The Strange Maid

ONE

I TELL HIM my name and brace for the inevitable rejection.

The pawnbroker blinks slowly, his long false eyelashes like raven wings. Dull fluorescent lights do his hard face no favors, and he’s sweating in his flannel button-up, utterly masculine and disapproving in every way but those lashes. He glances again at the knife waiting on the counter between us, then gives me a long look before saying, “You don’t look like a Valkyrie.”

Rag you, I want to spit at him, but he’s my last resort if I want a private room for shelter from the storm rolling in over Lake Mishigam even as we speak. It’ll be sleet and frigid wind, and I’ll be ragged myself if I go back to the Lokiskin orphan house tonight. I’d been managing my anonymity nicely until one of the girls saw the binding rune on my palm this morning. They’ve certainly been gossiping about Signy Valborn, failed Valkyrie, all afternoon.

Couldn’t you solve a simple riddle? the oldest of them mocked, glad to discover some power over me.

May your guts knot like birthday ribbons, I snapped at her before storming out.

I could show the rune scar to this broker now, too, but the idea of having to prove my word offends me. I only say, “Believe me or not, this blade is worth more than your life.”

I flash as bright a smile as I can to soften the accusation.

He grunts. “If that’s so, why not sell it to a dealer or weaponsmith?”

I don’t answer.

“You thought I wouldn’t want the registration,” he guesses.

“Your kind usually don’t.” I wave my fingers at his false lashes. He’s Lokiskin, by their proof: gender-blending is a telltale sign of the Shifter’s patronage. So is a less-than-ethical business practice.

“I run a legit business, little girl.”

I sneer at the metal shelving and clusters of pawned goods for sale. Televisions and game consoles, old VHS tapes, fancy dishes, furniture, lawn equipment, dusty books, altar candles and mismatched rune sets, bear and horse idols and mead horns. And behind the counter in locked glass cases: jewelry, daggers, swords, spears, and guns. None of them as fine as the knife I’ve offered.

“I didn’t steal it,” I say.

We both study my seax. The single-edge broken-back knife is twice as long as my hand, with Odin’s runes etched along the spine, a hilt of smooth troll ivory, and a star of tiny death-colored emeralds embedded at the bolster. The brown leather scabbard sits beside it on the counter, tooled with my surname, Valborn, in runic calligraphy.

“Even if you are who you say you are,” the broker says gently, “you should’ve known to bring registration for a piece like this.”

It’s the tone that stiffens my spine. “I wouldn’t have this much trouble selling it in Kansa or Tejas!”

“Then scoot on down to Kansa or Tejas with your unregistered weapon. I won’t have it in the shadow of the holy Death Hall.”

It’s just behind my teeth to spit out, It was a gift from the Valkyrie who rules from that very Death Hall, but what’s the point? I snatch the seax and snap it into the scabbard, curse his mother Loki, and shove back out into the icy street.

The scabbard fits through my belt, snuggled comfortably against my ribs, and a knot in my shoulders relaxes just to have it back where it belongs. I wonder bitterly if I chose this shop so near the temple of the Valkyrie of the Lakes because some part of me knew I could pretend to have tried to pawn it but not truly worry that I’d lose it.

I caress the ivory hilt, then shut my old red coat around myself. It’s bulky from stuffed pockets and makes me look twice as wide as I am. Though worn these days and ragged at the hem, other than my boots it’s the last vestige of my former glory. Soon I’ll have to trade it for something without a torn lining.

I braid my long hair with stiff fingers and wind it around my neck like a scarf before hunching into the wind off the lake.

Skyscrapers do little to block the cold. Their windows reflect the steely clouds and remind me Chicagland is closed to me. Cars crawl past as the evening drops, and my shoulders knock into hurrying commuters. If they knew that I’m what’s left of that boisterous, vivid little girl, the Child Valkyrie, if they noticed my rune scar, would they think the same thing? How hard is it to solve a single riddle? Would they study me with the same pity as was in the eyes of that cursed Lokiskin?

They think the riddle is the source of all my problems, when really it was just the final straw.

The dark orange and brown of autumn trees from the distant lakefront park snatch my attention. Splashes of violence between modern steel office buildings. I cross Roosevelt toward the L station; I can see the distant dome of the Death Hall against the gray sky.

My feet slow.

I could stay warm in the hall’s public sanctuary tonight, tucked in among the mourners and lost warriors, the devout Odinists and poets who seek out the Death Hall to pray.

The smell of mint and evergreen and wax would lull me; the candlelight, the creak of pews send me to sleep. There used to be green cushions tied to the seats that would make a soft bed. The death priests would allow it, and the wolf-guards, even if they came close, might not recognize my new thin lips and short fingernails, or my eyes, because they’re bigger now that I’ve lost the round pink cheeks of girlhood. I’d be home.

In a week and a half I’ll be seventeen. It’s a decade since I climbed the New World Tree, since Odin Alfather, god of the hanged, named me the next Valkyrie of the Tree, and still I have not won my place on the Valkyrie council.

For 250 years, the Council of Valkyrie has advised the president and Congress on matters of the gods. There were nine of them until the Thralls’ War, when Kara Neverborn defied Odin and was punished by being stripped out of the world, her name forgotten by all but the Valkyrie. Ever since then, the remaining eight have behaved—to a fault. They serve mead to the gods every holiday in Bright Home. They raise funds and awareness for charity. They speak out on behalf of the gods and sometimes mediate between our human government and Asgard. They officiate funerals and holy sacrifices. They’re celebrities who wield tremendous influence, can go anywhere and do anything because they touch the gods and walk among them.

And I belong with them.

Memory and longing draw me toward the lakefront park, toward the manicured lawns and bright maple trees, the museums and observatories and avenue of temples at the water’s edge. I played here every other year of my apprenticeship, when it was the Valkyrie of the Lake, Myra Quick’s turn to keep and teach me. I laughed all the time; I had clean sheets and anything I wished to eat. Shoes for running and shoes for walking, shoes for dancing. Silver rings and jeweled pins to hold my braids off my neck. Caramel ice cream.

I had sisters.

After Odin named me, he turned me over to the eight women who make up the Valkyrie council, quelling their irritation that he stole their prerogative of choosing their successors by saying they and they alone would declare me ready to take my place among them. They passed me from Death Hall to Death Hall every three months for eight years.

From the Valkyrie of the Rock in Cheyenne and from the South in Port Orleans I learned history and politics; poetry from the Valkyrie of the Ice in her hall in Vertmont; ritual and comportment from the First Valkyrie, who is stationed in Bright Home, Colorada, to be near to the gods. Languages from the Valkyrie of the Prairie, as well as a love for open air. The Valkyrie of the East, in Shenandoah, taught me to speak evenly and perform, and the West, in Baja California, told me about sex and death and gave me kisses to keep nightmares away. From Myra herself, the Valkyrie of the Lakes, here in Chicagland, I learned how to fight, though she swore to gut me like a deer if I told her sisters how good at it I was.

She gave me this seax in my belt.

The Chicagland Death Hall rises before me. Half castle, half modern art, it’s so different from my Old Eurland–style Death Hall that butts up against the New World Tree in Philadelphia. Here in Chicagland, they built their hall of limestone and tall dark windows that glint pale orange from the sun setting across the city. It’s a rectangular tower of straight lines, but for the green dome of the belfry, with huge white faces of the dead carved into each corner. The main entrance doors are capped by a lintel carved like the rays of the sun.

From the pole at the tip of the dome flies a green pennant, ruffling hard and fast in the lake wind. It means Myra is in residence. She’s somewhere above me, short hair slicked back for that severe look, maybe beating on a punching bag or bathing for dinner with the Jarl of Chicagland.

What would she say if I walked into the sanctuary and climbed over the marble rail separating the public space from the inner? If I knelt at her throne and told her all the secrets our god of the hanged has whispered to me, all the nights of stories and lessons that led to the riddle?

Every year on my birthday, at dusk, Odin Alfather sent Memory to my window to tap-tap-tap with her beak and draw me into the garden of the Tree. When I was still young, he’d come with his blond beard and fatherly smile to grab me up and swing me onto his shoulders, where I could wrap his braids around my hands like reins while he climbed us onto the lowest branches. I told him everything I learned during the year; he whispered how delighted he was with my fierce progress. That whirling mad eye of his noted how tall I’d grown, and he joked about my skinny arms, while I promised next year there would be muscle, next year I’d be nearly as tall as him.

Why did you choose me, Alfather? I asked. What is this itch under my skin when I think of you? When I remember blood and sorrow?

That itch is why I chose you, little raven, he said. The madness teases at you, because you’re bold and daring—who other would climb our sacred Tree for selfish reasons? And he laughed when I screwed my face at selfish.

Sometimes he appeared younger, a thick warrior to put me through my paces all night long, testing my reflexes, giving me a solid wallop to drive the breath from me. Other times he came hunched and old, a tall hat over his ice-white hair and that mad-pearl eye shimmering with mystery. Together we dug into the earth beneath the Tree’s roots to find worms and beetles with iridescent wings, the tiny building blocks of life, he said. Death and life, an infinite circle, he said. See here, the rainbow colors hidden inside death? The poetry of putrescence? Red-hot blood and clinging green decay, as beautiful as sunrise, as the rose born in summertime.

And I saw it; I believed it. I still do. There are hints of Odin the Mad under rocks and in the city rot; the violent pink smog has poetry in it, too, the dirty foam at the lake’s edge, the crumpled trash tossed by a wind into life. In the hot licking flames of a funeral pyre. The rest of the country doesn’t see it—even my sister Valkyrie pretend it’s not there—but it’s the Alfather’s constant presence, like the sun in the sky reminds us of Baldur the Beautiful, that this underbelly of death is Odin.

Kneeling at the edge of the smooth concrete path that curves toward the Death Hall, I skim my cold, stiff fingers over fallen maple leaves. Bright orange and scarlet, they curl against the dirt, sacrificed by the elegant tree to conserve energy and survive the winter. Without dropping these leaves, could it bloom in the spring?

People say I’ve failed every few months when some interweave site or local news channel does a fluff piece: Whatever happened to the Child Valkyrie? These leaves are what give me hope, even a year after I left the Valkyrie with the riddle clutched close to my chest, even as I’ve wandered the country hunting the answer like a revenant. A ghost of Signy Valborn. This reminder everywhere I turn that life and death are the same. One leads to the other, and my god rules over that transformation, the release of death into new life. The essence of sacrifice.

But in the shadow of Myra Quick’s magnificent Death Hall it’s so hard. Inside are warmth and a silky bed, delicious food and sweet-smelling shampoo. Death is concealed with makeup and evergreen incense, surrounded with ritual and simple poetry. Outside, where I am, with an itchy scalp and underwear in my pocket, ash on my tongue, only my own hair for a scarf, it is oh, so hard.

The queen walked out, gold-adorned—

We, shadow-riders, singers of death, weave with blood-soaked thread—

Lines of poetry shuffle through my thoughts, from the oldest Valkyrie poems, where the Death Choosers ride all together, as sisters and friends, shield-maidens and allies. I long to pull out my marker and draw the runes down my arm, or to find a bottle of paint and spray them against the sidewalk—better yet, a great red scrawl of poetry across the Death Hall doors. Poetry always makes me feel stronger, whether songs in Old Anglish or Old Scandan, or new, never-heard, never-read, never-spoken word-shapes I pull from my black imagination.

My mouth curls and I want that so badly, to paint my heart against the limestone hall, to remind them I exist. Do you still think of me, Myra Quick? I almost sold this seax today.

“Have you come to pray?” a man asks from behind me, his voice a rasp.

I scowl and answer without looking. “Come to the Death Hall to sacrifice, or don’t come at all.”

“Is prayer not a sacrifice of breath?”

The riddling answer gives me pause. I turn to find a young man slouching against one of the iron streetlamps. Perhaps five years older than me, in a tattered gray coat. He’s got sharp cheeks and a thin mouth, slender shoulders, and eyes as colorless as the overcast sky. Most intriguing are his intricate pale braids, woven and pinned in extremely old fashion. Like a poet from before the Viker age, or a silent-film star. For a brief, vivid moment I think it’s finally my Alfather again, come to me after all my prayers and begging. Slowly I say, “The worth of a sacrifice is in the pain it causes, and breathing does not seem to cause either of us pain.”

He pushes off the lamp and approaches; a hitch in his step fails to strip his grace away. There’s a sword strapped to his back, but all I can see of it is the one-handed grip and a garnet winking from the pommel. This man doesn’t take his eyes off mine and stops at barely an arm’s length away. We’re the exact same height, eye to eye.

“That isn’t the worth of sacrifice,” he says.

Rain hits my nose, but I don’t look away from his eyes. I search his face for a rune sign to show me his merit. Seeing such runes is a Valkyrie trait, to see the truth in the hearts of men and women: Who is a hero? Whose fate is grand enough to be touched by a Valkyrie? The gift bled into me when Odin kissed my palm in the Tree. It burned into my bones and cannot be taken away by any less than the Alfather himself. The council may have given up on me, but as long as runes appear to me in the faces of others, in their eyes or their freckles or the curve of their smiles, I’ll know I still have a chance.

The man blinks as rain scatters over his cheeks. It sprinkles on us, tiny ice water drops seeping through my hair to trail down my scalp and spine. I shove my hands into my pockets and don’t look away, though no runes appear. It cannot be the Alfather. I would know him; I would sense the madness. See some sign.

Slender wisps of hair stick to this young man’s temples, water darkens his heavy eyebrows, and the corner of his mouth twitches as a long drop of rain slides like a scar down his chin. He’s not handsome, but I think I could stare at him for a very long time.

“Enjoy what you see?” he drawls.

“Who are you?”

“My name is Ned Unferth.”

I snort. His name is like a riddle, too: Unferth is an Old Anglish word scholars have argued over for ages. It means either full of spirit or spiritless. Brave or cowardly, nothing in between. It’s a word that contradicts itself. It’s also the name of the poet who challenges Beowulf Berserk in the famous poem about trolls and kings in long-ago Daneland.

I know it well, for my favorite Valkyrie, Valtheow the Dark, appears in its verses, too. “He who knelt at the foot of the king,” I recite.

Ned Unferth shrugs. “There are worse things to be called.”

There’s silence between us again, and he seems content to wait here while the cold pinpricks of rain burrow into our bones. The tattered hem of his coat flaps, and under the water-dark cuff of his jeans his boots are scuffed and old. I should abandon this stranger, turn my back carelessly. But to go where? Back to the orphanage? To huddle under a bridge somewhere? The Valkyrie of the Gutter.

I shudder, and my head aches from the slicing wind. “Is there something you want?” I finally ask.

Unferth smiles quick, but enough so I see a flash of teeth. “I have a birthday present for you, little raven.”

Every piece of me freezes. So the Alfather calls me, and none other. Was I wrong before and this is Odin, my god of the hanged, standing before me, teasing me with riddles? Finally come to me again? But there is no madness in this man’s left eye, no hint of godhood or anything.

Cold rain falls all around as Ned Unferth leans toward me and says, “I know the answer to your riddle.”