Never (17 page)

The girls, to their credit, did not scream or fuss. Instead they tripled their pace, legs pumping as fast as they could as they sped past the village, aimed directly for their father's fields. Piotr, carrying Þrima on his back and the geese tangled in the net at his hip and Róta, supporting her baby's head and snagged up by her long, long hair, both fell quickly behind and took the fork in the forest that led home instead.

“I…feel like I know that one in the front,” Wendy said as they reached the dooryard of Piotr's home and found Eir there, blocking the way into her home from the three larger women. The leader of the three, curling locks framing her face, poked Eir in the shoulder repeatedly as she made her point. Wendy wondered what she was saying but the memory here was curiously silent.

Eir looked so small and fragile compared to the Valkyrie—without her armor, without her cloak of feathers, Eir was just a normal woman with a brood of children who needed protecting and a homestead targeted by an enraged goddess.

“Of course you know her,” Piotr said, his voice pitched in a low, harsh growl. “This is Sanngriðr. The Lady Walker.”

“No!” Wendy could hardly believe it, the difference was so dramatic. But, as she looked the Valkyrie over, she began noticing all the similarities that had drawn her eye before. “She's prettier with a whole face,” Wendy noted. “Though I think I like her better as skin and bones; she seems more formidable this way, all muscles and bullying. But why is it quiet now? I can't hear anything but you.”

“These memories are only cobbled together,” Piotr explained, glaring at the Valkyrie. “Some from me, some from my mother, and others from my sisters who could act as my eyes in times when I was elsewhere.”

“Oh, geez, I barely noticed that you weren't actually here.” Wendy looked around the yard. “So who gave you this memory?”

“Bolya.” Piotr gestured to a dark-haired girl carding wool on the porch; her eyes expression was open and startled as the three Valkyrie surrounded Eir and began gesturing pointedly.

“What's wrong with her?” Wendy asked curiously, amazed at the intent way Bolya watched the tableau. “I thought you said you were all healthy growing up?”

“Born healthy, yes, but even a Reaper can be wounded. My mother never buried a child to illness, but we didn't all leave childhood completely unscathed.”

“She's deaf,” Wendy realized, feeling idiotic for not putting that together before. She was going to ask more but Sanngriðr was curt with her demands; while Wendy and Piotr were talking Sanngriðr and the others mounted their mares and took dramatically to the skies. Moments later Piotr, Þrima, and Róta arrived at the homestead.

They found Eir shaking with anger and crying furious tears as she scrubbed the hearth. In the distance Wendy spotted Bolya rushing toward the fields and the rest of Piotr's absent family, waving her arms wildly to get their attention, her mouth open in a silent scream.

“Pay attention,” Piotr said, taking Wendy by the wrist and gesturing toward his mother, his past self, and his remaining sisters. “This is important.”

“Remember,” Eir said suddenly, the memory breaking into sound again as Þrima knelt beside Eir at the hearth and buried her thin face in their mother's strong shoulder, “remember that hearths are the best places to hide things.”

Then, looking pointedly between Þrima and Piotr, she lifted up a heavy fieldstone that appeared to be embedded in the floor at the base of the fire. Instead it lifted easily and beneath was the cloak of many feathers, the golden chain, and a thin shift of white—all the clothing that she'd worn when she abandoned the heavens for Earth.

Past-Piotr and present-Piotr, both standing in the doorway, said, “We'll remember, Momma. Please don't cry.”

“These are not tears of pain, or of sorrow, Piotr, but of rage,” Eir said, wiping the wetness from her cheek and holding the drops up to the light, cupped in her palm like diamonds. “These are tears that must be shed. Now, listen to me and listen well, for we have only a short time before my sisters will return.”

“We're listening, Momma,” Þrima promised.

“Every spring,” Eir said, “I must travel to the river to wash my cloak. This cloak.” She held her hands out at arm's length and flapped, miming shaking out a great swath of fabric. “This must happen every single year. No matter the weather, the cloak must be washed.”

“Why?” Þrima asked, leaning forward.

“Because without the cloak I cannot return home,” Eir said. “And feathers must be kept clean to fly.”

“You want to leave us?” Piotr asked, voice low.

“Oh, Piotr, no! It is nothing like that!” Eir hesitated and then added, “Piotr…Þrima…for your father I have taken on human flesh. I have weighed myself down with meat and broth and blood and babies, but always I keep in mind that someday my husband will die, that my children will pass and I will live on.”

Piotr frowned. “You can't die, Momma?”

“Son, my sisters and I…we are long-lived. So long-lived we
might seem immortal to humans. And, as my children, you are strong and healthy and will be long-lived as well, but you will never reach the years my kind will reach. Þrima here may live to be a hundred, or possibly two hundred years old, but no more. Even weighed down with this heavy human life I could easily—easily!—live on for two thousand years or more.”

Smiling, Eir reached out and stroked Piotr's cheek. “Already Róta is of an age as the day I stepped onto the snow and soil and took on a physical shell for your father. I have hardly aged since then and people in the village are beginning to…talk.”

“Who cares what they say?” Piotr demanded, pounding a fist on his thigh. “They're a bunch of busybodies anyway, and—”

“Piotr! Peace, Piotr, peace! Their rumors are not unexpected, sweet boy. I know that one day, when my children and grandchildren have passed from this place, that I will need to return to the Bright Lands and present myself for punishment. The necklace allows me to go there, the cloak is my badge, my proof that I am one of the Reapers.”

“Punishment? Momma, no!” Þrima shook her head, her red curls bouncing against her cheeks. “You haven't done anything wrong!”

“She disobeyed an order,” Piotr corrected his little sister. “She did it for Papa. Because he had kind eyes and she loved him.”

“Piotr has the way of things,” Eir said pressing her hand on the hearth. “I know that I will need, one day, to do the right thing, to face Freyja and explain myself. Thus I kept my cloak and I need to keep it safe.”

“Can we help, Momma?” Þrima asked. “I'd do anything to help you so you're not in trouble.”

Eir chuckled and ruffled her daughter's curls. “You are helping, my fierce, lovely girl. Now that I know that I may not, in fact, be granted the time I originally thought, I want you two to know that my cloak is here, and how to keep it. Can you promise me that,
Piotr? Þrima? Will you swear to keep my cloak safe, my necklace safe, so that I may return home and explain myself?”

“I promise, Momma,” Piotr said. “I'll keep your cloak safe. The necklace too.”

“Þrima?”

“I promise, Momma,” Þrima parroted. “I'll keep your cloak safe too. Better than Piotr will!”

Laughing, Eir drew her children close as, in the distance, Wendy could hear the sound of pounding footsteps approaching. She glanced through the open doorway and spied a much-older Borys sprinting across the far garden at the edge of the homestead's clearing, his children trailing behind.

With that, the world around them faded to white until there was no floor, no walls, and no roof above them, just an endless wash of white.

Wendy opened her eyes.

“That was…intense,” she said. “Piotr, how do you stand it? How can you stand getting all the memories back like this? In this…this huge painful flood?”

He shook his head. “I share them. With you. Only you make…this…bearable.” Piotr leaned forward and brushed a finger against her cheek. “Come. We will be missed inside.”

Wendy followed Piotr through a thin spot in the wall into the kitchen. Chel, Jon, and the others were examining the kitchen with dumbfounded expressions.

Wendy winced. The lead Walker who had visited the previous evening to fetch her on behalf of the Lady Walker had overturned the fridge one-handed; the kitchen was a mess. Wendy poked at a water bottle with a toe. It didn't move and her foot slid through with no resistance at all. She thought of the Walker upstairs, how he had crushed her belongings with just one hand, bullying her into going with him. How had the Walker
done
that? “I'm really sorry about the mess.”

Jon flipped the kitchen light on and tossed the car keys on the counter. “You can't control everything, Wendy. Okay, Chel, you get this corner,” he said, kneeling by the toppled fridge, “and I'll get this one. We'll lift together. One-two-three-HUP!”

Together the twins uprighted the fridge, plugged it back in, and between the two of them, managed to shimmy it into place. Chel knelt down to finish cleaning the floor while Jon found old towels to wipe the walls.

“Aw, man, I forgot about the cookies.” Jon said, lifting a paper towel off the counter and scowling at his burnt cookies underneath.

“Guys,” Wendy said, “we need to pack and go. The intruder was definitely a Reaper. A baby Reaper, a Reaper-in-training, but a Reaper nonetheless.”

“Reaper, schmeeper,” Jon said negligently, almost vibrating with energy as his second wind took over. “We can handle some chick breaking into the house, that's what 911 is for. You know what really has me creeped out? The Lady Walker. What's her deal, Wendy? How'd the Walkers manage all this?” He waved a hand at the pile of obliterated cookies and the broken bottles on the floor. “You know what sucks the hardest? I wasted a can of organic cocoa on these. That stuff is not cheap.”

“Color me sorry, Jon, I'll spring for more when I've got a wallet I can actually open,” Wendy said testily, reaching down and trying with all her might to pick up the overturned water bottle.
It's just plastic
, she angrily thought.
Why can't I budge it? What made those Walkers so special?
“Walkers, Walkers everywhere, only bony asses to kick.”

“That's it?” Jon asked, examining each cookie individually before dumping them one by one into the trash can. “That's all you've got? Just ‘Walkers’?”

“That alone ought to be enough of an explanation,” Wendy replied, grouchy and not bothering to hide it. Giving up on moving the bottle, Wendy leaned forward, resting her elbows on the counter. One elbow rested firmly on the Formica, the other slid through. Frowning, Wendy straightened.
Fine
, she decided, angry that even here, in her own home, she couldn't rest against counters that should be solid, and had been trapped behind walls that shouldn't be.
Fine, whatever. I'll just stand.

“Why aren't you scared of the Reapers?” she demanded of her brother, glaring at the counter.

Scowling, Jon dumped the last of the cookies en-masse, saving aside the least-burned cookie to try. He nibbled the edge before grimacing and, without looking, chucked the cookie over his shoulder into the can. “We handled Jane easily enough.”

“You got lucky,” Wendy said flatly. “Jane and the other Reapers won't let you sneak up on them again.”

“Fine then, Wendy-Wan-Kenobi, please teach this ignorant one the ways of the afterlife so that I can act all smug, too.”

“I'm not smug!” Wendy protested, stung. “It's just that there's more to the Never, more to Reapers, than you think, Jon.”

He crossed his arms over his chest. “Okay. Educate the plebeians. Make this whole afterlife thing worth our while. Because there's a pile of not-so-living bones in the trunk that is making me a touch schizoid, you know? I'm feeling all guilty on one hand and like a super-hero on the other hand. It's not a pretty feeling.”

“Jon, shut the hell up. You're acting like several flavors of wad, man,” Chel said, clambering to her feet and disappearing into the laundry room. She reappeared a moment later, ratty old towels overflowing from the rag basket now balanced between hip and forearm.

“Flavors of wad?” Eddie asked, bemused. “That's new.”

“Yeah. Jerkwad. Dickwad. Asswad. That's just my opinion, of course. Listening to you two is giving me a headache. Let Wendy talk and stop with the pucker-face.” She glanced at the ghosts. “And don't even get me started on you guys. You're guests. I don't care if you are dead or whatever; pipe down and be polite.”

Eddie belched, long and loud, before grinning at Chel. “What, I'm a guest now? I'm not family?”

“Okay, that's it, I'm done with all of you,” Chel grumbled, dropping the rag basket on Eddie's foot. He jerked back before realizing that the basket couldn't hurt him. Elle snickered and Eddie colored.

“Chel, come on,” Wendy said, feeling bad for smirking at Eddie's reaction and embarrassment. He deserved it though, the big flirt. “What do you want out of me?”

“More training would do for a start,” her sister grumbled. “Especially if other Reapers might be on the way.”

Scowling, Chel dropped back to her knees and grunted as she swept a hand under the counter, cursing beneath her breath.
Curiously Wendy crouched down at Chel's level and saw that a ketchup bottle had spun out and lodged itself beneath the counter and against the wall. Loose hanks of her bleached blonde hair swung against Chel's cheeks as she shifted her head this way and that to try and get the best angle to wedge beneath the counter. “You did promise,” she grumbled. “About training.”

Wendy glanced at Jon. He seemed unhappy with the idea. “What about you, Jon? Are you certain?”

“Might as well, right?” Jon muttered as he picked up the ketchup bottle, examined it for cracks, and wiped it down with a sani-wipe before setting it in the fridge door. “I need to know how to control the Light, too. So no one else…” he swallowed thickly, and Wendy knew he was thinking about the Walker bones piled in the trunk. “…gets hurt.”

“Okay,” Wendy said, clapping her hands brusquely. “You two want to see the big time? Fine. Great. Time's short. Let's go out back.”