The Lost Sun (9 page)

“Yes,” I whisper back.

“It was very cold in the car, without you.”

“I couldn’t sleep and didn’t want to disturb you.”

“I don’t mind. I climbed up here because you were so hot.”

“It is the berserking, boiling in my blood.”

“And the insomnia, too.”

I nod. And shift away, taking my arm back to sit up. I can’t hold her and think of berserking at the same time.

Astrid sits, too, pulling her knees up to her chest. “If you welcomed it, would you still be plagued by sleepless nights?”

“I believe so,” I answer, not looking at her. “My father rarely slept. It’s one of the reasons they say we have such limited time to live, even if we’re never defeated in battle. We burn up our energy and life in half the time because we never sleep.”

“Has there ever been a berserker who did not die fighting?”

“Yes.”

Her finger, soft as a butterfly wing, skims down my tattoo. It continues down to my jaw, drawing a line toward my chin. My body flares to life, threads of fire ripping out from that center of madness.

She turns her hand over so her knuckles rest against my face. “Soren,” she breathes.

I push myself off the roof of the Spark and my feet hit the frosty grass hard. “The sun will be bright soon,” I say.

More slowly, Astrid slides after. I offer my hand to assist, but she ignores it. “Yes,” she says, brushing off her dress, “and Baldur the Beautiful awaits us.”

The land is flatter than ever and filled with nothing. It’s as though vegetation has been burned off, and all that grows now on the rocky plains are stubbly patches of grass. The sky rises away, pale blue, and enormous clouds billow in rows like ocean surf. The only trees cling to the edges of trickling creeks.

We brush our teeth and change into fresh clothes in the public restrooms at a commercialized trading post, built to resemble a long building from an Old West town. They have fountain drinks, syrupy coffee, and doughnuts. We fill up the gas tank, too, and Astrid has a five-minute conversation with the attendant about the attributes of the ’84 Spark versus the ’92 with its Deutsche-made engine while I hover nearby, keeping my tattooed cheek averted.

Back in the car, we pass turnoffs for the Lakotas Buffalo Reservation and several pioneer homesteads turned into kingstate monuments. There are bronze National Historic Site markers every five miles or so along the road. The quiet, the utter lack of people on the road, makes me feel watched. I continue glancing in the rearview as I drive, searching for pursuit.

“They aren’t coming after us, Soren,” Astrid says.

I frown. “We’re missing from school.”

“We’re adults and can leave school on our own. Didn’t you pass your citizen test?”

“Of course.” She knows it. I had to before receiving my tattoo. “It’s only so empty here. Makes me nervous.”

“Can you imagine living this far into the plains? There are still pygmy mammoths and hill trolls, and the walled towns are few and far between. Mom and I never camped alone in this part of the country.”

I glance at her, to see she’s staring out her window with her fingers against the glass. “Like we did last night.”

Astrid laughs and looks at me from the corner of her eye. “Mom and I didn’t have a berserk warrior with us.”

I only grunt in response. The anxiety continues to itch between my shoulder blades, and I punch on the radio to HM, the public news station.

Through static, the announcer’s voice slowly emerges: “… quell the rioting in Shenandoah. Graycloak has dispatched permission to all the kingstates for militia members to carry open steel in the streets, against the wishes of minority leader Edding.”

My palms are slick against the steering wheel as all my skin begins to tingle.

“It’s likely to be defeated by Lawspeaker Howardson when she brings it before Congress, but a source from the White Hall claims that the president hopes this situation with the missing god of light will be resolved before Sunsday’s emergency meeting.”

Astrid sighs through her teeth and her head lolls against the seat back. “They can’t fix this with politics,” she murmurs.

“They have to do what they’re best at,” I say.

A little laugh escapes her, and she lifts her head as the announcer says, “Thousands of pilgrims have flocked to Skald, at the foot of Bright Home, with signs declaring that Ragnarok has begun. They’re gathered in the city parks mostly, and the militias are in a bit of a standoff there with religious leaders who insist on opening all the temples on Skald’s Chapel Row. The Valkyrie of the Rock arrived on the scene yesterday afternoon with seven of her wolves, and to the surprise of the king of Colorada, she held a prayer service in the city center, asking the mourners and pilgrims to remain calm and only pray together.”

A new voice, that of a woman, speaks:
“This near to Bright Home, our prayers will rise with the wind up to the Valhol, where Odin sits and searches for his lost son. We will give the Alfather our strength to stretch his reach over the mountains and prairie, from ocean to ocean of this great country. Baldur the Beautiful will be found, and
will
return to us with all the glory of the sun.”
The radio announcer takes up the story again, adding, “On the
heels of the Valkyrie’s prayer, a spokesman for Ardo Vassing, prince of Mizizibi and well-known telepreacher for the Bliss Church, told the press he’ll be hosting a three-hour televent tonight, beginning at the CST sunset hour.”

Astrid leans nearer to me. “We’ll have found him by then.”

My tension only lets me flick fast glances at her, but Astrid’s face is loose with expectation and hope. I push the gas pedal down another bit to flare the engine. There isn’t anyone for miles to notice I’m speeding.

The morning news hour ends with Evelyna Salsdottir, the champion poet of New Asgard, reciting her award-winning verse, “Sunfall in Mesa Verde.” It’s about vanishing people, and the memories they leave behind, like the longest shadows cast as the sun sets. I’ve never heard it before, but Astrid murmurs the refrain along with the radio. When the last word fades under the buzz of our engine, she changes the station to iron rock.

“We’ll be there soon,” she says, and shuts her eyes.

I let the pounding rock shake the car. The rhythm travels up my hands from the steering wheel and into my shoulders, helping me relax. I drive through two and a half songs, eyes glazed on the black line of highway, before a high beep interrupts the music.

“This is an emergency broadcast. It is not a test.”

Astrid grips my knee, digging her fingers into my jeans. I jerk upright, the frenzy blinding me like a flash-bomb. My foot hits the brakes and we screech to a halt. It’s a good thing there aren’t others on the road.

“Repeat: this is not a test. All citizens of the United States of Asgard are cautioned against moving outside of city centers. Greater mountain trolls have come down from Canadia and attacked a settlement in Vinland. This is not a test.”

I lower my forehead to the steering wheel and press in, letting the dull pain focus my fever there instead of that hot place where Astrid’s hand holds my knee.

“All citizens of the United States of Asgard are cautioned against moving outside of city centers. Greater mountain trolls—”

She violently changes the station back to HM. The emergency broadcast is blaring there, too. Astrid dials the volume down and gently replaces her hand on my knee. The effort to be calm makes my bones tremble.

After a moment, the HM announcer cuts in, apologizing for the interruption in regular programming, and says, “We received the official statement from President Adamson, and it’s true that Tyrsday evening greater mountain trolls crossed Leif’s Channel onto Vinland, wreaking destruction along the coast, including burning down the village of Jellyfish Cove and the National Historic Site where Gudrid Traveler and her family first landed. At least fifty-six people have escaped the island, but over a hundred residents are not yet accounted for. The Mad Eagle and Flying Bear berserk bands were dispatched from New Scotland to stop the trolls before dawn. No herd has caused such a death toll since the renegade Rock Mountain herd that famously killed Luta Bearsdottir’s family in the sixties.

“The captain of the Mad Eagles reports that the trolls left symbols of Ragnarok painted in blood on the ruined walls of
the town, and it’s been confirmed that the president’s warning has been put into effect because he and Congress believe the troll-mothers will use our time of loss to create as much chaos as they can.”

I switch off the radio. I can imagine how brutal those people’s deaths were, and don’t want to hear more details.

Astrid slowly gets out of the car, moving with exaggerated grace as though she’s afraid of falling over. With her seething kit, she kneels on the gravel shoulder of the highway and braids some of the tall prairie grass into a circle. She sets the kit before her and lights a slim candle. “For all the children of Asgard who were killed,” she whispers, and then repeats it more loudly. “May their spirits lift as smoke and find peace in the halls of death, wrapped in Freya’s feather-warm pillows.”

She uses her hands to waft the thin gray smoke up toward the sky.

It’s said that all our prayers are gathered up by the wind, are seen by the stars, are captured in the claws of ravens, and given into the ears of our gods. But the gods have been remarkably vague about why and when they choose to turn their attention to individuals.

As I watch Astrid, I wonder if she thinks any of them are listening to her now.

But I suspect if I asked, she would tell me that the prayer itself has power, regardless of who hears it.

We’ve been back on the road for only ten minutes when we begin to see hills in the distance, turned shadowy and violet in the late-morning light. We turn off the highway where a carved-wood sign declares the entrance to Badlands National Park. Astrid says, “Mom and I used to stop at all of those kinds of signs to take a picture.” She sighs. “Uncle Richard has the album. It’s just us, standing there grinning. Sometimes Mom helped me climb up to the top, and held my ankles so I wouldn’t fall.”

“Too bad we don’t have a camera,” I say.

She smiles wistfully.

I drive to the small booth in the middle of the road. A rack of heavy spears and steel shields leans against it. On either side, an eighteen-foot fence of reinforced logs spreads out, enclosing the park. There’s probably a war band based near here for emergencies. I’ve heard that most such postings are considered cushioned ones, because it is extremely rare for any of the parks to see more danger than the occasional pack of wolves. Though given what’s happened in Vinland, that may not be true this week.

We’re greeted at the gate by a woman in a brown ranger suit, blond braids falling from under her hat. Her eyes barely pause at my tattoo. “You two should be moving along to a city. Didn’t you hear about the trolls?”

Astrid leans over me and says brightly, “We won’t be long.”

The ranger purses her lips, but then shrugs. I hand over money for the seven-day pass and an overnight camping ticket.

“If anything happens, make for the visitor center. There’s a
shelter in the basement,” the ranger says. She hands me a glossy brochure along with the change.

Astrid flips through it as I pull the car forward. “I wish I knew which of these hiking paths Mom and I took that last night,” she says, holding open the page with a green-and-tan map crisscrossed by red roads and tiny dotted lines.

“Why don’t you look outside and I’ll just keep driving until you recognize something.”

The dry prairie spreads out all around us, but ahead and to the side are tall spires of layered rock. The road winds us closer to the spires, and when Astrid points, I stop the car on the gravel shoulder. There’s a footpath leading toward the edge of the prairie, where the ground cuts away. I open my door.

The path crunches under my boots as I walk out through the scraggly prairie grass alongside Astrid. At the end of the path, a small sign proclaims the Badlands to be twenty-two thousand acres square, butting up against the Lakotas Buffalo Reservation to the south. What we’re looking at is the bottom of an ancient sea, where layers of sediment were deposited and pressed into stone. Five hundred thousand years ago the land began eroding with rainwater and streams; it was water that cut these fissures and canyons.

“I prefer to imagine rock giants hammering their homes out of the flat prairie,” Astrid says.

“So do I.” The canyons stretch as far as I can see: striped gorges flushed deep golden and orange by the sun behind me.