Tessa Gratton - The Strange Maid

None responded. They regarded me as a unit, eight pairs of eyes hammering me in place, bending my knees with their weight. If only I could have read runes in their eyes! But never had their worth been revealed to me that way.

I pressed my fist against my chest, where I had when I was a little girl and wanted to shriek and wail my grief. “You are gutless cowards! This is transformation, and action! Odin chose me because I am bold, and you’ll watch from behind me!”

“You will be rejected by the people if you try to bring back the old ways,” Precia, the Valkyrie of the South, said calmly, as she was always calm. The youngest of them, barely seven years my elder, she coifed her hair like an elegant old lady and wore chunky antique jewelry. “They want us as we are. Symbols, voices. Protectors. They trust us, and we will not let you jeopardize that trust. Or the Covenant. Without the Covenant, we cannot exist in the modern world.”

I felt tears in my throat, and I lifted my chin to keep them back. “You should hear his voice when he urges me to this; you should ask him yourselves. Let me show you!”

“You will not.” Gundrun cut her hand down, and that was the final word. Hers was always the final word.

Except Myra Quick, the Valkyrie of the Lakes, leaned forward. “Happy birthday, Signy,” she said bitterly.

I fled for the garden of the New World Tree, shoving past the death priest pruning the winter yew bushes. I flung myself at the base, scraped my hands against the trunk, and pressed my forehead into the rough bark until it hurt.

I thought Myra understood me better than the rest, she and Precia, the Valkyrie of the South. Myra sparred as skillfully and strong as the ancient Valkyrie Hervor and Skuld, and I remembered how Precia’s cheeks would go pink with elation when we reenacted the Flight of Brynhild . We three would be the passionate, raging ones, spirit-sisters to tilt balance against the First Valkyrie and her conservative confederates, the Valkyrie of the Ice and the East.

But even they didn’t understand.

Alfather, help me! Give me a sign!

There was no answer but the whisper of wind through the rattle-dry leaves of the Tree. I curled between two massive roots, hair tangled in my face, hands cold and tucked to my breast, until I fell asleep.

In my dream I led Malchai to the hanging ground, and the city cheered for me as the noose slung around my neck. I was the one dragged into the sky, to dangle and dance and choke for the Alfather.

Dawn woke me, frost in my hair and my face numb. My throat ached for all the crying I’d done and was bruised from dreaming. I stumbled to my feet. Three of the Valkyrie stood in the garden with me: Myra Quick, Precia of the South, and Elisa of the Prairie. Tears tracked down Precia’s bright cheeks, and Myra’s lips were pale. Elisa closed her eyes and pointed to the trunk of the Tree.

I looked.

Burned into the dark, ropy bark was a riddle.

The Valkyrie of the Tree will prove herself with a stone heart .

It was the only answer I got from my god.

Thinking he agreed with them, that I’d gone too far, too fast, I took what I could carry and walked out of the Philadelphia Death Hall.

For nearly two years I’ve wandered, sleeping where I can, earning money how I can. Poetry on a street corner or, early on, officiating small funerals before the country realized I’d run away—before one of my death priests or wolf-guards leaked the riddle to the newspapers. I’ve crashed in half-decrepit buildings, brewing street-shine and selling it for coins. Trusting people with runes in their eyes like joy and strength and courage . At first I tried to be cool like Precia or Siri, tried to harden my heart into stone. Not to grow wild with anger or grief or passion.

Impossible, when I can’t stop this itch to leap into action, to do something no matter what the consequences. How can I walk past another girl being roughed up? How can I not deface those infuriating anti-berserker subway posters? How can I do less than Valtheow, who made herself a mask of mud and blood to face down her enemies?

I don’t understand why Odin would want me to have a heart of stone, if that’s what the riddle means, when I know he was drawn to my wildness.

If this were an ancient poem, if I read the line in a song, I would think stone heart was a kenning for death, or maybe for a Freyan, someone who worships Freyr the Satisfied, the god of earth and fertility, like my parents. They love the earth and poetically speaking could be said to love stone, to have hearts for stone. But it’s so twisted up in language! Could a stone heart mean justice? Balance, like what Tyr the Just brings to the world in the shape of laws and integrity, because a stone heart would not vary? Or maybe a stone heart is a heart of fire, because flint is a stone and it sparks fire from steel.

The people I’ve asked did not know, either. I managed an audience with several lawspeakers, and a Freyan priest in his temple; I got onto the stage at a public reading at the Mishigam Poet’s College and recited them the riddle as if I’d created it. None of them had a better answer. How should the Valkyrie prove herself with a stone heart? I demanded again and again.

A young seethkona across the border in Acadia searched for a clue in my runes, but all she saw was the road stretching ahead of me for months and a cold, broken city. I even hitched to New Netherland City to ask Rathi Summerling, my former wish-brother, who was apprenticed to a Chautauqua preacher there and knew everything about history. I remained with him for three months, falling a little in love with him and his city for the mold in the cracks of its sidewalks, the violence of the taxicabs and sharp steel skyscrapers, the disposable smells, the crush of people streaming over all that death like it nurtured them. But not even he could give me an answer.

Two years now since the riddle appeared, most people have forgotten me.

The rune scar still marks my palm like a brand: this girl belongs to the god of the hanged. But I’m a Valkyrie in name only.

And here is this man, Ned Unferth, standing in the freezing rain outside of the Chicagland Death Hall and saying as if it’s the simplest thing in the world, “I know the answer to your riddle.”

He must be mocking me.

I get right into his face. “ Liar.”

“I never lie, little raven,” he says.

Little raven . I flatten my scarred palm over my heart, pressing down against the rise and fall of my breath. Then I lurch forward and grab his face. He doesn’t move, barely blinking. My thumbs press under his eyes. His jaw is rough and cold against my palms. He leaves his arms hanging at his sides, flicking a glance at the onlookers who pause with concern under their umbrellas. Then Unferth smiles at me again, a dangerous curve of lips that lures me even closer.

And there, there in the colorless iris of his left eye, is a single bright rune: truth .

He promises me food and answers if I go with him. Elisa of the Prairie would lecture me about getting into cars with strangers, but I have my seax, and the rune in his eye as a hint of his worth. I don’t think he’ll try to murder me tonight, and a clue to my riddle is worth the risk.

What else am I supposed to do? Anything is better than throwing myself on Myra Quick’s mercy.

As he opens the passenger door of a blue pickup truck, Unferth calls me little raven again. Oh, how I miss my god of the hanged! This riddle is all I have left of him, my only way home to him again.

Unferth gets behind the wheel and turns on the heater as he drives north out of town. Neither of us touches the radio, and the only sound is the roar of the engine, the streak of wipers, and rain spattering the metal roof. By the time I’m warm, my stomach screams for food and I’m damp from the soaking my coat received.