The Strange Maid Read online

  Beside the bolt lock is a heavy switch that controls the UV lights rigged to the inner ceiling. When I flip the light switch a dull hum clicks off. I unlock the door, then shove it back with my hip in order to keep my eyes on Red Stripe.

  He’s a statue of himself, pale blue and mottled with gray. His arm wraps protectively about his ducked face. His shoulders slump; his tusks are only cracked points of stone.

  As I watch, dust flakes away from his skin and settles onto the mangy rug covering the floor. Tiny fissures appear all over his body and a thin layer of stone skin sloughs away. He shakes all over and groans.

  Red Stripe rubs his tiny yellow eyes. In the cool light streaming through the windows set high enough the sun won’t ever touch him, that brilliant line of scarlet lichen stretching down his spine seems to bleed.

  “Good evening,” I say loudly enough for him to easily hear, and set down the plate of toutons and molasses I brought from the pancake booth. Trolls are supposed to be carnivores, but theses cakes are Red Stripe’s favorite. “I’m sorry I’m late.”

  He grunts thanks. Though he can say my and Unferth’s names and responds to commands, he seems to prefer communicating without words. Unferth teases me it’s to do with my mothering style.

  While he eats, I go through into the small back room and grab the long broom. The handle is smooth and warm in my hand, thanks to Red Stripe’s amazing ability to fill the whole shed with his body heat. I brush him, scrubbing the remaining rock dust from his shoulders, from the creases of his elbows, and most important from under the heavy iron collar connecting him to the massive chain bolted three meters into the ground. I don’t believe he requires it, but for the comfort of the Summerlings and Coveys from town, who aren’t used to trolls at all, much less tame ones, we leave him trapped. He tilts his head and raises his arm for me, and his wide lips relax against his blunt tusks.

  I smile as I scratch at his broken arm with the broom, where it itches the most. My fondness for the beast wells up and I’m glad we’ve already discussed with Rome leaving Red Stripe here when Unferth and I go. He’s a welcome attraction, given how rare it is these days to find greater mountain trolls in captivity. There are laws, I’ve learned, against hunting them in the Rock Mountains or near Montreal because of those old treaties between the troll mothers and Thor Thunderer, and when they wander farther south they’re destroyed almost immediately by militias. When they die they turn to stone, so almost nobody in the world knows what their living skin feels like, or the color of their eyes, or how well they communicate. Tonight will be a revelation for the festival guests.

  “You’ll be happy here with Rome,” I say, patting Red Stripe’s cool arm. He heaves a massive sigh that fills the room with his hot, saccharine breath. It disrupts the motes of dust that hang lazily in the shaft of sunlight cutting past his head. I feel as he must, trapped and slow-moving, made to perform the same steps again and again. Now that the snows are melting, now that Baldur, the god of hope and light, is coming back to us, I’ll shake off my stone dust and explode back into the world with my stone heart.

  Chaos is here to remind me: I’m going to change my destiny again.

  The festival feast hall is modeled after the ancient kings’ halls of Old Scandia; a massive single room of wood and sod, with pillars holding up the roof, intricate ironwork thrones, long tables and benches, and painted round-shields hanging from the rafters. Three nights a week the tourists can buy a seat and a meal, complete with the sort of entertainment they might have found had they lived a thousand years ago and sworn to a Viker king.

  My wish-father, Rome, plays the king, in a yellow and red wool shirt and trousers and a heavy fur cape latched with golden brooches. He has on a wide leather belt and bracers, with massive copper rings around his upper arms. The Freyan charms braided into his reddish beard glint in the false firelight as he welcomes the tourists back to Old Asgard, where please may they yell and cheer, please may they stand with a poem to share, and all give thanks to the great god of Vinland, Freyr the Satisfied.

  Tonight he calls himself Hrothgar Shielding, the great king of Daneland, and welcomes the crowd to the golden hall Heorot. Unferth will play the poet as usual; I will be Valtheow the Dark, queen of Heorot. The beefiest of the actors, George, wears bearskin and has painted a spear onto his cheek to play the hero, Beowulf. We’ve created a breakaway section of wall for Red Stripe to burst through for the finale. He waits behind it now, with two clowns holding UV lights on his legs.

  Once the welcome and the opening prayers are over, Rome exhorts his poet, Unferth Truth-Teller, to entertain his company while the meal is served. Most nights there’s roast boar and cured ham, apple tarts, salted cod, a not remotely authentic spinach salad, six options for beer, free honey soda for the kids, and plates of cheese. But as it’s Baldur’s Night, we have mead for toasting out of great cauldrons, and the trays are loaded with candied apples and bacon-wrapped apple sausages.

  Unferth rises from his crouch beside the carved thrones to call out a song about Pol Darrathr, a son of Odin who lived hundreds of years ago and earned himself immortality and the name Baldur the Beautiful.

  I listen for my cue while hidden behind the thrones and don’t wait for him to finish before I throw aside the curtain and stride in, arms spread. “Listen to the Valkyrie’s Prayer!” I cry.

  Unferth flicks his hand dramatically at me, and I just as dramatically ignore him to take Rome’s hand and step onto the queen’s throne.

  From here I can see out over the long tables, meet the eyes of families and guests spread out on benches with their plastic goblets lifted. Hot orange lights flicker like fire from sconces, gleaming against the snakes and deer and running wolves carved into the rafters. There are men of our company seated among the crowd in the hard leather and metal armor of a great king’s retainers grinning at me, and the serving women stop with hands full of mead and food to watch.

  I slam the butt of my spear onto the throne three times before crying,

  “Hail, day!

  Hail, sons of day!

  And night and her daughters now!

  Look on us here

  With loving eyes,

  That waiting, we win victory!”

  At the halfway point, everyone in the crowd recites it with me, even the smallest children. The Valkyrie’s Prayer is one of the first we learn as children, regardless of what god we most worship. The audience’s repetition of my words rumbles through me, becoming a familiar eight-count rhythm that sounds in my ears, like a pounding heart or Odin’s eight-legged horse running through my bones. It’s more exhilarating to lead the performance than I expected.

  Holding up my spear, I call for silence. “Tonight is Baldur’s Night—tomorrow we will celebrate his return to us. But do you remember when he died? Do you remember the wailing and tears?” I lower my voice just a tad to say, “I remember; I remember every prince’s death, and this one we all dreamed!”

  “What did you dream, Valkyrie?” calls a man with a little girl in his lap.

  I point at him with the tip of my spear.

  “I dreamed I rose before dawn

  To clear up the Valhol for the newly slain.

  I woke the Lonely Warriors,

  Bade them up to strew the benches,

  Clear the ale horns,

  And my fellow Valkyrie to ready the wine.

  I dreamed the arrival of a prince

  Like no prince we had known before.”

  I push through the crowd to tell them what runes I see and use my calligraphy set to paint binding runes and poetry onto their faces and hands. Rarely do I see actual runes in the faces of these tourists but only pretend I do for the act, for the game. When I can, I scare them with prophecies of death and gruesome visions.

  One of the serving women brings me a goblet of mead and I drink it down before slamming the goblet onto the nearest table. The yellow honey alcohol sloshes over the sides and splashes onto the worn wood, and I cheer—the audience chee
rs with me.

  I sit back in the throne as Rome takes over again and encourages two performers to act out a boasting game while everyone eats. Unferth joins me, lounging against the side of my knee, and I once or twice take a thin braid of his in my hand, curling it possessively through my fingers. We cheer the competition, Rome and I, with Unferth crying insults to the losers while rubbing the ball of his hand into his cranky right thigh.

  George stands up from among the actors playing King Hrothgar’s retainers. He says his name is Beowulf and challenges Unferth’s poetic prowess with a boasting poem about how strong he is, how he swam through the ocean strangling sea monsters. Unferth snarls back, perfectly in character, calling George a liar and a coward with florid language.

  Just as their spar grows too heated, just as Rome and I pretend to consider intervening, a great low roar pierces the hall.

  We freeze in exaggerated poses. It comes again. Red Stripe, exactly on the poetry cue Unferth’s been repeating for days. George/Beowulf draws his sword as Red Stripe bursts through the foam-brick wall to the north of the thrones. I scream as loud and horridly as I can, drowning out the troll’s war cry.

  The audience screams, too.

  Red Stripe charges in, taking prompts from Unferth, who’s shifted to the back of the hall, using blunt-tipped spears to poke and prod his thick skin. Rome yells to George, “No sword can penetrate this beast’s cursed hide!” and George throws down his weapon. The retainers join him, but it’s George alone who throws himself at Red Stripe, gripping the papier-mâché prosthetic arm we tied to him. The two grapple and dance, fast and grand in the firelight.

  It’s all I can do not to laugh with delight.

  Unferth yells, “Grendel!” and Red Stripe roars again, throwing George away. Red Stripe turns to the audience and opens his mouth hideously wide. Children scream and many of their parents, too, but there’s clapping and gasps of amazement. Nobody runs. They know this is a show, despite the terror blazing through the atmosphere.

  George leaps onto Red Stripe from behind, grasps the immobile prosthetic arm, and tears it off with a berserker roar of his own. Dark purple corn syrup—my idea—splashes in an arc like arterial spray, pumping as George squeezes it from a hidden trigger.

  Red Stripe crashes to his knees, but is up again and runs away with a long, sad moan, his footsteps shaking the hall. Unferth slips after him through the ruined wall of our false Heorot. George lifts the dripping fake arm over his head, and I climb onto my throne to begin the applause.

  Great bands of laughter and cheering hit me, hit all of us. George and the retainers nail the arm to the wall behind the thrones and Rome calls for celebratory dessert.

  The crowd is loud with chatter and wonder, cheering us and digging into their tarts and ice cream. I sink into the throne, hot and alive, a grin splitting my face so hard my cheeks ache.

  After dessert I stand up and crow a harsh poem Unferth wrote about living on a rock of ice like ours, about how badly we need the coming dawn to drive the trolls away and for Baldur the Sun to bring joy back to the world. Rome waves a ring-adorned hand for dishes to be taken away and every goblet replaced with a paper lantern and an apple. The lantern is for releasing when the sun sets, to light Baldur’s path home. The apple reminds us of our mortality, that like Baldur we will all die some day without tasting the apples of youth that give eternal life to our gods.

  I eat my apple wildly. I destroy it like it’s my enemy, letting juice run down my chin to a roar of approval from the actors playing Rome’s warriors. They pound their feet and I pound mine back, every grain of the wooden throne pulsing beneath me. Rome laughs, a comforting old sound, and the audience laughs with him, children joining me in messy eating; apples and apple juice stain the tables.

  We release the crowd, Rome and I, crying out a closing prayer together. Rome invites them into the meadow for bonfires and a mummer dance before we release the lanterns at sunset. I toss the last of my mead into the fire and it bursts into sparks and snaking smoke.

  Out in the meadow, I grab a mask from the communal box and dance as eagerly as any Freyan born. The bonfires remind me of harvest dances from my childhood, of my parents and colorful autumn leaves.

  I drag tourists into the dancing with me, hold their hands and spin and spin. The clown Peachtree leaps onto me from behind, enveloping me in a monster hug. “That was amazing!” she shrieks. “Stay with us, Signy!” Her hair flairs blue and pink around her head and a hundred tiny plastic sequins stick to her face for a mask. I only laugh, and she flaps at my boring raven mask. We share a plastic glass of mead before diving back into the dancing.

  Fiddles make raucous noise, and shrieks of laughter carry it along. Everyone wears a mask: some are plain from the bin like mine, some feathered or long-nosed, others bejeweled, painted, or scattering glitter with every step. Who can tell tourist from townie? Husband from wife, or Odinist from Freyan? We all crowd together on Baldur’s holiday, dancing, drinking, and readying paper lanterns to send up into the sky as a trailing beacon to guide Baldur home at dawn.

  The raven mask lets me be one of them, not Signy Valborn, if only for a night.

  Jesca bustles through the crowd, her hair uncharacteristically loose and a flute of champagne in her delicate hand. “Signy!” she calls out. Her hip bumps into the woman beside her, and she playfully apologizes before reaching for my hand. I kiss her cheek, and she says loudly in my ear, “I just spoke to Rathi before the feast! He’s accepted a summer fellowship at a church in Mizizibi; isn’t that wonderful! He said they fought for him!”

  I look into her bright eyes and see only home there. Only a tipsy glaze and happiness. She pushes my mask off my face to better study it. “He’ll be here next week to visit, and I thought perhaps you might want to wait for him, to stay just a little bit longer.…”

  “Jesca!”

  “You two were always so good for each other.”

  “We were little kids; that’s not who we are anymore.” My vivid joy is sinking away, but I cling to it, wanting to keep hold of this high bliss as long as I can, before I have to go away tomorrow and leave this perfect night behind me.

  Jesca touches my cheeks. “That isn’t what he told me last summer, maidling.” But she shakes her head before I can answer. She kisses my cheeks and murmurs, “Happy Baldur’s Night,” into my ear.

  She vanishes into the crowd again and suddenly I’m desperate to find Unferth. Where did he disappear to? Isn’t he finished putting Red Stripe to bed yet? I turn in a full circle, scanning the crowd.

  Thin, straight clouds point toward the vanished sun, dragging lines of pink with them. The air is cold but bright and very much alive. People smile at me, hold out hands to pull me back into the dancing. They call her name, Valtheow! or Vinland Valkyrie!, not Signy. They want me to join them, offering another drink or piece of roasted apple. I take it all, eating from their fingers, drinking the mead or sparkling wine until my head spins.

  What I want is Ned Unferth, right now. I want him to see me being part of all this, bright and heady like he was at the Shipworm, a piece of this whole.

  I hurry toward the boundary of the meadow, heart beating harder than it should. The evening presses in and I blink fast, trying to find my best balance. I search the shadows for him, the edges of the crowd where he must be if he’s not in the center of it all. “A creature of thresholds.” I whisper a drunken poem to myself. “Spiritless because nothing exists between nothing.”

  There he is, standing on the slope of the moor, flask in hand, still wearing his feast costume. A green goblin mask covers his face, with apple-round cheeks, crescent eye slits, and a wide, clownish nose. But under it is his dangerous smile, his sharp white teeth.

  “Finished gaping?” Ned says lazily, one corner of that smile hooking up.

  “I don’t think I am,” I whisper, stepping forward. I snatch his hand and pull him farther up the rocky slope to where the shadows dance, too. The beak of my mask is too long for what I wa
nt, and I shove it up over my forehead, catching it in my hair with a tangle. Ned widens his colorless eyes but says nothing as I pull off his mask. It leaves two small red lines on his cheeks where it pressed.

  He’ll never be beautiful, never free of the gouges pain leaves around his mouth. Always tight angles and narrowed eyes. But there’s a charged string connecting us and it’s the only thing I understand at all.

  As the firelight flickers across his thin lips I hear nothing but the howl of blood in my ears. I kiss him.

  His chest is hard against mine and he touches my elbows. I cup his face; my fingers skim the rough edges of his jaw. A tiny sigh escapes him, and the moment he breathes into my mouth I sink in, dropping forward forever, but not like falling. Like floating.

  “Oh, little raven,” he whispers, and I smile, thinking, I want those teeth cutting into my lips.

  But when I move to kiss him again, Unferth holds me back.

  “Ned?” I say, blinking. The slope puts him centimeters higher than me, so he looks down with an ache in his eyes, except that it might merely be pity.

  “You shouldn’t do that again,” he says.

  Confusion makes me spiky. “Do that?”

  “Kiss me,” he snaps.

  I push my hands into my stomach. “You liked it,” I say, knowing, knowing, knowing he kissed me back.

  But he’s silent, as if he has no idea, for this one single time, what he can possibly say.

  I grab his coat in my fists and kiss him again, pushing our teeth together, making it a fight. He’ll fight me to the end of the world if that’s the sort of kiss it has to be.

  “Signy,” he hisses, shoving me away.

  Everything inside me combusts. “Unferth,” I spit back. “What is wrong with you?”

  He lifts his eyebrows in that arrogant way and I feel small and stupid. What is wrong with me?

  My heels catch on gravel and I trip, righting myself with a furious grunt. Without a backward glance I stomp away, wishing my boots could pound bruises into the island and tear the night up.