The Lost Sun (22 page)

“Yes it is! Yes it does!” She wrenches back from me, but I hold tight to her elbows.

We stare at each other. I don’t know what to say, how to untangle the longing and anger and frustration I feel, and put them into coherent sentences. How to convince her I won’t let fate keep me away from her. I will win Odin’s boon, divest myself of this frenzy, and be with her. If fate can’t foresee such
an outcome, it is only because fate is too narrow-minded to imagine a free berserker.

Astrid’s rigidity slowly melts. “But maybe I’m missing something. I thought I wasn’t going to see you again, and here you are.” Her lips twist. “I’m not infallible.”

I smile, too, just a little.

She takes my hands. “Why are you out here? Not inside where it’s warm—where we are?”

“I couldn’t sleep. Too awake. Too wired.” I shrug.

Astrid pulls me down to my knees, and I sit so that she can slide between my legs. Her back settles against my chest and I wrap my arms around her. I close my eyes. The ground is hard and cold, but it doesn’t matter because she’s enveloped in my fever. She holds my arms close to her and tells me what the three of them did after escaping the caravan mob. “We drove and drove,” her voice whispers up at me, and I’m glad I can’t see her face. “I kept turning around to look out the back, even though it was ridiculous to think I could see you. I just couldn’t stop hoping. When we got gas, I watched the road. Baldur and Vider broke open the mead bottle for the money, and I didn’t even help pick up all the rolling coins. When we stopped for food, I didn’t want to eat. I was so worried. But we had to go on.”

“I know. It was the right thing. Baldur is the most important.”

“He said to me, ‘Do not throw away his sacrifice. Soren gave us this gift, and he expects you to use it.’ And so I climbed into the car with them and tried not to think about the last sight of you I had. Blazing with strength and power. I wanted to go
back. To take the car and drive back. All I could think of were the runes I read, of fate taking you away.” A shudder presses between us. “And I held on to that image of you, painting it with brighter colors in my mind, so that I would always have you with me.”

I say, “I’ll bend fate to my will for that.”

She laughs, and twists in my arms. One hand finds my face, her palm cool against my tattoo. “Soren, I half believe you could. You would stand there and simply not move until fate bowed away first.”

Her smile shows off her teeth, and even in the thin starlight, she’s beautiful. She scratches her nails gently down my face and back into my hair, just under my ear. I’m suddenly frozen. Her lips are centimeters from mine. I can feel her breath in my mouth.

“Astrid,” I say heavily and fast, “I frenzied today.”

Her little gasp and laugh cut through the air and I’m free of my paralysis. She pushes back from me, delight widening her eyes. “Soren! You went berserk?” Astrid shakes her head and looks me up and down. “That’s what happened to you? That’s how you found us again? The rage led you here!”

I think she’s going to clap, and I catch her hands. I press them together. “I lost it, at the caravan, and ran for the mountains before I could hurt anyone. It was so awful, so dark and spinning—Astrid, I don’t even know how to tell you what it was like.”

“Like being caught in a whirlpool? Like your limbs will be torn free and—”

“And if I didn’t hold tight, I would be destroyed.” My chest pinches as I remember falling into the frenzy and losing myself. I close my eyes.

Silence is her only answer. I can feel her waiting, sitting back on her heels in the dark prairie. The creek teases me with its quiet babbling, like distant laughter or applause. I look.

Astrid is watching me. Her lips pull down into a pout; a line pinches between her eyebrows. “I was going to say: and all you have to do is let go.”

I shake my head. “No. Never.”

“It’s the only way—give in to it and you can swim
with
the current. You can’t fight the tide, Soren!”

“I want it out of me. That’s all.”

“You want to lobotomize yourself! Destroy everything that makes you who you are!”

“It doesn’t define me.”

Astrid laughs. A full, high-pitched laugh that tilts her face up to the stars. “Oh, Soren. You’re either blind or a fool.”

It hurts, but I clench my jaw and say, “I won’t let it define me forever, then.”

“It’s your every waking thought.” Astrid stands. “What will you be when it’s gone?”

“Anything I want.”

She shakes her head. “Can you imagine me without my seething? As anything but a seethkona?”

I stand as well. “I don’t have to. It’s what you want, who you are. You’ve embraced it.”

“A berserker is who
you
are, Soren.”

“Not when I ask Odin to take it away. Not then. I’ll just be Soren, a warrior. I’ll be able to fight at your side safely.” I reach for her. “I won’t have to worry about hurting you. I can be with you.”

Astrid doesn’t let me touch her. Her chin lifts and she says with an air of finality, of authority, “If that time comes, I won’t want you to.”

She leaves me standing alone at the bank of the creek.

Dawn arrives as a sky full of purple clouds.

Vider comes running around the barn, a grin splitting her face. Twin braids trail out behind her. “Soren!”

I push up from my meditative crouch and grimace. Every piece of my body aches. “Good morning,” I manage. It isn’t that I slept, but that I spent the final hours of the night unmoving, staring into the water until I imagined I could feel the earth turning beneath me.

“Astrid said you came in the night.” Vider stops a few paces from me, her hands clenched together. She’s wearing one of Astrid’s cardigans, and already most of her flimsy pale hair has fallen out of the braids.

“I want to thank you, Vider Lokisdottir,” I say, holding out my hand. “For aiding in the rescue of Baldur. I owe you a debt.”

She bows her face and shakes her head so that hair falls over her eyes to hide her blush. “That isn’t why I did it.”

I don’t reply, but only wait with my palm up. Wind fans her hair over her face and she claps her hand against mine. “Why, then?”

“I’m not certain.”

“It was well done.”

Her fingers curl firmly around my wrist and she peeks up at me. “Teach me more?”

It startles a laugh from me, and Vider puts her fists on her hips.

A workout is exactly what I need. And food. But food is where Astrid is, and I’m not ready for that.

Vider lowers herself down beside me and we begin some stretches. As I show her the proper stance for a triangle stretch, Baldur arrives. “Ho!” he calls.

It’s such an old-fashioned greeting, Vider rolls her eyes at me.

But I welcome him on my feet, as I did her. Baldur shines, and his eyes mirror the purple sunrise behind him. I hold out my hand, but he embraces me like a brother. “It’s the best news, that you returned to us,” he says. “I had to come see for myself.”

“Thank you, Baldur.” At this moment, as the sky-mirrors of his eyes glow and he smiles at me with such simple, friendly grace, it’s worth it that I lost myself to the frenzy. Further words dry up in my mouth, but he smacks my shoulder and says, “Are you ready for a spar? Is that what all the exercising is for?”

I look at Vider and tilt my head questioningly. She shows a ferocious smile that squints her eyes and reminds me of
pictures of forest goblins I saw as a child. I hold up one finger and swiftly flick it at Baldur.

She catches my meaning before he does, and we attack together, with a strangely harmonized roar.

Baldur throws out his hands and laughs, letting himself be tackled. We all go down. It’s a quick skirmish, and I’m against both of them when Vider suddenly switches sides like a proud daughter of Loki. She feints toward him, but inserts herself to block my attack so that Baldur is able to sideswipe me. Then she uses her disloyalty to get around Baldur and sweep his right foot out from under him. I catch him and pin him, and we’re all gasping with laughter. Clearly Vider is the victorious one.

As revenge, we teach her some difficult blocks and tell her to repeat the string of movements over and over until her muscles know it better than she does. With a scowl of concentration she begins, and Baldur and I face off.

We’re a few minutes into hand-to-hand, and my forearms are alive with pain from blocking his punches, when I notice Astrid coming around the barn. I try to ignore her, to focus on Baldur. He’s an excellent boxer and I’m already sweating in the cool morning air.

I won’t want you to
.

Her words snake through my thoughts as she kneels by the creek, some ten paces downstream. I barely deflect the heel of Baldur’s hand as it comes at my head.

I maneuver so that my back is to her. Baldur frowns as he realizes I’ve put myself at a disadvantage on purpose.

I focus as I dance around Baldur. My breath moves through
me like a calm but strong river, lapping at the edges of the frenzy.

“If you take me down, we can stop. You seem tired.” Baldur falls into a defensive stance, on the balls of his feet, hands up.

“I’m not tired,” I say. I attack again; he deflects again. We move around each other, jabbing and blocking. My boots grind into the field dirt and my arms ache. But it’s distracting me.
I won’t want you to
.

“Have you ever wondered,” he says between heavy breaths, “what Astrid tastes like?”

“What?” I swing in and he blocks me. Our forearms jar together as I bounce back again.

“I suspect she tastes as good as she looks.”

I aim for his nose.

Baldur deflects again, slapping me away easily. “Sweet as mead, sharp as vodka.”

My stomach twists as though I’m starving, or about to vomit. I never should’ve reminded him of his womanizing. “She isn’t yours to taste.”

“Whose is she, then?”

I falter. Not mine so long as I berserk, by my will. Not mine when I am free, by hers. “Freya’s.” It’s half a question.

Baldur catches my fist and flings me back. “I doubt Freya would mind sharing with a handsome cousin.”

My breath streams out raggedly. I remember how Astrid looked at him that first morning. How her face lit up with awe and love.
Do you love the gods, Soren?
She could love Baldur in my place.

He would never be afraid of the frenzy.

The moment I think it, my iron star cracks open. It’s so freshly awake, hungering to be free again.

Baldur skirts closer and I leap back from him. I shove a fist hard against my own chest as if I can keep the rage trapped; my other hand shoots out. “Stop. Baldur, stop.”

“Stop what?” He spreads his hands and sneers. The expression, on his beautiful face, is terrible, like the sun burning black. I can hardly believe this is Baldur! I meet his eyes and … they’re calm. As serene as the sky, as a quiet mountain lake.

“Baldur.” I whisper his name. He doesn’t mean any of it. The derisive mask is only that: a mask. I’m confused, and my hands lower as my rage quiets down.

His eyes narrow at the corners. He winces. Then his hands, too, fall to his sides. “Soren.”

“Why did you do that?” I shake my head. “My battle-rage, it … You …”

Baldur sighs. Wind picks up through the trees on the other side of the creek, shaking free loose pine needles and scattering them into the grass. He closes his eyes briefly, and without their knowing sky-bright gaze he’s only a beautiful man.

I step away again. “Why are you trying to make me berserk?”

His eyes pop open, pinning me to the spot. My heart stops beating as he says, “That is not what I’m trying to make you do.” And then his gaze shifts. I follow it to where Astrid is rinsing her face in the creek. We watch as she dries it on her sweater and then stands. She glances at us, but the moment she sees me looking, she turns her back and hurries for the barn.

“What’s wrong with Astrid?” Vider asks, coming up beside us. I don’t think she’s heard our conversation.

“Yes, Soren, what’s wrong with Astrid?” Baldur nudges me with his elbow, as if I’m his little brother.

I open my mouth, then clap it closed again. Vider’s eyebrows are lifted, her cheeks flushed from effort. Baldur’s lips pinch expectantly.

“She and I …” I pause. What can I tell them? Nothing that doesn’t make me sound exactly like what Astrid accused me of being: a fool.

“Go talk to her.” Baldur bends over and grabs the roll of Astrid’s seething kit, which she left out here last night when she stormed away. I take it reluctantly.

“She’s mad at you?” Vider asks. Something I don’t understand wavers like uncertainty in her eyes.

My hand tightens around the leather kit. “Yes.”

Vider throws her arms up. “That doesn’t make any sense! She was desperate yesterday afternoon for you to be all right, and now you are and she’s angry?”

With a laugh, Baldur wraps his arm around Vider’s shoulders. “Are you sure you’re a girl?” he says, and receives a sharp smack on his hand in return. He takes her fingers and raises them to his lips. The smile he offers is smooth and perfect. I see the moment she meets Baldur’s eyes, because the sunlight brings her to life, too.

I can’t be upset with him. Not with the morning turning his hair to gold, and his laugh making everything brighter. I see ghostly chain mail hanging from his shoulders, and a silver
helmet caught under his arm. It’s some image of him I’ve seen on TV, I’m certain. He has gold rings in his ears, and bracelets lining his forearms like gauntlets. The memory wraps around my ribs.

We must get him to safety. And Astrid should be out here with us.

Grimly, I take my father’s sword and swing the strap over my uninjured shoulder. Before I can give in to fear, I head for the barn.

The sunlight crushes through the fallen section of roof, filling the barn with yellow light. It transforms the dust motes into elf-gold.

Astrid has put on the exercise bra and pants she wore at the holmgang in Nebrasge, and she carries a thick branch in her hands as she silently moves through a pattern of combat. It’s a dance we’re taught as children, incorporating the seven basic sword strikes that are legal for holmgang. I stare at the muscles of her back as they move beneath her skin, at the appearance of ease with which she lifts the branch. Her form is excellent. I walk forward to take my place beside her. I mirror her movements, find the rhythm of her breath with my own. We do not touch; she doesn’t even acknowledge my presence, but there’s no way she isn’t aware. Her pace never changes, and when she transitions into the seven-defense dance, she flicks her eyes at me briefly.