Tessa Gratton - The Strange Maid

“Where are we going?”

“Dinner, and then, if you like my answers, north into Canadia.”

I could get used to such truth-telling. It’s relaxing, despite the excitement that thrills up my spine. Canadia. That more than anything convinces me he has a plan: there are no good reasons to head into troll country. I watch him as he drives, eyes on the road, going about five kilometers below the speed limit, hands at two and ten. Always uses his blinker, lets cars merge, and never cusses, even in the Chicagland traffic.

Either he’s from another planet or too cautious to be an Odinist.

“What’s the answer?” I say after ten minutes and only about seven kilometers.

“I’d prefer to lay it all out in proper order,” he says tightly.

“Did Odin send you?” I ask instead. “Are you one of his men? Not a berserker, not a death priest. A warrior?”

“I’m a poet.”

“An Odinist, then.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Most poets are Odinists.”

“These days.”

I frown. It’s all true, but not exactly answers. “Are you dedicated to Odin?”

He flicks an irritated glance at me but has to look straight back out the windshield. “Does it matter?”

“Obviously! Did Odin tell you the answer to his riddle? And you know my secret name.”

“ Hrafnling,” he mutters. “An Old Anglish diminutive only. ‘Little raven’ was a Valkyrie’s child name in ancient times, in the oldest songs.”

“I’ve never heard it before!”

Unferth only shrugs.

For ten more minutes I glare at his profile. His nose is crooked and his lips thin, but I quite like his cheekbones and jaw. There’s a twist of shine on his neck that might be a scar. As his hair dries it brightens to a wispy pale blond. He’s got scars on his knuckles and fingers, too, from fighting.

Unferth pulls off the highway into the parking lot of a Xia buffet. “You must be hungry,” he says.

“Just tell me the answer,” I insist.

He settles his hands and the keys in his lap and leans his shoulder into the door to face me.

I try again. “How do I prove myself with a stone heart?”

“Kill yourself a troll.”

“ What?” I’m trapped between laughing incredulously and kicking him across the gearshift.

“A stone heart. If you kill a troll, it turns into stone, doesn’t it? Heart included.”

Laughter dries on my tongue. I stare for a long moment. Unferth waits expressionlessly.

“That’s so …” I pound a fist onto my thigh. “Ragging literal. Too literal. It can’t be. It has nothing to do with the … kind of Valkyrie I want to be. With the reasons I clashed with my sisters in the first place! The answer should be about being bold or not, about danger or power or safety! It should be more dramatic than this, at least.”

Unferth’s eyebrows go up. “Trolls aren’t dramatic or dangerous enough for you?”

I shrug a little helplessly. It’s a valid point. Killing a troll—a greater mountain troll, a monster—would be glorious and violent, a thing only the wild berserkers do these days, or Thor and his army.

Valtheow the Dark faced trolls.

Hope sputters to life. For the first time I wonder if Odin sent that riddle to prove to my sisters that I was right . Maybe I’m not supposed to learn something about myself or change; maybe they are . He wants the old ways back, and I’m his vessel for it.

“Perhaps some food will fatten up your riddling muscles,” Unferth says, unlocking the doors. He tucks his sword under the dashboard and leaves me, running through the rain toward the buffet. I scramble down after him.

Cozy red decor welcomes us, along with tinny harp music. The walls are covered with banner paintings of misty hills and old fishing boats, and gentle lamps hang low over the booths. It smells like fried vegetables and fish, and I barely pause at our table before heading for the buffet. Unferth orders a beer after asking the hostess which is her favorite import, and adds a second for me before following.

I ignore that it’s been weeks since I ate food this rich and plentiful, and devour it messily. Unferth eats like it’s a science experiment. A bit of every offering fills up two plates and three small soup bowls, and he tastes it all, either discarding the whole after a single bite or finishing it. I’m done long before him, feeling stuffed for the first time in ages. I continue to study him, as if his clothes or his habits will tell me how he guessed the answer to my riddle.

Under his coat he’s got on jeans and biker boots, a plain T-shirt over a long-sleeved one. It’s definitely a scar around his neck, just exactly where a noose would pull, and three of his left fingers are encircled by rings. He’s exceedingly polite to the server who refreshes our waters and offers chopsticks, and his speech has a rhythm to it that’s not quite an accent but marks itself. I take a drink of the pale Xian beer and close my eyes. With a full stomach and warm all over, my body wants to sink deeper into the booth and relax, but my mind is sailing.

Here is this Unferth with a supposed answer to the Alfather’s riddle—a miraculous, well-timed answer nobody has suggested before. If Odin didn’t send him, how did he find me, and why now?

I set down my chopsticks. “How old are you?” I ask.

“As old as the flower that blooms and dies every year.”

I scoff. “Where are you from?”

“A country where the sun rises and sets every other day.” Unferth turns over an egg roll and meets my eyes as he spears it with his fork.

“Who is your father?”

Now a lazy smile stretches across his face and he slumps back into the booth. “As much a king as I am.”

His answers are riddles, too, and could mean he does not age, he is not from the Middle World, or he is as divine as his father. As Odin. The thrill of leaping to a conclusion makes my toes dance in my boots. “You’re one of the Lonely Warriors,” I guess.

The Einherjar, Odin Alfather’s undead soldiers, drawn from the greatest of our heroes from all the ages to serve him in Asgard. They train constantly in the fields outside the Valhol to fight at his side when the end of the world comes. They eat with him and drink from the Poet’s Cup to retain their memories even in death; they are his spies in the Middle World, his brothers-in-arms. Perhaps he learned to call me little raven from Odin’s own lips.

But Ned Unferth laughs dismissively.

I wait. Rain slashes the windows. We’re practically alone in the restaurant, in a quiet bubble. “Well?” I finally push.

“Was there a question?” he asks, not bothering to hide his mirth.

How delightful that I can amuse him so well. I narrow my eyes. “Are you Einherjar ?”

“I am a man.”

Frustration squeezes my fists.

Smile gone, he says, “Ask the right questions and I’ll answer them.”

“Why are you sure the riddle means I need the heart of a troll?”

“I am a poet and riddler, little raven. I know words and their meanings inside and outside, and from angles you cannot imagine. I know all riddles have more than one answer, and the heart of a troll is one answer to your riddle.”

“Is it the right one?”

“They’re all the right one.”

“Will you explain it to me? All the angles I can’t imagine?”

Unferth curls his lips. “It would take a hundred days.”

“ The Valkyrie of the Tree will prove herself with a stone heart,” I bite out.

“Prove herself to whom?” he asks.

“To the Valkyrie. To Odin.”

“Where does it say that?”

I open my mouth but say nothing.

He shakes his head. “You assume too much. All that is there is that the Valkyrie, whoever she is, will prove herself to someone or something with a stone heart. As no doubt you have assumed , many things could be symbolized by a stone heart. It’s a poetic device, isn’t it?” Unferth puts one finger against the polished wood of the table and draws an invisible heart. “The only thing that is absolutely, by every angle, a stone heart, literally, is a once-beating bloody heart transformed entirely into marble or obsidian by the sun’s curse upon the trollkin. Perhaps not the only answer, but the best answer.”