks with deep foundations, they are strong because his people are strong. Their voices ring out together; their bonds are forged in lightning. The Thunderers do not weaken, because to weaken is to stop growing. To weaken is to betray their god. I prowl among them, flirting with husbands and tempting children, whispering into wives’ ears, any little thing to drive them apart. If they go with me or believe me, I sneer and snap and show them how disloyal, how weak, how unworthy of Thor’s love they are. If they do not, I remember their names. I carve them into mountain granite with my claws.

Freyasday is a day for dancing, for wild, ecstatic dancing where the seethkonas ply their trade. These women prophets are in every city—some talented and able to dance along the threads of Fate, some only drifters in the dance. Some create elaborate rituals, wear catskin gloves, and eat the hearts of birds in a cathedral of trees and sky, lose themselves in Fate as they sing out to Freya the Witch and all their mothers and grandmothers. Others close their eyes inside the walls of a tiny apartment and toss runes. I prefer the seethers who use drums, who welcome the crowd to dance along to the drumbeat and the rhythm of the nine worlds. Dancing like that, blistered and hot and lost, is almost like chewing on Baldur’s heart.

Freyrsday is the Day of Satisfaction, and I eat well. These celebrations are rich and full of history, of hands clapping and raised voices. Preachers talking of the earth and love, of fertile imaginations and fertile bodies, of responsibility and good works and family; all as if it is fun, is delightful, is everything a body could need in this life. They preach under tents, they preach in million-dollar, state-of-the-art temples. They preach on television and in the halls of Congress.

But on Sunsday, I am never full.

• • •

To be fair, because I answer to the god of justice, I have tried everything under the triple heavens to fill my craving. Sex, drugs, dancing, liquor, racing, murder, women, orgies, high magic, and pain. If it can be done with hands or mouths, I’ve tried it, with my own hands and with others’.

Not with children, though, or my Mother Loki would destroy me.

I was a monster in Frankland two hundred years ago. In Deutschland, I was the Big Bad Wolf. I was hell hounds and black dogs, and I bathed in the blood of virgins. Here in the United States of Asgard, I am the scourge of cattle, now that the bison are gone, and I’ve been told my appetites hold feminism back. I say I’ll eat anyone who can prove it.

It’s harder in this age of camera phones and twenty-four-hour media access. Used to be I could terrorize a village for months, and the news spread only to the local king or chieftain. A hundred miles away, nobody knew I’d been on the prowl. Now I have to watch myself and try not to let them catch me on any camera, not connect this girl’s face with the monstrous wolf Fenris, who crouches at Tyr’s side during Bright Home celebrations. It’s happened, of course. If you look, you can find Glory Lokisdottir in grainy interweave videos, or the blur of my motorcycle. You can find images of my mouth painted like wine or purple hellebore, bold and livid, or my eyes darkened with thick liquid lines, smeared green and glittery like a mask.

Without the makeup, I am nearly invisible.

• • •

Today Jenny Calsdottir speaks of compassion in the face of anger, forgiveness and communication in the face of hatred. It’s a lesson needed these days in New Asgard, where Odinists and Freyans split Congress in two with nary a friendly word between them, and their stringent, narrow messages are repeated again and again by pundits and in headlines. Jenny tells us it is the angry few at either end of the spectrum who perpetuate the myth that we are a people divided, that the truth is most citizens wish for strength and loyalty and love to bring us all together. Perhaps she is right. She says we must see the good in others, seek the truth of god in our brothers and sisters, even if it is hard—no, especially if it is hard. That is our mission. We pray to bring out the god in ourselves, and we reach out to find it in others.

I think, I know where Baldur’s godhood resides, and I want to eat it.

I stand up and stalk out into the atrium, around to the little bathroom beside the stairs. Straight-arming my way in, I splash my face with cold water. The shock cools my temper and washes away the disgusting odor of urine and mold and bleach. It’s not even a dirty bathroom. But I prefer the great outdoors for such ablutions.

Padding down to the basement, with its yellowing tiles and old metal chairs and pressed-wood tables, water-stained ceiling and paneled walls, I aim for the kitchen, where Renee Anning is arranging donuts on long plastic trays. Her thin fingers are encased in latex gloves, her mouth covered by a breathing mask, her twisted hair in a net. She still smells like stomach acid and anti-bacterial wash, and I know she’s dying. I remember when most people died before they were even forty. Silently, I pull gloves from the cardboard dispenser and help her. She smiles at me and doesn’t notice my bare feet.

Singing and the echo of keyboard and tambourine sink down from the sanctuary. I hum along, and Renee joins me. I want to say something about death and illness, about gnawing pain, but women these days are not as inured to the gruesome aspects of death as they used to be. That new Valkyrie is right about one thing: New Asgard has forgotten the ugliness of the world; its people build walls and stories up around it and pretend they’ve evolved.

Baldur helps them do it.

I tear a donut to pieces and stuff it in my mouth to hide the evidence.

Disliking having to hide my strength by taking just one tray at a time, I scowl as I lay out the tables. Renee pours herself some burnt coffee in a Styrofoam cup and brings me another. I take it, grateful to have the harshness to hold under my nose. I sip, letting the coffee scorch my tongue and terrorize my olfactory nerves, if nerves are what I have.

I sit on an orange plastic chair and cross my legs at the knee, breathing deep of the coffee smell, trying to be calm, to not drag my anger at Baldur, my hunger, into this basement. Kids rush past, parents just behind, and the hall fills with high chatter as everybody grabs donuts and coffee and lemonade. They’re smiling, mostly, shoulders relaxed, women clicking toward the tables in decent heels, men unbuttoning suit jackets and loosening ties. Here I sit in a skimpy halter and jeans that show off the cup of my ass.

Jenny touches my bare shoulder. “Glory,” she says.

I use my real name because it’s common enough. I tilt my head and know my hair brushes her wrist. Her smile is small but genuine, and worry clouds her brown eyes. Because of the coffee, I only get a whiff of deodorant-blocked sweat and delicate jasmine perfume. “Hi,” I say, showing all my teeth in a smile.

“What’s wrong?” She slides into a crouch, knees demurely together under her violet striped dress.

“Wrong?”

“You don’t have any shoes.”

I grimace. “I left them when I ran away from….” I shrug.

She pats my hand and uses me as leverage to push up.

Jenny is in her forties, married, with three kids. She preaches full-time and has published two books about prayer and modern life. I read one of them and ate the other. Hanging from a delicate chain on her neck is a tiny gold crucifix with that dying god Christ and, behind it, a sun charm for Baldur: the Risen Son, the Risen Sun—many a Biblist’s favorite pun. I like it, too. I like it because I like anything that makes the world bigger instead of smaller, and that’s what Jenny preaches.

But today, bigger only feels emptier. I think about Baldur ignoring—no, worse than ignoring, not even recognizing—the suffering around him, or the shadows. The sun is in his eyes, and so it is all he sees. “I saw Baldur,” I say abruptly.

Jenny pauses. “You saw Baldur?”

Heads swing toward us, donuts half chewed, coffee unswallowed. A little girl in a flouncy dress skids to a stop in front of me. “Baldur!”

Working my jaw, I nod.

“What was he like?” It’s Jenny, calm and curious, voicing the question in everybody’s eyes.

“Just as you expect. Beautiful. Friendly.” I shrug and fling up my arms exactly as a teenager who’s caught in a trap by her parents might.

They wait expectantly.

I lean forward. My thighs stick to the plastic chair, and the waistband of my shorts pinches my bellybutton. I’m sure anyone who wishes to is filing the shape of my tits away for private time. “The sun made him obvious,” I say. “It loves him as much as he loves its warmth. As he passed, people stared, smiled, felt better about their lives.”

It’s working here, too, even once removed. They smile around me, imagining him as they’ve seen him on TV but right before them. One or two even touch their hearts, like the old man on the boardwalk.

I dump my coffee in the trash and head for the door, performance over, but the clicking of Jenny’s heels gives me pause. I smell dead mice behind the disused heating vent next to my bare feet. Leaning there, I turn to her. She touches the small of my back.

“Why did seeing him upset you?”

Her breath smells like old toothpaste and lemonade, a better addition to her perfume and sweat than sour coffee would have been. She thinks I’m a Lokiskin orphan, raised in a city home with others like me, parentless, searching, not quite a woman. It’s not unusual for girls with snake tattoos to end up with the Sun.

“He didn’t see the shadows.”

The preacher tilts her head. “He focuses on what’s bright.”

I nod. “If you don’t shine, he won’t see you. He is not a seeker or a teacher, like you say he is, like your dying god. He doesn’t want to lift you up—us up. He doesn’t care if we evolve into better women and men. He doesn’t want to save us or change us.”

“We have to save and change ourselves, Glory,” Jenny says calmly.

I laugh. It is a deep laugh, deep as my sister’s gullet.

Her smile is patient. “It is possible to change, though I can hear you don’t believe that yet.”

“Some things don’t change, Jenny.”

“Like the gods?”

“Perfect example.”

“They don’t have to change in order to mean something to us, or to help us. Remember what I told you when you first came here? That we pray to change ourselves, not our circumstances. So it is with the gods. They can hear us if they choose to, but we only need to hear ourselves.”

The ideas long to comfort, but I’m one of those unchanging things. My hunger will never diminish until I devour the sun. Until the worlds end and we are reborn—if we’re reborn. “Baldur could do much to change our circumstances,” I push.

“But if he fixed our problems for us, we would not learn.”

“What if they’re problems he created, or the other gods?” I lean nearer to her. “What of the divisions you mentioned today, in Congress? A word or two one way or another from the Alfather or Freyr the Satisfied would go a long way.”

Jenny shakes her head. “I disagree. We know what Odin or Freyr would want, if we think about it honestly enough. They are what they are and always have been. This is about us deciding for ourselves, as a people, how to move forward. Some will win, some will lose; some will not care, some will care too much. Each of us, individually, must find clarity and truth and then act upon it. We must reach out and help our fellows find their own truths, whether they align with ours or not.”

“You give humanity too much credit,” I say bitterly. I have seen it. I have been there for the rise and fall of empires. The falls begin this way, usually: factions among the people, divisions among the leaders, crowding and intolerance and violence.

This is how the gods rose, too, to the top of the nine worlds. But there are so few of them left now, it’s harder to start wars.

“I give you credit,” she says. “And if I give it to one, I give it to all.”

My hostility crumbles under the beam of her sincerity.

If I ate her, would any of this generous spirit sink into my blood? “You remind me of him,” I mutter.

Her unplucked eyebrows lift. “Him?”

“Baldur.”

The smile that lights up her face makes her seem even more like the god of luminosity. I honestly cannot remember ever feeling so radiant myself. I cannot give off light, because I am a sucking, starving black hole. I sniff long and deep: I smell her flesh, the dead skin on her scalp, the hairspray holding her soft waves behind her ears, the nail polish remover still clinging to her cuticles, the chemicals of her lip gloss, the turning silver in her ears, flecks of dry blood, hormones sliding out of her like heady perfume. I want it all. My lips part, my tongue presses against my teeth.

Jenny Calsdottir’s dark eyes flicker, and she falters back a step.

Snapping my mouth and my eyes shut, I press my fingers to my eyes. “I’m sorry,” I whisper, harsh and wolflike.

I don’t wait for forgiveness or any response. I go out into the sticky afternoon, thick with people and traffic and humidity, thick with smells, all of them unnatural, manmade, chemical and electronic and plastic and loud. Hot oil and alcohol, yeast rot and mold. They burn through the air, coating the sweet late-summer-cloying-flowers smell, destroying the first curling-brown scent of autumn.

I walk. I stride long and hard, bare feet slapping the concrete. My glare drives any company away and I continue on, through the daylight, past the avenues and sparkling city fountains, past condos and libraries and an asphalt university. Past hospitals and militia stations, car dealers and movie theaters and broken-windowed elementary schools. I smell gunpowder and sweat and moldy siding. I smell charcoal and dead fish and pigeons. I smell rats and bats; I smell dog skit and dogs, piss and sewage and stagnant water. That is the city to me: layers of smells driving me on and through. It used to be I could get through a city, one side to the other, in minutes. Now there are rings of metropolis surrounded by lesser city and suburbs and sprawling neighborhoods like rabbit warrens but smelling worse.

I land on a street where the buildings lean toward one another, where cars go slower on shiny rims, and my glare attracts one in every seven people I pass. They see me, and gasp or drop open mouths, and once or twice, a man follows me a few paces before his senses get the better of him.

This place is mere miles from the church, but it might as well be a lower world.

I wind along brick streets through the bluffs to the river and the warehouses slick with evening and abandonment. Shattered windows, caved-in roofs, death soaked in from when men packed pigs here, from when they drove cattle through for slaughter, for passage up the river.

There are people here, too, the kind who make me hungrier because they are hungry and let it show. Near the church, near the shiny metal skyscrapers, out near the honeycomb mansions, people are starving, too, but they hide it behind masks; they hide it behind convertibles and big-box stores. They hunger and imagine if they ignore it, the hunger will go away. Fashion and prettier friends and status and designer drugs will help them step over the gaping hole. But here where there is less to covet, less to long for, simply less, you can’t hide the hunger, and it burns in the eyes; it shows in the cheekbones and the color of your gums. It shows in your reaching fingers and addictions.

The sun slides away, sick and yellow, and I hunt.

I find bangers and thieves, flower girls and runners and people just trying to survive. I find boys hunkered down in shelters made by bridge eater trolls, built of old iron and broken cross beams. I find twisting graffiti of the New World Tree and the Norns who keep your Fate. I find runesign and broken swing sets and sunken apartments where lights begin to flicker on and shadows move inside as families gather for scant dinners, for yelling and probably cheating, a few of them for love.

And there I find it: a glowing blue arrow.

My hunger is huge, and I lean in against the rough brick wall, fingers on elaborate gang messages I don’t understand, and lick the blue paint. It is new. It smells fresh and tastes like acid.

Rave.

No matter the time, no matter the social divisions, there are always parties like these. The rich and the poor have found ways, together or separate, for as long as I remember. As long as there have been drums and drugs and bodies to touch.

Now my smile is a smile of love: I adore humanity for this.

The raves are one thing this modern world does better, for now we have gel lights and surround-sound, strobes and DJs and every kind of liquor under the sun. We have body paint and glitter and leather straps.

I could go home for some of that paint, for a dress made of sequins and dreams, but it won’t matter in the end. What matters is the sweat and the dancing.

• • •

The rave is in the basement of an old brick building, a cannery with the bones of old machines and shredded conveyer belts, swathed in darkness and flashing shadows. You only have to follow the acid blue arrow, around the side, through a narrow metal door, down rough concrete steps. Here are men with wicked or senseless or panting eyes and women to match, the gut-aching throb of bass vibrating the rusty metal banister. My bare feet crush against crumbles of rubble and brick, shuffle through glass and metal shavings, shed hair, dropped hairpins and buttons, through sticky spilled Vodka Cranberries and spit and gum.

I smell it all, and my toes stick and slide. Were I other than the Fenris Wolf, it would be intolerable.

But the pounding music, the vibration of my hair follicles and thrumming of my blood, the wild layers of filth and frenzy, laughter and sighs and ragging moans, make the danger come alive and burn.

They don’t card me or ask for a cover; they only back out of my way.

I dive in like the people are warm ocean waves and I want to drown.

This is what the party is like: green and purple spotlights, glow sticks and splashed liquor, cheap beer, cheaper boys, girls in skirts and a stripe of a top, neon hair, shoving and screaming and skull-filling music.

If only it would fill my stomach.

But it’s close.

I throw out my hands and whip my head, I jump and fling myself. I do not drink; I do not put any dissolving pills under my tongue or snort powder into my nostrils. I only take flesh in my hands: hips and shoulders, necks and fingers. I howl and laugh, I snarl, I snap, I put my mouth to other mouths and taste the depths of tipsy and the edges of trashed.

I spin, I climb, I am a sucking black hole drawing light and pulsing music and the girls and boys and darlings-in-between to my center.

They reach for me, groping and clinging, clammy fingers and sweaty palms, teeth and tongues and hips and arms. They can have a piece, any one of them, a taste, a touch, a kiss, a strand of hair.

It is like being worshipped, like the sun on Baldur’s mouth, perhaps. But this is hunger.

Living, breathing, screaming, sweating hunger.

All that is missing is that sun.

The taste of his heart.

The hot, hot, decadent, syrupy blood and muscle. It is the sun, my sun, and I need it.

I am pulled and I go with them, some girls and a boy or two, stealing me, taking me up and over to a sofa, soft as velvet and smelling of honey soda and sweat and sex stains. They have their mouths and hands on me; they could eat me, and I could let them.

My hunger is silver, painful steel.

I hear it then: No, no, stop. A muffled cry, the slap of painful connection.

Behind that, I hear choking. I smell bile and the tang of thin blood, of potato spirits and harsh chemical burning. Overdose, alcohol poisoning, roofies and rape.

Must they ruin everything?

Yes, yes, because that is the world! What is that poem…Death is the mother of beauty.

I fall still, a quiet, motionless point amid this writhing, spinning, dancing, flashing snake of humans. The green and purple lights burst and fade, in and out, and my world narrows, muffled and throbbing.

What if the way is to just do it?

What if instead of watching this world fall, I make it fall? I live in fear of the beginning of the end. I have this cursed collar keeping me small, because the gods fear it, too. They fear the prophecies of the Volva; they fear their final deaths. It is this fear that holds us stagnant, that keeps us from changing. We cannot change as women and men do, because we are afraid to die.

Maybe the only way to throw off that fear is to stop trying.

Slowly, I push the lovers away, forcing back their mouths and hands. I stand up from the dropping sofa and push through the crowd. My ears ring with dull, low tones. My skin vibrates.

Up and out of the basement rave I go.

• • •

If I swallow the sun, if I eat Baldur, it will set off the end of the world. Odin Alfather will face me, and I will eat him, too. I will finally crush his bones, tear him apart for hurting me and hating me. The prophecy says that when I turn from his broken corpse, gorged on his flesh and the flesh of the sun, another son of Odin, named Vidar, will grasp my jaws and, in a fit of berserker frenzy, rend me in two. Thor Thunderer will kill my sister, the World Snake, but die of the wounds she lays upon him. Freyr the Satisfied will be slain by his own lost sword.

Many of the gods are destined to die. The seas will rise. Mountains will crumble. The great horn will blow.

And it begins when the wolf swallows the sun.

• • •

Where I left my shoes on Venice Beach there is a party now, too. A nighttime, starlit bonfire party, with guitars and bottles of mead, bathing suits and swimming beneath the moon.

I smell him, Baldur the Beautiful, as easily as I did at dawn. Old Spice and apples.

Pressing through the laughing, mildly drunken crowd, I focus on him, on the glint of his hair in the firelight. I only need to stand before him, taste him. Ask him why I should keep hold of my gnawing hunger.

My toes sink in the cool sand. The wind is warm and salty, refreshing. Smoke and ancient ocean depths in the air, coiled through seaweed and sweet leaf and beer foam. Bad breath and bodily fluids. Scraggly grass and bougainvillea. Barbeque. My stomach growls. I growl, too.

“Glory.”

A young man steps in my path, pushing through the crowd to do so. The fire is behind him, making him a dark silhouette, but it’s one I know well: offensively wide shoulders, the curve of muscles down his bare arms and up his neck, square head, shaved black hair; lit from behind, it looks like a narrow halo.

Soren Bearstar, Baldur’s berserker friend.

I smile slow and wide and lean in to drag my fingers against his hard chest. He is hot and smells like a fever, as always. “Soren,” I say.

He curls strong hands around my wrists to stop the progress of my touch. “I don’t like the look in your eyes.”

I lick my lip and drag my teeth against it, too. Under my palms, his heart beats hard and ever so much faster.

“You’re covered with glitter,” he says, his frown shifting the shadows on his face.

“Want some?” I purr, stepping nearer. He steps back, and we begin an inexorable march toward the surf.

I slide my entire body against his, because I can; he is strong, but I am a monster. “Let me have you instead,” I whisper.

Soren – young, solid, beautifully innocent Soren – gasps when I scratch his jaw, when I lick at his rough chin. “Instead—of—what?” he says.

Laughing, I throw my arms around his neck and arch my back. I laugh with my head fallen, hair tumbling curls and glitter away; I use my easy strength to pull up against him, wrapping my legs around his waist.

He stands with his arms out, like a scarecrow. I can see the whites of his eyes all around the dark brown iris, under soft black lashes. He is such a rich, delicious specimen. Burning and slick from the fever in his heart. Some berserkers spurn him for being born to a dark mother, born with her Savaiian features and coloring, but they are fools. Nothing is lessened by his smooth, wide nose or full bow lips, his upturned eyes or heavy brow. But men will see what they hate before anything else, especially men belonging to the Alfather.

Overhead, the stars glimmer—what we can see of them through the haze of Los Angeles light pollution. I tighten my thighs, and Soren glares at me. I grip the back of his head, nails sharp on his scalp and neck. My teeth feel longer; I ache against him, starving, empty, and I remember I saved him once, in a faraway Cheyenne kingstate forest. He was seventeen and alone, burnt out from his very first frenzy, the first time his berserking fever exploded inside him and he lost himself, he lost everything. He was so afraid of the consequences of his frenzy, and terrified for Baldur, that the god of light would get himself killed before he’d eaten that year’s apple of immortality.

But mostly, he was afraid of himself.

I fed him and told him a story.

I made him feel better, insisting he could control himself if he wanted to, because I do.

Did.

These oily, shining scars on my wrists and around my throat are the remnants of chains the gods of Asgard put on me to keep me from growing as large as the world, so large that the sun would be only a snack, a morsel, a quick snap of teeth and gone.

I’m not afraid of myself. I’m only tired. I’m tired of being hungry, of holding it in. I’m tired of watching women and men do evil, of not interfering, of seeing the same cycles over and over again. Like pushing Soren out of their berserker club for not being a pale Asgardian! It is the same! I’m tired of hope, of the hopeful; I’m tired of it being a chore to see the good, to find miracles. It’s all there if you look, but looking takes so much effort. Other gods, other godlings, can retire for years, can withdraw and live apart, can travel or sleep or do anything they wish. But I cannot rid myself of this cursed hunger.

“Glory, are you crying?” Soren’s voice is hushed with wonder.

I am.

My arms curl around his hot neck, and he brings his own around my back, hugging me.

Just a hug.

Kind and firm, he relaxes under me, even though my legs still wrap his waist, even though I’m pressed against him as hard as I can be.

With a little sigh, he even touches his jaw to my hair and rubs tentatively, encouragingly.

Tears fall from my eyes, smearing glitter and liner, I’m sure, staining his skin like sparkling blood. I hold on. I let myself cry, and Soren Bearstar, the gentle ragger, walks graceful and strong into the ocean with me. He crouches smoothly, and the cold water rushes around his knees, then his thighs, and splashes the bare small of my back. I gasp and shudder. He kneels with me, and I keep holding on, keep crying, gut-wrenching sobs as loud as my hunger.

He pets the hair wrapping around my back and shoulders, holding me like a babe as the salty foam crusts my shorts, soaks his T-shirt, washes cold between our chests. He asks no questions, offers no answers or stories or senseless spoken compassion.

The ocean slicks and sucks at us, giving and taking, giving and taking.

Finally, Soren leans away, shoulders hunched, to make eye contact while I remain on his lap. Moonlight and citylight and firelight toy with one another in his eyes. His lashes flutter, his brow falls low with concern. But still, he says nothing, only waits.

I swallow and sniff. Here, all I smell is the wild ocean, the salt and rotting wet fishtails, seaweed and musty gull feathers and Soren—as good at blocking my nose as poisonous pink bubblegum or burned, sour coffee.

“I’m so hungry,” I whisper.

A smile curls the corner of his very full mouth. Before I can speak, he lifts us, smooth and sure, out of the water, dripping, splashing, and carries me to the barbeque pit, where I am overwhelmed by fire, smoke, pig fat, spices, and meat. He clears everyone out and passes a hand through the air like a game-show host. “All for you now,” he says.

And I eat, bones and everything.

• • •

This is how they say it happened:

Because of Loki’s crimes against Odin, I was taken from him when I was born and brought to Asgard. There, I was raised among the gods. But I grew and grew in size and wolfish beauty, gifts from my monster father. I gained cunning and some little magic, too: gifts from Loki, who bore me as a mother bears a daughter, for months inside her womb. I ate and ate and ate, until the gods recalled the prophecy that I would be strong enough one day to swallow the sun and begin the end of the world. So they decided to chain me down.

With a ribbon woven from six impossible things, they caught me, and the only god brave enough to tie off the knot was Tyr. He tightened it around my neck, and I snapped my jaws over his wrist. I was a wild beast, not to be trusted for all the long, terrible weave of Fate.

• • •

This is the truer story I told Soren Bearstar years ago:

It was my mother, Loki, the boy-god everyone loved and hated in equal measure, who carried me over the Rainbow Bridge to Asgard, who put me in the gods’ bower, for he loved me and wished me with him. They raised me on the mountain with kindness, though most feared the sharp fangs pushing out where my baby teeth had been. Only Tyr the Just brought me meat instead of fruit, and when I was my wolf-self, starving and running wild, only he brought me flowers instead of whips. He sang songs to help me learn control, taught me the language of peace and fairness.

It was my own fault they remembered the prophecy that I would swallow the sun. I ate a feast’s worth of sacrificial horses and pigs. I’d done it because they were meant for Freyr; he kicked me as often as his brother the Alfather did, but Freyr called me Loki’s Bitch instead of my name. I’d eaten his feast for revenge, but all I accomplished was to remind the gods of my never-ending hunger.

They dragged to the Shining Hall, where Odin and his brothers sat waiting. The gods of Asgard encircled me, made me gag on the sour and sweet and bitter smell of their apple-blood.

We shall subdue her, Odin said.

With the sound of a cat’s food, said Freyr.

The beard of a woman, added his twin sister, Freya.

The roots of a mountain, Thor said.

With a bear’s cowardice, said my mother’s god-wife, Sigyn.

With a fish’s breath, whispered Heimdall.

And the spit of a bird to bind it all, Odin himself finished. These impossible things shall keep the impossible at bay.

“Wait.” Tyr spoke. He stood before me, sword at his hip, fur mantle making him even larger, his stance balanced and sturdy. He is one of the eldest gods, and if he has not the sharp wit of Odin, the loudness of Thor, or the lushness of Freyr, it is not because he isn’t wise or strong or beautiful. “This wolf-girl is one of us,” he said. “A child of Asgard. Shall we treat her so poorly and judge her on actions she has not yet taken? Where is the justice in such a thing?”

I held my head high, hunger gnawing inside me, for bones to crunch or for one of his smiles. I growled.

Show us, brother, Odin said. Prove that she can control herself. That she can resist the sun-size need.

No, no, I thought, knowing I could not. But Tyr walked to me calmly and I backed away, body ripping and cracking between wolf and girl and wolf and girl, for he was not safe from me. He was not safe! He smelled like apples but also of need and kindness, warm fur and flowers and sweet honey sweat, dust and iron and leather. I was so hungry, I became the wolf completely, bones breaking, teeth reshaped. My tongue could not form the language he’d taught me.

Tyr’s face was calm. He did not tremble as he put out his hand, though I did, back bowed. “She will not attack,” he called to them. “My word shall bind her.” And then, only to me, his voice tender and trusting, “My flesh shall bind her.”

I opened my mouth to howl, and he slipped his fingers past my fangs, sliding them graciously along my tongue. I held my jaw open, shaking in my bones, and his apple smell coated my mouth, sank down my throat and into my gullet, into my hunger itself. It was all I knew, all I needed in the nine worlds, in the universe of stars.

I bit down.

The gods cried out in fury and horror as I drank Tyr’s blood and crunched the delicate bones of his hand. He stumbled back, lips white, bleeding wrist spilling apple-sweet blood onto the floor of Odin’s Shining Hall.

I swallowed his hand.

Relief and something I had never known—satisfaction—made me lie down, spreading my wolf-self out, licking lazily at the bloody droplets that stained the space between my mouth and his body.

It was easy then for them to hold me down, to wrap the impossible ribbons around my neck and paws.

When I am a wolf, the ribbons glint silver and white, braided and spun: a collar and shackles. When I am a girl, they fade into scars that glimmer in the same way: a necklace and bracelets of injury. The scars are easy to hide with jewels and scarves and bangles, though usually I don’t bother.

Some days, when the sun is high and I am starving, when chasing men who remind me of Baldur is not enough, I find Tyr, in Miami or Chicagland or Reno or Bostown. I find him and I kiss him.

I told Soren Bearstar that those kisses are all that keeps the sun in the sky.

• • •

I wake up on the sand, covered with a beach towel painted with a vibrant Disney Viker in golds and greens and purples. Soren is there, and before I leave, he catches my hand and says, “If you need a place, a safe place, to rest or hold onto yourself, you should go to the orchard.”

It’s a kind thought, a generous one, for I know he would rather not share Idun the Young with anyone, god or girl or man. I smile, not my usual wicked, tempting, flirting grin but one I hope shows him I actually care, I appreciate his thought and friendship. I have not had many friends in my long life, because the gods fear me and I avoid human connections. But Soren seems neither, exactly, bridging the gap as he bridged the chasm between Baldur’s light and berserking fever.

“I think I’ll go to Tyr,” I say quietly, failing to layer my tone with innuendo.

Soren nods as if it’s as much as he expected.

• • •

Tyr the Just lives in Miami.

Maybe because it’s tropical and colorful and he was born in a land of ice and weak sunlight. Though he travels every Tyrsday and often returns to his ancient home in Scandia, he can usually be found reading by his pool or tending his garden of eye-peeling rainbow flowers.

His house is a five-bedroom piece of modern art: glass walls and broad balconies, white stucco cubes stacked on cubes, with expansive grounds that include palm trees and fuchsia-flowering vines, rolling lawn and a patio with an aquamarine pool, all sloping toward his private dock and sleek, long-nosed yacht.

It’s late in the morning when I arrive, barefoot still, in my stained jean shorts and drooping green halter. My hair is crunchy and smells like dancing and sand and salt. Barbeque sauce under my fingernails. I leave sticky prints on his gate keypad, one of six who know the code, and the elegant white gate swings silently open, welcoming me into Tyr’s clean paradise. I walk quietly up the path, a mosaic of glass and mother-of-pearl. The wind smells like ocean, sunscreen, and the perfume of flowers, an undertone of oil and trimmed grass. Simple, inoffensive.

By the time I reach the wide front door, he’s pulling it open for me.

Built like a fortress wall, Tyr is all squares and rectangles, brick and mortar. Sea- and sun-scoured skin, like the salt-crusted shores of Old Asgard, blue eyes the color of tears and topaz, hair like beards of wheat, sometimes shorn to his skull, sometimes hanging in waves to his shoulders. His expression always rests in a gentle frown; when he chooses to smile, you’ll see only the slightest uptick in the corners, a shine in his eyes, and long crow’s feet above his cheeks. He leaves his jaw rough, neither bearded nor shaven, as if one or the other would promote bias among his followers.

And where he once had a right hand of skin and delicious bones, he now has a hand of silver and gold, elf-made, elegant and immobile and wedded to his flesh halfway up his forearm.

This morning, he’s got on slouching pajama pants and a thin royal blue robe hanging off his shoulders, untied, displaying a thick line of chest, well-muscled and brushed with soft golden hair. Two mugs of steaming chicory coffee in his flesh hand. Silently, he offers me one; I gratefully accept and step into the cool entryway, pink tiles cold on my bare feet. The wide-open space and floor-to-ceiling windows create the feel of a peaceful, sunlit cavern.

Tyr turns and heads through the dining room into his kitchen, which is all islands and warm wood and mosaic countertops. His blue robe flutters at his knees. He’s barefoot, too.

I follow, breathing in the chocolaty-mud smell of the chicory. It blends with the atmosphere of his home, destroying my ability to smell other people or recent meals. Tyr keeps it clean, doing all his own housework. He pauses and glances over his shoulder. “Drink that quickly and go shower. I’ll make food and more coffee.”

His voice is rich and tired-sounding. I wonder if he’s had company, or been traveling. It’s a wondrous treat not to know, thanks to the chicory smell in my nose. I don’t talk, only down the hot drink, letting it scald a little, plant a burn in my always-starving stomach. I set the mug on a counter a little too hard, though nothing chips, and obey him.

One of the five bedrooms here is mine and mine alone: up on the second floor, with a low king bed, a balcony overlooking the bay and downtown Miami in the distance. It’s sparsely furnished in soothing creams and mint and sea-foam greens, with hardwood floors—because carpets and rugs hold scents—and hypoallergenic sheets and pillows. A bureau of day clothes and a closet of fancier clothes as well as shoes. A small bathroom in porcelain and silver and dark blue tiles. I drop my clothes on the floor and take the hottest shower I can, tasting the salt left in the brackish water Laflorida kingstate treats for human use.

After scrubbing my hair with honey- and chemical-smelling soap and scraping clean my body, I put on an emerald bikini and complementary sarong. I stretch up onto my toes, fingers reaching toward the ceiling, and jut out my empty belly.

There’s ham frying downstairs, and he’s roasting some apples, too. I smell toast and mustard-seed cheese, capers and smoked salmon and…mango jalapeño chutney.

I kneel to dig under the bed for my plastic bin of nail polish, choose three shades of green, and take the little bottles downstairs with me to retouch my toes. Tyr stands at his counter cutting into a cantaloupe.

He’s lit a few unscented beeswax candles, the kind he knows I like, with their balmy old smell and light smoke. He makes them himself these days. There’s a quiet radio show playing from a box atop the refrigerator, just the murmur of news. I set my polish on the round table in the breakfast nook and join him, leaning across the counter to pluck a piece of salmon. He flicks his clear blue eyes at me, cheeks twitching in nearly a smile, just the promise of one.

I swallow the fish, then lick my chops loudly for him, putting all my weight on my forearms to swing my heels up in the back playfully. “I’m clean now,” I say.

Tyr nods and slides the halved cantaloupe toward me with his gold and silver hand, and then the butcher knife. He goes to flip the ham, and I take up the task of cutting fruit. We work in silence except for the murmur of the radio, the pop of fat, the schick of the knife, and my purring stomach.

His metal hand does him little good, other than as a placeholder or eye-catcher. The fingers move slowly, and the wrist barely bends. They might have done better, the elf queens, but Tyr did not wish it. The hand is a reminder, he says, of hunger and love.

I don’t like to hear him say those words, either of them. Neither of them.

We spread our lunch feast on one of the tables on the patio, in the shade of a wide blue umbrella. Sun flickers on the pool and on the ocean, off the sleek black windows of his yacht.

We eat.

There is no talk until every crumb is consumed, mostly by me. Then both of us lean back in the wicker chairs and sip black coffee. I am barely hungry now, but the pinch remains, mildly throbbing under my diaphragm for attention. I close my eyes, let the wind dry my hair.

“What is wrong with you, Fenris?” Tyr asks after a long lull of distant waves and a dance of seagulls in the sky.

I shrug, tacky and short. How to explain to him what made me cry in Soren’s arms last night? Why I want the world to end? That there is nothing for me but this hunger?

“Fenris,” he says softly. He gazes out to the bright ocean. A few sailing boats mark the water with long white lines.

“I think they were right to fear me,” I say.

“Cowards.”

“Cowards run away; they do not act. The Alfather and his family did. They bound me against Fate.”

“They judged you for a crime you had not yet committed.”

“I will, though,” I mutter.

His disapproving frown makes me squirm.

I say, “It isn’t because I think I’m weak or even because of destiny, Tyr. I want to do it.”

The god of heroism startles. In him, it is like watching a glacier shift. “You’ve never said that before. Not in all the years of your life have you said that to me.”

“I wanted to once before,” I confess, turning my face away from his. “When you founded this country, when Old Asgard became New, when you were all setting up the systems of government and going through the land enslaving and battling. Riddling and bargaining with men. I’d been coming here a long time, since before Gudrid Far-Traveler led her family to Vinland. It was wild and empty, and people were easy to avoid. They had great civilizations here, did you know? Up and down the Mizizibi River, and they had complicated trade routes and built earthworks, not nearly so grand as pyramids or castles but impressive. They left me alone, I left them alone. Ate pygmy mammoths and greater mammoths, trolls and bison and old condors when I could catch them. Ran through mountains and didn’t meet a man or woman for months. But they were here. I wonder what Freya saw in the weave of Fate for them? Or if she cared at all when you came here, when you conquered them?”

I glance at Tyr, but his cragged, handsome face is untouched by pity or empathy or anything. Waiting for me to get to the point.

“It happened so fast,” I say. “A hundred years, and my wild land was gone, my neighbors killed or enslaved. I don’t know why it occurred so quickly. All I know is that the momentum of change changed. Industry and science and communication came together in discovery and invention to make this modern world seem like a child in her parent’s shoes. People barely keep up with it, but drive recklessly forward anyway! Remember the Thralls’ War? Men and women fighting against each other and against their gods in order to make people free. Good! But look how it was done, Tyr. Humans actually forced change upon the Alfather himself. They push forward and forward, pushing for progress and plowing over anything in their way – traditions or ways of life. This United States of Asgard is a monster.”

I catch myself thinking, A hungry monster.

Tyr says, “Such things have happened before, Fenris. In other lands and other times. You are only looking at what is in front of you, only looking at what you can see.”

“What else should my eyes be for?” I snarl.

“You’re telling yourself a story about this country that suits how you feel instead of what actually is—finding a narrative to match your emotions, instead of finding anger or satisfaction or joy in the more complicated, messy truth.”

“Bias.” I say it low in my throat, disdainfully. Bias is Tyr’s ancient enemy.

He nods once, regal and slow.

I thrust to my feet. “It is impossible to be unbiased, Tyr! Not and have a heart, have desires. And I know you are not made of stone. You want.”

“And what do I want?” he asks mildly.

“Peace!”

“And what you want is to eat Baldur and start the twilight of the gods?”

I lick my lips before I realize what I’m doing. Under all the grease and mustard smells hanging in the air, under the concrete and lawn and chlorine and ocean, I detect the apple-blood richness pumping through Tyr. My mouth waters at the memory of his blood spilling over my tongue.

Grasping my stomach, I curse in seven old languages, hissing my fury, because this gaping hunger is making me shake. I turn my back to Tyr, shoulders hunched against the agony. “I wanted to eat him before, too at the beginning of this country, when everything was in upheaval, before I was distracted by automobiles and telephones and the television. There was so much to see and smell and do, to learn and devour! But I’ve done everything in this new world. I want to eat him now because…because there’s nothing left for me. I don’t fit here.”

Tyr’s hands fall to my shoulders, one warm and gentle, one cool and hard and heavy. He stands behind me, close enough to feel his body heat and smell skin and smoke and the memory of pillow feathers in his short blond hair. “You don’t fit, so you want to end the world? Ah, what a selfish notion, Fenris Wolf. How like your mother you are sometimes.”

I clench my arms around myself, gripping my elbows. “I’m so hungry, Tyr, and that is why I want to end the world.”

“And so you invent a story to convince yourself it is not selfish, it is right. That the world deserves to lose its sun and gods and begin anew.”

“Then I should end,” I say harshly, pulling away from him. He lets me go. I stomp around the outer crescent of the pool toward the ocean, and stop as a breeze brings myriad fish and rot and flower smells.

“Fenris,” he calls, and do I detect a note of feeling in my name?

I glance back to see him with one hand out—his flesh-and-bone hand—reaching for me. His high brow wrinkles with confusion and hurt. “Fenris,” he says again, quieter now that I’m looking at him. He shakes his head. “Don’t say such things.”

“Why?” I yell, exaggerating the word, all mouth and challenge.

“You know,” he says. His expression settles back into its perpetual near-frown.

“I don’t know,” I insist quietly. I suddenly want him to say it; I hunger to hear him reveal his cursed bias. For me.

He won’t. I should know already, he would say. Isn’t he the one who brings me an apple of immortality every spring? Not my mother, not any of our cousins. He sees to it. Is that not enough of a gesture to prove his loyalty?

Apples and kisses.

I want more. I want more.

I dig my fingers into my hair, scraping the scalp. I fist my hands; I tear at the dark curls. My knees bend, my back curves. I crouch like an egg beside Tyr’s pool, face tucked in. I am shaking, starving, angry, on the verge of tears again.

I am so hungry. So tired. I want more.

My refrain.

Tyr kneels beside me. He brushes the hair off my back, then traces the line of oily scar that is my necessary collar. “Your hunger was not bound the way your body was; isn’t that what is happening? You remain small, a girl, a strong wolf, but your hunger is the size of your sister, who wraps herself around the middle world. You cannot contain it with little bites, tiny moments of satisfaction.”

I shake my head. Maybe. Yes. No. I don’t know. “Lock me up, Tyr, if you don’t want me to eat him. Lock me up.”

“You don’t need that. Stay here. Remain here with me and I will be your anchor, as I always have been.”

“I want more,” I whisper.

He leaves his hand against the back of my neck but says nothing.

• • •

I stay for a while.

It is easier with Tyr so nearby, his calm, judging eyes on me. His skills in the kitchen help, too. We play an old game of planning elaborate meals and dinner parties, spending hours shopping and prepping, chopping and cooking, only to eat it all: one or two shares for Tyr, the rest for me. On Tyrsday, when he travels elsewhere to sit judgment, I lounge at the pool, pretending I am a great tropical flower, feasting on the sunlight. I swim laps and hold my breath for long minutes.

Odinsday, I find a local Odinist chapel that smells of old blood and incense and sit still for as long as I can stand it before running home to Tyr.

Thorsday, I follow him into the Everglades, and we hunt through fetid smells for alligators. He keeps an airboat out where there are no earthy paths, only waterways and huts on stilts.

Freyasday, he drives me in a sporty white two-seat convertible to an all-natural restaurant and buys out the entire menu for me. I eat very well: hormone-free beef and fresh raw fish and my favorite kinds of steamed and creamed veggies. The lavender cake and mint cream is my favorite dessert. When we’re finished, I sneak out the back under the pretense of using the toilet and run to a nearby park, where I’ve seen an old seethkona dance on Freyasdays. I push through the gathered seekers, snapping and glaring at any who complain, and offer her a gold bangle to read my Fate.

She is bent and wrinkled, in a white sundress that shows off the gray-brown bark of her skin. Fingerless catskin gloves cover her hands, and she wears a sagging crown of hibiscus flowers. I smell the crowd of people, sweaty and perfumed, hopeful, anxious, laughing, and tense; I smell hair product and makeup, Cuban coffee and hot cream, spices and hot pigs and rust from the swing set.

The seethkona takes my hands. I’m in a short halter dress printed with obnoxious green leaves, but nobody will care, because of how amazing it looks against my hips and over my tits and scoops so low in the back, you can see the entire curve of my spine. My sandals are spike-heeled; mere mortals might not be able to walk in them across grass or gravel without snapping some bones. I’ve put on my glittery green eye shadow and thick black liner, cab-sav lipstick, fingernails the color of trees at night. They are dangerous, and so is my mouth, so are my teeth and eyes and this aching hunger.

I am dangerous.

But I smile prettily for the prophetess.

She sees through it, talented as one is after living seventy years spying on Fate.

“Oh, girl,” she says in an ocean-spray voice, “don’t waste that on me, won’t do you no good.”

“Makes the rest of the crowd feel better, maybe,” I say in my own growling-wolf voice.

The seether smiles and shakes her runes. She does her spinning dance, slow and steady, but the air picks up gnarled silver strands of her hair and the hem of her skirt, so it seems she’s dancing on another plane, where the wind is faster or gravity has changed.

The runes fall, pat pat pat, onto the wide woven mat upon which she steps, painted with an elaborate scarlet web and black-white-blue-green stars.

I know the runes. I’ve read them and their predecessors for ages and lives. But I look only at the seether’s eyes, sharp, dark, and darting, short brown lashes aflutter.

“Oh, girl,” she repeats, sucking in air. “You’re—” She stops, points one finger, nail yellowing, at a single rune. Glory.

I laugh, loud and harsh as an upset dog.

The glory rune is shaped like an arrow, like a T with its cap broken. Its oldest name is Tiwaz, and its oldest meaning is simply god. These days, we call it Tyr.

“Hungry,” she finishes, mouth turned in sympathy.

“Is that all you see?” I whisper, verging on hopeless.

Tip of her tongue visible, she studies the runes. All around us, assorted drums beat arrhythmically, like nobody can focus or nobody cares. “I see it all coming together, soon. Your knot, soon. I see urgency, girl, I see a need, and I see you finding relief—in death or darkness or satisfaction, there.” She points at a few more runes. Torch and joy and death. “I see a heart in a hand. Your heart or your hand, I do not know.”

A heart in a hand.

Baldur’s heart in my hand, I hope.

I wipe sweat from my brow and smack my wine-colored lips. I would like to chew on that pointing finger of hers, knowing it will be stiff and brittle and strong.

But I go, abrupt and running, through the crowd, away from the park and the drumbeats, and slam into Tyr’s broad chest. He steadies me with his flesh hand, touches his silver and gold hand to my face. The metal is cool even in all this tropical heat. I skim my cheek against it again, a caress, a question, a suggestion.

Tyr, in lightweight shirtsleeves and linen pants, an old man’s fedora tilted over his short, thin blond hair, removes his hand and leads me back to the convertible.

• • •

Freyrsday, I go to Mizizibi and the Bliss Church to hear Ardo Vassing and his wife and protégé preach. Bliss is an amazing monstrosity perched atop a bright green hill outside Jackson, surrounded by piney woods. Three white paths curve toward it, one from the lake and two from the parking lot, up a gentle slope of perfectly manicured grass. The building itself gleams white, though the peaked roof is slate and crowned with an obelisk made of copper, tinged red by the sun. A few centuries ago, the Freyans used more anatomically correct representations of fertility.

An entire battleship, masts and cannons included, or the whole of the Philadelphia Death Hall could fit inside the church. Grand pink-and-red stained-glass windows stretch across the front, and the double doors are thrown open like welcoming arms. A sign with golden lettering reads Welcome to Bliss.

I like it.

I avoid the cameras inside – for the service is filmed for several television stations – and they do make a show of it, with lights and giant screens, a full choir and a six-piece band. The Vassings are a beautiful family, Ardo with his braided beard and pinstripe suit, his wife elegant as a dancer, with a graceful voice to match her legs. Rathi Summerling, the protégé, has a face like sunshine and reddish-golden hair, set off by the shimmering gold waistcoat he strips to in the impassioned middle of his short sermon, rolling up his shirtsleeves to the elbows, mussing his perfect hair. I think he would make an excellent Baldur substitute, but for the fact that he is like a brother to the new Valkyrie, and her ire would be more trouble than eating Rathi’s heart would be worth.

I stand and clap, I sing and sway with the congregation, ears ringing, nose full of high-class perfumes and electronics and chemical-fruity air freshener. The loudness tastes as good as always, the shouts and joy of Freyan Satisfaction. These rituals are not so sexy as they were four hundred years ago, but the energy raises the hair on my arms, makes me want to howl.

When I get home that evening, Tyr is waiting on the upper balcony like a sentinel, moonlight in his hair and on the rough stubble along his square jaw. He’s in white, and his silver hand might be made of the stars.

I trail up to the third story and join him. I slide my hands around his waist and kiss his neck. I bare my teeth and sink them into his muscle, not breaking the skin, only feeling the strong meat between shoulder and neck, tasting salt and light sweat and that always-ever-tart-apple-blood just under my lips.

Shivering and shaking, I remain fixed there, until Tyr dislodges me with a tiny grunt and takes my hand to lead me to the kitchen, where another feast awaits.

• • •

It’s Sunsday again, and I go dancing.

Tyr comes with me, not to a sun temple or to the Church of the Rising Sun, but to a slick old club with a few boarded-up windows and lightning graffiti, the interior glowing with rich orange paint and oil chandeliers, where, even in the middle of the day, gorgeous gentlemen and mothers and lifelong partners dance graceful bolero steps. I would have chosen salsa for its speed and passion, but Tyr would not dance frenetically. He put on a fine suit and polished black shoes, and pointed me toward an elegant green old-fashioned gown with an asymmetrical hemline, high boat collar, no sleeves, and matching heels with rhinestone buckles across the toe. We go through the bolero dance again and again, smooth and nimble, arms arched, toes pointed, me laughing and whirling under his arm. When we spin together, faces turned toward each other, Tyr is almost smiling.

He charms little grandmothers and speaks to them in their native tongues. I rip into the words, too, making them my own. I drink the sweet mint cocktails and shoot rum with three men who, by their dark brows and ready smiles and thick, curling black hair, must be related. I get a little drunk, which pleases me and makes me kiss all three of those brothers or cousins or uncles and sons—I neither know nor care, and Tyr the Just watches me. They know him here, call him Tio or Mars. He leans back with his elbows on the bar, discussing some local Freyan politician with the owner, light blue eyes on me on me on me.

They call me Glorious.

When finally he takes me home, I am spilling and hot, thrilled and spinning to a dance in my mind. I am sloppy and hungry, and we go straight to the kitchen, where I eat pickles and pulled pork we brought with us in Styrofoam, until Tyr touches my hair and I kiss him.

His kiss is like everything he does: welcome and certain and slow. He supports my weight easily as I climb on him, my legs around his solid waist, my arms twined about his neck and head. But that’s all the action Tyr takes. He holds me and lets me kiss him. Lets me suck and bite and take, lets me reach deep, lick his teeth instead of my own.

Though his jaw moves and his tongue and his lips, too, though he embraces me strongly, you could not quite say that he kisses me back.

• • •

I smell my sister’s breath in the wind on Tyrsday afternoon: halitosis extraordinaire.

For months and months, she has remained on the ocean floor, breath held and burning fat for energy. It makes her smell terrible when she finally surfaces for a few days, until she’s eaten enough to smell like dead fish again.

She wakes me from a doze, scent tickling my senses and making me smile. The sun has set, the moon is half awake, and the glitter of the Miami cityscape across the bay is all the light I have. I’ve been lounging on this pool chair for hours. I rise and walk down the long yard to the dock.

Tyr’s long-nosed yacht bobs slowly in the shallow waves. Moonlight brings the black windows to life and dances over the black ocean. I stand with my toes at the concrete edge of the seawall, staring out for some other sign of her. Behind me, Tyr’s house is dark and silent. The god traveled today to Sun Valley to sit judgment, and I do not know if he’ll return tonight or in the morning.

“Sister?” I call softly.

The sharp, unpleasant scent of her breath strengthens.

Silently, I pad barefoot, in only my bikini, down the warm wooden slats of the dock. It shifts under my weight. I crouch at the edge, balanced right before tipping into the sea. I stare, allowing my eyes to adjust to the black, changing water.

There: a solid darkness, unmoving.

“I see you,” I whisper.

Inches from my toes, her tail rises. She is a long, strong wyrm, a sea snake of polished black skin that glints blue and purple if you see her under the sun, but in moonlight is cold obsidian and smooth as a dolphin. I step out onto her, sinking down to press flat against her body, and she moves out again with me.

Cold water laps at my arms and legs. Surf sprays my upturned face.

She pulls me out into the night. I smile, then grin, then laugh at the harsh wind that smells of nothing but ocean and my sister. Still, I have not seen her head, will not until we are far out to sea and under such a spill of stars you cannot make out individual points of light. Until the sky is one solid caress of starlight smeared around an oblong yellow moon.

My sister slows, swimming in a lazy loop for nearly an hour, until she’s made a circle of herself, threading up and down through the water. Here I am, at her tail, as her head lifts out of the dark ocean.

Her eye is black and spiked with green, the same green as mine, but that eye is larger than my head and hooded along her beautiful thick skull.

My sister, the world snake, does not speak: Her fangs are too long, her lips too thin, her tongue too narrow. She can hum, though, a tune more tragic and echoing than the saddest of the great whales’ songs, a hum that vibrates through the ocean or high enough to make the stars tremble. It shakes my ribcage and steadies my pinched, starving heart.

I touch my lips to her salty, smooth skin and sing with her.

She is so magnificent, so giant and monstrous. My hunger could fit inside her.

If it were not for this collar and these manacles, I might be as large as she is—a wolf with a head like a tank and teeth as tall as a grown woman. Capable of eating whales or elephants in a single bite. Of leaping mountains.

The sun would be no match for me then.

I press my cheek to my sister and the ocean waxes around us, tugged by the moon above. I tell her what I think and feel; I dig my nails into her skin, though the outer layer is so thick, I would have to transform into that wolf to harm her at all. She hums and listens, blinks and rolls her eyes and squints; I know what she wants me to know. If I choose to eat him, she won’t mind.

• • •

Eight days later, it’s Baldur’s Day.

The autumnal equinox. Midway between the longest day of the year and the shortest. Baldur’s last day of life. As long as I don’t eat him, don’t set off the chain reaction of Ragnarok, he’ll be reborn again in the springtime.

I go with Tyr to the celebration at Bright Home. There will be afternoon dancing and an early feast, and then, just as the sun sets, this year’s chosen hero will throw a special silver bolt into Baldur’s heart. The god will die. We will burn his body on a grand funeral pyre as all the country looks on through the blank, black eyes of video cameras.

As is my habit, I go as the wolf. I am rough and beautiful, my shoulders as high as his hips. My green eyes are wicked, my teeth bright, my hunger desperate and sharp. We enter the gilded feasting hall with Tyr’s fingers dug into my dark auburn ruff.

Bright Home is as massive a place as Bliss Church, but built of great stones and redwood trunks after the old ways, lined with benches and lit with torches. Banners hang, always, and tonight they are full of sunbursts and silver for Baldur the Beautiful.

Many of the gods proceed grandly in, but not Tyr. My god prefers a subtler entrance, though he is too broad, and too handsome in his grim way, not to attract attention. Especially with a striking beast like me at his side, tongue lolling out, claws clicking on the polished stone floor.

He takes his throne, one of nine on the wide dais where the most revered gods of Asgard sit for the feast. I crouch at his side, loyal as a dog, and put my head down on my paws.

This place smells of evergreen and fire, ashes and smoke and honey. It smells of fur and velvet and sword oil. Succulent roasted boar, candied fruit, potatoes and butter and every kind of apple you can imagine, in Baldur’s honor. For tonight, they are fried and boiled and roasted and baked into tarts. They are eaten fresh or peeled for divination. They are carved into flowers and suns and starbursts, into faces and letters that spell out blessings. They hang from the rafters, from the sconces and banners. They are painted every color of the rainbow, stamped with stripes or smiles or paisley or plaid.

I shut my eyes and listen to the conversation and laughter, the trumpets and fiddles, to the procession of Valkyrie with their ceremonial goblets, to the godlings at their banished table. I listen to my mother Loki arrive, arguing with his favorite cousin, Thor, about love, of all things. The twins Freya and Freyr enter in a whisper of velvet, murmuring quietly to each other as they sit in thrones pushed closer together than the rest. My lips curl when the Alfather sweeps past in scuffed black boots. His wife, Frig, bends beside me to touch my ear. I flick it back, then forward again, and do not open my eyes even when she says, “Thank you,” for what I am not sure. Perhaps she heard I’ve been volunteering on her day of charity. She smells of petunias and antiseptic and hair powder.

North, god of winter and the only one older than Tyr, comes trailing a ragged hem, in leather-wrapped boots melting ice in the warmth of Bright Home. He pauses to lean on Tyr’s throne and speak, but I snap my teeth at him. We have never been friends, since he hates my father for being my mother. The bent old god frowns at me, his silver-white hair falling in gnarled waves down his chest. And Tyr fists his hand in my fur.

I close my eyes again and wait for Baldur.

The god of light comes striding in to a swell of cheering and welcome. I am on my feet, leaning forward, and Tyr wraps his hand around the thin, braided chain of impossible things around my throat.

Baldur glows.

He is stunning.

Like the richest, reddest steak, a dripping chocolate tart, a honey cake with eyes that mirror the exact purple of the twilight sky outside. My stomach lurches and growls. It purrs through my bones and screams in my blood. They will never allow the Fenris Wolf near him.

“Hush, Glory,” a sweet, soft voice says, and the goddess Idun appears at my side. She kneels at my shoulder, one pale, bare arm wrapping over my ruff. She hugs me, pretty brown eyes on mine, face right at my starving, sharp mouth.

I shiver and breathe deeply. Like all of them, she smells of apples, but for Idun the Young it is her calling, not her blood, that is the reason. Though she tends the orchard far in the north where the apples of immortality grow, she was born to womankind. She is young and precious to the gods, the key ingredient in their eternal life. The thing that makes her apples magical.

Tyr says, “Idun,” quite formally, and I sense him bow to her, all respect.

She smiles a sweet bow of a smile. “Lord Justice.”

What a flatterer. His hand relaxes in my fur as he responds with pleasure. Should I be jealous?

Idun tucks her diaphanous white skirt over her knees as she settles against me. “Soren told me you’ve been feeling poorly,” she murmurs in my ear fluff. “And I would extend the same offer he did: Come to my orchard if ever you need respite or solace or sanctuary.”

“She might devour all your apples,” Tyr says.

“They grow back,” Idun teases. “And you would fit in with my other monsters.”

Her breath is touched with honey mead and apple pie.

A thin whine slips through my teeth. I hunger. I want more. I search for Baldur in the crowd, but there are too many folk here: gods and godlings, Valkyrie and Lonely Warriors, mortal politicians and celebrities and stars. Caterers and valets and cooks and servers. There are too many golden heads and white or silver clothing worn in his honor.

Idun strokes my cheek, and Tyr does the same.

Eventually, the feasting table is set before us and piled with food. Tyr feeds me from his own hand, and Idun vanishes into the crowd. The tastes are slight but delicious, and I enjoy chomping and chewing with my great maw visible to the media, to the humans who likely forget who I am when I seem so like Tyr’s loyal hound.

After I’ve eaten, I bite Tyr’s hand gently, lovingly, sliding my tongue against his palm, pressing my fangs to his wrist without breaking the skin. And I slip away. It is our way at such events. I eat, and I go; I was present, now I am not. Usually it is to run through the mountains and work off my hunger, or to speed away on my motorcycle for hunting or dancing or ragging.

Tonight I slink through the shadows and into the twilight of the great mountain. I transform myself into Glory, into this pretty, dangerous girl in tight pants and tighter green sequined shirt and emerald spike heels. My father would be proud I know well how to use what he taught me.

And I skulk about outside Bright Home, along walking trails and around verandas and the private homes certain gods keep here. I track specific smells and play games to distract myself as the sun sinks.

When I can no longer see it for all the thick lodgepole pine trees and the steep, craggy slope of the mountain, I return to the hall. I do not become the wolf again but go in as a girl, a hungry, hazardous girl.

Baldur is a blaze of joy and terror in the center of it all.

The crowd, pressing and sad, eager and anxious, overwhelms the space of Bright Home with nervous sweat and hot breath, alcoholic fumbling for cameras and the hands of their companions. The gods gather around Baldur and the large pyre built of evergreen and ash wood, their special guests just behind.

The god of light stands bare but for loose white pants, somber as he rarely is, and alone before the pyre. Another god speaks—Odin, I think, but my hunger roars in my ears. The noises are a distant murmur, the touch of shoulders to mine, the drag of energy and reluctant fingers, as if some know they should try to stop me. It all swirls around, but I am focused; I have my target, and there is a thin arrow of crystal desperation between us.

Baldur sees me. His eyes widen, but he does not cry out or show fear. He only tracks me as I move nearer, as I weave through celebrities and godlings and journalists and politicians.

Every step rings through my starving heart.

At the edge of the crowd, Soren stands beside Idun the Young; one large and dark, one small and pale.

My lips draw away from my teeth.

My tongue dries as I pant, as I gasp.

The collar and manacles tighten and twist, cold as ice, but I am too hungry, too strong. They can contain my size, not my actions. I cannot swallow the sun whole; I can only tear him into tiny bite-sized fleshy pieces with my hands and claws and teeth.

Sweat drips along my spine. I tremble. The entire crowd, the feast hall, the mountain beneath me trembles.

In the spotlight, Baldur’s lips form my name.

I cannot speak through the fangs and heavy tongue in my mouth.

Soren grips my arm, and Idun, too, leaning up onto her toes to cry in my ear. I do not understand.

The spear wielder is before Baldur: that is his death in the hand of some royal daughter of a southern king. But I want to be his death.

Eat him.

Destroy the world.

I scream; I am so hungry!

And here

Here

Tyr the Just steps in front of me.

I lift my chin to look into his face. His eyes are hard as forever, his jaw stony as the mountains.

Gathering myself to thrust forward, to lunge past him and dart for Baldur, all my muscles bunch; my bones thrum with glee and expectation.

Tyr moves first.

My hunger explodes in ferocious pain.

Pain sharp and hot below my ribs radiates up to my heart.

• • •

I hear it now: gasps and screams from the Bright Home crowd.

Soren Bearstar says my name in horror.

• • •

Tyr studies me, awed and furious and curtained with amazing grief. Even he shakes now, trembles with emotions I cannot read over this starving pain in my heart.

We are connected, he and I.

Not by my hunger.

Not by great bias.

Not by history or destiny.

We are connected by his sleek metal hand, thrust into my chest, curled up under my ribs to get at my heart.

• • •

He tears it free.

• • •

My heart. In his hand.

I open my eyes to clear violet skies.

Like twilight spread from horizon to horizon, no variation, no lightening or darkening from sun or sunset. Wisps of clouds pull in unnatural spirals, like a painting, not the heavens.

The tickle of grass on my cheek alerts me to the tall summer grass all around. Green and elegant, fringed with honey-yellow seeds that bend and bow in a warm breeze. I smell nothing but grass and rich earth. No dead worms or the dust from grasshoppers and beetles. No rotting mice, no skit, no petroleum tingeing the air.

I’m a girl, and naked, but the crushed grass beneath me feels silky and tangled, not prickling and rough. Lifting a hand, I brush the bearded grass and hear a small sound like bells, a tinny rattle that makes me smile despite myself.

I am warm. I am not in pain. The bright sky doesn’t make me wince. The hand I lift is smooth and unlined, entirely lacking any green polish. There is no slow beat of my own heart. There is only a quiet emptiness in the pit of my chest.

Not discomforting, not gaping or painful. Something has changed.

• • •

I
am
not
hungry.

• • •

Swinging to my bare feet, I stand and stretch. This delightful lack of desire, of need! Here is this beautiful meadow that stretches in every direction, and I don’t want to eat it.

Laughing, I hop up and down, clapping my hands like a little girl. My hair skims my bare back, my toes are warm on the earth, the tall grass brushes my knees and thighs.

I run.

My legs stretch and my lungs fill with this warm honey wind. I spread my arms and grasp the air as I go, then pull them tight against myself and pump hard and harder, running running running, because there is nothing else I need.

The meadow curves with me as I race for the horizon, as if it were its own small world spinning under my feet.

Eventually, a small cabin appears, one room, with a blue gabled roof and a garden of bright summer flowers that are yellow and orange and purple, or huge red eyes surrounded by sunburst petals. The front door is propped open with an old watering can.

As I approach, a man appears in the dim doorframe, wearing frayed old jeans and nothing else. He is beautiful like the sun, formed like the gods are formed, with a spill of golden hair and eyes the exact same gentle purple as the sky. He lounges against the doorframe, propped on his shoulder, hip cocked.

I grin and slow my run so that I stalk toward him, and he sees me. His eyes go wide in surprise and pleasure, and he reaches out a hand.

Taking it, I feel a spread of contentment and the tiny revving of an engine deep inside my gut.

He weaves our fingers together, and we stand there, studying each other. I know him, but I can’t think of his name.

To be honest, I can’t think of my own name, either.

I’m not certain how long we stand there, how long before we wander the garden together. He shows me his favorite flowers, dips a cool drink of water from a well surrounded by green sprouts. His voice is gentle and pretty. He offers me a pair of pants, and a shirt if I like, but also shrugs like he’s not sure why it matters. I tell him I’d like a pair of spike heels, and for a moment, a flicker of understanding wakes in his eyes, but then he only shrugs again and laughs.

• • •

We do whatever we like, the purple-eyed man and I. Mostly, that means lying in the meadow or lying in his bed or wandering in great circles through the tall summer grass. It is always purple afternoon here, or quiet purple twilight. Sometimes I turn around and expect something, like memories have flashed in my peripheral vision, like just-forgotten dreams. A man with a silver and gold hand. Great roasted pigs laid out for feasting. A woman with silver curling through her bob. A vicious black machine I think of as my bike. Older bearded men I don’t like to think about, two of them judging me in some confusing way. Silver chains.

I catch my golden companion frozen sometimes, staring at the middle distance, as if he, too, remembers things. Once he asks me, “Do you think my name is Soren?”

It’s a name I know and feel matters somehow, so I tell him perhaps it is, but I don’t really care. As I speak, a face forms in my memory, darker and more solid and not so easy with a smile as my golden friend’s. I say, “I think your name is Sunshine, sunshine,” and he laughs.

“I think your name is Beast.”

Shocked, I laugh, too, and curl my fingers into claws, wondering why it is no insult but rather that I relish the name as a compliment.

• • •

A woman arrives and the sky tilts silver.

A luscious full moon rises. I study the cool, mottled rock hanging low enough to touch, while a new echo beats in my belly.

I want it.

The woman’s eyes are like that moon, as she slinks toward us in a simple gray dress, barefoot as we are, her hair loose to her waist in a great fall of starlight. I like her, I think, for I know her, and am very glad to have on one of my friend’s shirts, belted at the waist with a tie from the curtains.

“Fenris,” she says in a voice deep and calm. I know she means me. My name rings through my bones.

I don’t move as she comes near and touches my temples with gentle fingers. Her skin is cool, and when she whispers my name again, my knees buckle with memories.

• • •

Freya the Witch kneels with me, stroking my neck and back in tiny circles while I shake and shudder.

A hand clenches against my chest, where my Tyr stabbed his elf-made hand inside me and broke my heart.

“How long have I been dead?” I gasp.

“What a question,” the goddess of fate and dreams says, half in a laugh, as if the answer should be obvious.

I growl and bat her hand away.

“The apple you ate calls you back to the living, Fenris,” she says.

“I’m not hungry here,” I whisper. “You should leave me.”

I can feel the wind is cooler now, and the silky grass itches, when two moments ago, it tickled and teased.

“Too many would not like that,” Freya says dismissively.

I shake my head. Nobody, nobody will argue if I stay here. Jenny Calsdottir will wonder where I disappeared to. Soren Bearstar will think of me when he drives through Cheyenne. Frig might wish that other godlings volunteered at her hospitals, as I did.

Tyr.

I stare at the grass, unseeing, remembering his cold metal hand against my heart.

And I am not hungry.

“I don’t want to starve, Freya,” I say.

“Then you should not eat the apple Tyr brings you again, and when you die, you will remain so.”

“Here? With Baldur?” I glance toward the house now, where the simple golden man I’ve spent three hours or seven weeks with, I cannot say, has transformed into my bright Baja California surfer cousin. To my mind, at least. Where he lounges on the unmade bed, legs dangling, staring at the play of light through his fingers, he still forgets us all. For once, I do not desire to swallow him whole.

“Baldur is not always here,” the goddess of dreams reminds me. “But I will have you at peace in death, because the Alfather will not want you in his battle hall.”

It is a bitter sort of comfort. And the rules of the apples are firm: I must go back.

• • •

Rising is painful, a gentle reminder of the consequences of life. It hardly bothers me, for this ache in my bones and guts and heart is a bare echo of the pain of my hunger.

I know climbing through twisted roots; I know dirt under my fingernails. I know blackness and the taste of mud, of earthworms and damp, rotting leaves, and fertile waste in my nostrils. A quiet slip of perfume.

My fingers reach thin air; a hand grips my wrist.

I am tugged up through the ground and sprawl naked on the middle world’s cool, itchy grass. My head is cupped in somebody’s lap, fingers brushing hair off my face. Traffic sounds and wind in a million tiny leaves, the smell of crisp autumn leaves, of rain high in the clouds and unfallen. Stone smell and bricks and polished wood, more distantly, minty incense and evergreen.

I’m at the foot of the New World Tree, in the garden of the Philadelphia Death Hall.

A growl slips up from my throat, and I pull my lips back from my teeth. I do not wish to engage with that cranky new Valkyrie.

“Tsk, hisk,” my mother says, putting her hands against my face.

I open my eyes to look up at her. She leans over me, so her freckled face is upside-down and her choppy red hair falls around it. “Hey, Daddy,” I say, because nothing annoys her more. She is small but voluptuous today, pretty in pale green and pink, lip gloss and curled eyelashes—her most motherly persona and resembling me, for once.

Loki Changer purses her lips in displeasure. “I’ll leave you here naked for the Valkyrie to find.”

Though I should sit, should roll away into a crouch, run off to show my mother I don’t need her charity, she keeps combing her fingers though my hair, and it feels so good. My eyes sink shut again, and I sigh.

I’m hungry.

It’s small, as tiny as a seed.

Familiar. Cursed. A little bit comforting.

“Why did you try to eat him, why now? Why in front of the world?” Loki whispers.

I shrug. “How did you know I was coming back today?”

Bending over me, the god of tricks and changing puts her lips to my forehead. “I brought your body here, Fenris. I waited. I made Tyr leave so you would not have to see him.”

My mouth waters at the thought of Tyr’s thick apple blood and delicate crunching bones. I shudder and hug myself.

“Cold?” Loki lifts me by the shoulders and stands, transforming larger and male but still red-haired, freckled, gentle. He reaches over our heads to pluck a long golden leaf off the ash tree that unites the nine worlds. Skimming the tip against my shoulder, he hums a discordant note, and the leaf becomes a robe.

“Hungry,” I say, wrapping the robe around my waist. It falls to my knees.

My mother laughs, loud and thick with dark amusement.

I smile despite myself.

“Let’s go feed you then, daughter,” he says, and my smile grows three times.

• • •

It’s Moonsday, and after finding real clothes, I lead Loki to a Philadelphia food bank where the chief volunteer knows me. She shies away this time, fear plastered on her mouth and in her flared nostrils.

Glory the Fenris Wolf is famous: the country saw my face as I tried to attack Baldur. Dangerous. Hungry. But Loki’s presence keeps the woman from turning me away. So we don our gloves and work the line. I take a bite from every tray I serve, grinning dares at the homeless and poor who come through the line. I say, “Call me Fenris” to some and wink at others. When they are afraid, I let my smile fall tenderly and say, “May you find the end of your hunger,” like a blessing. When they bravely tell me to help myself, I accept a second or third bite and offer a different prayer: “I will still starve long after you are full, and the sun will stay in the sky.”

It’s exhilarating to feed others when they know how hungry I am. When they look at me and see my needs and desires and know I survive. I lick my lips and know they survive, too. There are many hungry people in the world.

On Tyrsday, I get on my bike and ride the high wind for Memphis, where I wait in the line of petitioners to see Tyr the Just sitting judgment. I allow all who come to go ahead of me, so that I am the last, at the very end of the day. The hall of justice is lined with columns, sticky in late autumn without any air conditioning. Benches spread on either side of the aisle, and a box for lawspeakers, two news crews and the nine regular citizens summoned as official witnesses to Tyr’s judgment. I stride in, heavy steel-toed boots crashing against the marble floor, jeans tight, emerald T-shirt even tighter, and a leather vest laced up my back with silver wire. I’ve left my hair down, painted my lips, and put glitter on my eyelids. This is the Glory Mask, the face of the girl wolf.

When Tyr sees me, he grows even more rigid, his flesh hand fisted atop the armrest. His glacial eyes widen just a fraction, something even I would not have seen had I not been staring at him. “This is done,” he orders, getting to his feet.

“No,” I call out, continuing down the aisle toward him. “I am here for judgment.”

His jaw clenches; he is an old castle wall, handsome and ruinous.

I smell so many aftershaves and body odors, shoe polish and hairspray and cobwebs, overheated computer parts, ink and plastic, taco sauce. I stop at the base of the two-stair dais and tilt my head up toward his.

Tyr the Just steps down to me. I flash him a toothy grin, all bravado. He reaches with his flesh hand and cups my chin. I lean in, and he grips harder; I might get bruises. It is a welcome, wonderful ache.

“What are you doing, Fenris?” he whispers. The cameras have such good microphones, we have only the illusion of quiet privacy. Nobody behind or around us breathes.

I say, “You held my heart in your hand. Tell me if you found it wanting. Judge me, god of truth.”

His hand falls away. “Fenris.”

I lift my eyebrows. I part my lips to draw in a tasting breath of him. “Forgive me or send me away forever, Tyr. It is the Day of Judging, and I need to know.”

“You’ll try again. You aren’t sorry for it,” he mutters.

“You’ll stop me again. You always do.”

Casually, as if the movement is incidental, Tyr slips his hand into the pocket of his slacks. He pulls out a thin, shimmering chain of rainbows.

My collar.

“You cannot offer me your other hand to distract me while some other god slips it on,” I say, trembling at the sight of it.

He takes my hand in his cool gold and silver one, turning my palm up. And he snakes the chain in a spiral against my skin. “I will not put it on you.”

“Why not?”

“I have never been able to look at you without remembering I was the one, all those years ago, who bound you.”

“With love, with trust.”

“It was still a binding.”

As I step nearer, my steel-toed boots knock into the shallow first step. “You’re supposed to judge me, not yourself.”

“No one is above justice and truth,” he says deeply, low and soft.

Closing my hand around the collar, I ask in the smallest whisper I can, “What do you want from me, now?”

“Be careful with yourself until I can fetch you another apple.”

I frown. “I do not know if I will eat it again.”

Panic flares across his feature; everyone present must see it clearly. An awkward, fearful shift waves through the audience. “Fenris,” he begs. “You must.”

The hunger in my belly has encompassed my new heart. Its beating feels desperate. “Why?”

His eyes flick to the cameras, to the rest of his justice court, and back to me. “I won’t stop you if you are not immortal. When you try to devour the sun again, how could I stop you if it meant you died forever?”

“That….” I pause, a gasp in my heart, and deliberately choose to say the rest, though it will be caught on camera, though it is obnoxious. “That sounds like bias, Tyr the Just.”

In reply, he sinks to his knees before me. “It is impossible to be unbiased, if you have a heart.”

“Get up,” I hiss, panicked myself now. I clutch at the shoulder of his suit jacket, tugging. “Get up.”

The god smiles broadly, gleaming teeth and crinkled eyes. “Promise me you’ll take care until I get you an apple so that I can protect the sun. So I can know you will live.”

I shake my head in denial, having expected to make promises about my hunger, about control, about behavior, or about wearing this collar again.

“Promise me,” he murmurs, taking my hands off his shoulders, pressing them together with the gleaming rainbow chain between them.

I let my knees go and fall into him, kissing him so he stops talking, kissing him because he tastes like apples and blood and honey soda and limes.

• • •

On Odinsday, I wake up naked in Tyr’s Miami bed, sprawled beside him, and hungry. When I’ve stayed in his home before, he’s been awake earlier, already frying bacon and brewing chicory coffee, but this morning, he sleeps the sated, deep sleep of a man who is more than full. I scratch at his stubble and skim through the hair on his chest. I drag my hand along his collarbone and walk my fingers against his ancient, faded battle scars. Tyr sighs in his sleep, grumbling and reaching for me.

I roll over him, stretching across his body to the nightstand, where, at the base of an elegant black lamp, the collar of impossible things coils. It clings to every available shard of late-morning light in the room. I take it up, the silky, delicate chain cool against my fingers, and propped against Tyr, I loop it around my neck.

The clasp is tricky, and the moment it latches, I gasp at the flood of sharp sensation running down my spine.

Then it is gone, and I only remember that the sensation was there, not what it felt like.

Tyr says, “Glory,” thick and sleepy. He spreads his hand against my chest, fingers at the collar that has melted into a silvery scar necklace, palm over my heart.

“I’ll be a little bit careful,” I promise him.

• • •

Because it’s Odinsday, I get out of bed and go to the Port Orleans Death Hall. Instead of slipping inside, I wander the ghostly white city of the dead that surrounds it. Mausoleums of marble and pale granite and concrete rise like row houses, decorated with hammer statues and lambs, hands folded in prayer and stone flowers and fire engines. Plastic flowers brighten the metal vases beside vault doors, and some real flowers, too, wilting in the soft autumn heat. I breathe evenly, smelling musty old death and raw salt tears, the mangy water stagnating in the cisterns, iron rust, troll droppings, and molted pigeon feathers. I skim my fingers across Thorson names and Freyan, too, etched into the rock, into monuments to the city’s militia and the oldest decrepit families. I imagine them in Freya’s Hel, in that meadow where Baldur is now, or in the Valhol or sleeping peacefully here until Thor Thunderer calls them to his far mountain for the final battle.

To their graves, I whisper, “Dream deep until that day comes, for it will be me who begins it. Me who swallows the sun for the start of that final destiny.” I smile, lips pressed to rough, gouged mausoleum corners. “I am still hungry.”

• • •

Thorsday, I walk openly in Shield, Colorada, grinning my side-splitting grin for everyone who sees and recognizes me. The brave ones nod encouragingly and ask for a picture. Or they press lips together in disapproval, for I am chaos and unpredictability and also too beautiful. I suspect they were excited when I attacked Baldur; they thought the world was about to change, and now are afraid of themselves. The true cowards run or shy away. One or two, I chase for a few blocks, to give them something to be afraid of. To be wild, to put on a show.

• • •

Freyasday is my day for dancing.

I find a harvest festival in the eastern Kansa river valley, full of Freya’s children and Lokiskin. A hundred people play wild drums, three bonfires burn even before the sun sets, and a family of seethkonas tosses bones and dances through intricate red ribbon labyrinths. They do not stop me from stripping off boots and jacket and flinging myself into their celebration. I spin and sweat with them, cry out in the heartbeat rhythm of the drums and old songs, growl and twist and stomp my feet.

They laugh and scream and welcome me. Me, the Fenris Wolf, the Hungry One. They give me beer and mead and roasted corn, let me share their meat and plentiful grapes and apples.

In my turn, I whisper secrets of Freya’s Hel to any who wish to know. I talk of Baldur and memory loss, of the sweet colors and languid, gentle flow of time there. I promise them Freya the Witch embraces all their dead loved ones, and say that if not for my place to come in the end of the world, I would sleep there still. Live and burn now, I say, so that you may rest in death.

I curl all night in a heap of Lokiskin and Freya’s children, on blankets beside the glowing bones of a fire, under stars and a thin, slivered moon. It is a puppy pile, with me at the heart.

• • •

Freyrsday, I go back to Bliss Church, in the Mizizibi kingstate. I push to the front of the aisle and stand at the stage, quiet and smiling, so that the Vassing preacher cannot miss me. He tugs his braided beard and nods a slow welcome, while his wife makes a sign of peace over her heart but stays away. It’s their beautiful protégé, Rathi Summerling, who crouches at the edge of the stage and holds his hand down to mine. Green is the color of death, and the color of my eyes, but today Rathi wears it: mint waistcoat embroidered with vines, emerald pinstripe linen suit, an evergreen and aqua and mint paisley tie knotted fat under his chin. His eyes are as bottle-green as I remember, and his smile thrills. I take his warm hand, and he heaves me up beside him, murmuring, “We match today, what a sign,” for of course, I’m wearing green, too.

The young preacher lifts our linked hands high, and into the thin microphone that curves around his cheek from a nearly invisible headset, he calls to the congregation, “Can you imagine what this creature can teach us of Satisfaction?”

A wave of cheering washes back toward us, and I grin, tasting it. “I am never satisfied!” I scream. I need no microphone.

“None of us is,” Rathi Summerling says, to me, as if there were no theater before us, no hot lights, no artificial sound and air conditioning, no makeup on his cheeks. But his voice slides through the dark sanctuary. “None of us knows Satisfaction before we go to meet our god of Satisfaction, before our bodies become one with the earth and new life grows through our hearts and bones. But it is the longing, the desire, that lets us reach for better things, that makes us reach for each other. We share our burdens; they are both lessened and made stronger for it. That is the quest of Satisfaction, Fenris Wolf, that is our spiritual hunger.”

I like his words and his voice. He smells of hair gel and some thickly sweet tropical flower. Leaning in, I say in a whisper, just where his mouth is and into his microphone, “You are so bright and sunny, perhaps you are the answer to my hunger….”

Rathi laughs—bright and sunny—and it ripples through the Bliss Church. He puts his arm around me and asks if I know any church songs. Of course I do. I sing one of the oldest Freyan songs I know, about a king who married the land itself.

The Vassings invite me back next week.

• • •

On Sunsday, as the sun rises, I don’t want to leave Tyr’s bed. It’s three hours until the start of Jenny Calsdottir’s service, at the Risen Sun church in Westport City. Last time I was there, I was rude. I told them I had met Baldur, and I didn’t lie but left out so much I might as well have lied.

I don’t have to return. Nobody is making me.

• • •

Warm but bland light fills the church sanctuary, and the narrow band of stained glass behind the altar glints pale blue and yellow and white. Jenny stands at the lectern in a creamy suit, her curls pulled back in a soft bun. The pews are crowded today, as they usually are in the weeks just after Baldur dies. I hesitate at the rear doors, already late and not wanting to create more of a scene than is inevitable.

They might see me as their devil. I am the weapon that will devour their sun.

But I’m not ashamed of it.

Only of hiding it.

I step through the doors onto the thick carpet running down the center of the sanctuary. Today I didn’t forget my shoes; they’re conservative for me, strappy, with a low heel. I have on long pants that flow against my ass instead of looking painted onto it, and my halter leaves no slice of belly visible. Just my shoulders and arms are bare, and my hair is pinned up, to display the liquid shimmering scar of impossible things around my neck.

Jenny trails off when she sees me. The congregation shifts slowly, turning heads and bodies to investigate the interruption. Some lean away, some gasp, some cover their children’s eyes. Some stand up.

I hold myself as calm as I can, despite the thudding heart in my chest, the rippling, pinching hunger in my belly. I lift my eyes to Jenny.

She grips the sides of the lectern until I can see her knuckles whiten from here.

Thick silence clouds the wide room. Pews creak, a child coughs, clothing rustles.

Jenny steps away from the lectern. “Did you find your truth, Glory?” she asks in a breathy, nervous voice. But her chin lifts and her expression is somehow warm.

“Fenris,” I say. “I am the Fenris Wolf. And some day, I will devour the sun.”

THE END.

The Strange Maid

Fans of Neil Gaiman, Holly Black, and Maggie Stiefvater will embrace the richly drawn, Norse-influenced alternate world of the United States of Asgard, where cell phones, rock bands, and evangelical preachers coexist with dragon slaying, rune casting, and sword training in schools. Where the president runs the country alongside a council of Valkyries, gods walk the red carpet with Hollywood starlets, and the U.S. military has a special battalion dedicated to eradicating Rocky Mountain trolls.

Signy Valborn was seven years old when she climbed the New World Tree and met Odin Alfather, who declared that if she could solve a single riddle, he would make her one of his Valkyrie. For ten years Signy has trained in the arts of war, politics, and leadership, never dreaming that a Greater Mountain Troll might hold the answer to the riddle, but that’s exactly what Ned the Spiritless promises her. A mysterious troll hunter who talks in riddles and ancient poetry, Ned is a hard man to trust. Unfortunately, Signy is running out of time. Accompanied by an outcast berserker named Soren Bearstar, she and Ned take off across the ice sheets of Canadia to hunt the mother of trolls and claim Signy’s destiny.

Buy The Strange Maid for Kindle

Acknowledgements

The deepest thanks to Laura Rennert for making all of this happen.

Also to Lara Perkins, Jennifer Soloway, and Victoria Piontek, and all of Andrea Brown Literary Agency who had a hand in supporting me.

Pam Feinsilber for detailed, thoughtful copy-editing, and 52 Novels for taking formatting out of my hands.

Saundra Mitchell for beautiful covers.

Lydia Ash and Natalie C Parker for reading and critique, not to mention hours of laughter and wine.

Also by Tessa Gratton:

THE UNITED STATES OF ASGARD SERIES:

The Lost Sun, Book One
The Strange Maid, Book Two
Gold Runner: A Novella of Goblins, Theft, and Teenage Gods
The Apple Throne, Book Three (forthcoming April 20, 2015)
Lady Berserk: A Novella of Dragons, Trickster Gods, and Reality TV
Glory’s Teeth: A Novella of Hungry Girls and the End of the World
The Weight of Stars: The Novella Collection

THE BLOOD JOURNALS SERIES:

Blood Magic, Book One
The Blood Keeper, Book Two
With Maggie Stiefvater and Brenna Yovanoff:
The Curiosities: A Collection of Stories

About the Author

TESSA GRATTON has wanted to be a paleontologist or a wizard since she was seven. She was too impatient to hunt dinosaurs, but is still searching for someone to teach her magic. After traveling the world with her military family, she acquired a BA (and the important parts of an MA) in gender studies, and then settled down in Kansas with her partner, her cats, and her mutant dog. She is the author of The Blood Journals series and The United States of Asgard series, including The Lost Sun, The Strange Maid, and The Apple Throne, as well as novellas Gold Runner, Lady Berserk, and Glory’s Teeth. Active on both Twitter (@tessagratton) and Tumblr (tessagratton.tumblr.com), she can also be easily reached at her website, TessaGratton.com.