The Strange Maid (13 page)

Today the meadow is decked out for Baldur’s Night. They’ve put up evergreen boughs and chalked sunbursts onto the tents and booths. Prayer flags flap in the sharp breeze. The air smells like ice and grease and tangy iron. Slush and mud slip under my boots, and yelling and laughter attack my ears. There is no room for peace here, and I love it.

The impromptu troll cage is a small shed on the side of the meadow nearest to town, where most of the electric hookups are. Melting snow pours down the sheet-metal roof, dripping in long streams to the rocky earth, where it forms a moat of mud and ice I easily step over. An evergreen bow shakes glitter onto my face as I jerk the door open.

Beside the bolt lock is a heavy switch that controls the UV lights rigged to the inner ceiling. When I turn the light switch a dull hum clicks off. I unlock the door, then shove it back with my hip in order to keep my eyes on Red Stripe.

He’s a statue of himself, pale blue and mottled with gray. His arm wraps protectively about his ducked face. His shoulders slump; his tusks are only cracked points of stone.

As I watch, dust flakes away from his skin and settles onto the mangy rug covering the floor. Tiny fissures appear all over his body and a thin layer of stone skin sloughs away. The pieces clatter and clink down to the floor as he shakes all over and groans.

Red Stripe rubs his tiny yellow eyes. He’s a meter taller than me, and in the cool light streaming through the windows set high enough the sun won’t ever touch him, that brilliant line of scarlet lichen stretching down his spine seems to bleed.

“Good evening,” I say loudly enough for him to easily hear, and set down the plate of toutons and molasses I brought from the pancake booth. Trolls are supposed to be carnivores, but theses cakes are Red Stripe’s favorite. “I’m sorry I’m late.”

He grunts thanks. Though he can say my and Unferth’s names and responds to commands, he seems to prefer communicating without words. Unferth teases me it’s to do with my mothering style.

While he eats, I go through into the small back room and grab the long broom. The handle is smooth and warm in my hand, thanks to Red Stripe’s amazing ability to fill the whole shed with his body heat. I brush him, scrubbing the remaining rock dust from his shoulders, from the creases of his elbows, and most important from under the heavy iron collar connecting him to the massive chain bolted three meters into the ground. I don’t believe he requires it, but for the comfort of the Summerlings and Coveys from town who aren’t used to trolls at all, much less tame ones, we leave him trapped. He tilts his head and raises his arm for me, and his wide lips relax against his blunt tusks.

I smile as I scratch at his broken arm with the broom, where it itches the most. My fondness for the beast wells up and I’m glad we’ve already discussed with Rome leaving Red Stripe here when Unferth and I go. He’s a welcome attraction, given how rare it is these days to find greater mountain trolls in captivity. There are laws, I’ve learned, against hunting them in the Rock Mountains or near Montreal because of those old treaties between the troll mothers and Thor Thunderer, and when they wander farther south they’re destroyed almost immediately by militias. When they die they turn to stone, so almost nobody in the world knows what their living skin feels like, or the color of their eyes, or how well they communicate. Tonight will be a revelation for the festival guests.

“You’ll be happy here with Rome,” I say, patting Red Stripe’s cool arm. He heaves a massive sigh that fills the room with his hot, saccharine breath. It disrupts the motes of dust that hang lazily in the shaft of sunlight cutting past his head. I feel as he must, trapped and slow-moving, made to perform the same steps again and again. Now that the snows are melting, now that Baldur, the god of hope and light, is coming back to us, I’ll shake off my stone dust and explode back into the world with my stone heart.

Chaos
is here to remind me: I’m going to change my destiny again.

The festival feast hall is modeled after the ancient kings’ halls of Old Scandia; a massive single room of wood and sod, with pillars holding up the roof, intricate ironwork thrones, long tables and benches, and painted round-shields hanging from the rafters. Three nights a week the tourists can buy a seat and a meal, complete with the sort of entertainment they might have found had they lived a thousand years ago and sworn to a Viker king.

My wish-father, Rome, plays the king, in a yellow and red wool shirt and trousers and a heavy fur cape latched with golden brooches. He has on a wide leather belt and bracers, with massive copper rings around his upper arms. The Freyan charms braided into his golden beard glint in the false firelight as he welcomes the tourists back to Old Asgard, where please may they yell and cheer, please may they stand with a poem to share, and all give thanks to the great god of Vinland, Freyr the Satisfied.

Tonight he calls himself Hrothgar Shielding, the great king of Daneland, and welcomes the crowd to the golden hall Heorot. Unferth will play the poet as usual; I will be Valtheow the Dark, queen of Heorot. The beefiest of the actors, George, wears bearskin and has painted a spear onto his cheek to play the hero, Beowulf. We’ve created a breakaway section of wall for Red Stripe to burst through for the finale. He waits behind it now, with two clowns holding UV lights on his legs.

Once the welcome and the opening prayers are over, Rome exhorts his poet, Unferth Truth-Teller, to entertain his company while the meal is served. Most nights there’s roast boar and cured ham, apple tarts, salted cod, a not remotely authentic spinach salad, six options for beer, free honey soda for the kids, and plates of cheese. But as it’s Baldur’s Night, we have mead for toasting out of great cauldrons, and the trays are loaded with candied apples and bacon-wrapped apple sausages.

Unferth rises from his crouch beside the carved thrones to call out a song about Pol Darrathr, a son of Odin who lived hundreds of years ago and earned himself immortality and the name Baldur the Beautiful.

I listen for my cue while hidden behind the thrones and don’t wait for him to finish before I throw aside the curtain and stride in, arms spread. “Listen to the Valkyrie’s Prayer!” I cry.

Unferth flicks his hand dramatically at me, and I just as dramatically ignore him to take Rome’s hand and step onto the queen’s throne.

From here I can see out over the long tables, meet the eyes of families and guests spread out on benches with their plastic goblets lifted. Hot orange lights flicker like fire from sconces, gleaming against the snakes and deer and running wolves carved into the rafters. There are men of our company seated among the crowd in the hard leather and metal armor of a great king’s retainers grinning at me, and the serving women stop with hands full of mead and food to watch.

I slam the butt of my spear onto the throne three times before crying,

“Hail, day!

Hail, sons of day!

And night and her daughters now!

Look on us here

With loving eyes,

That waiting, we win victory!”

At the halfway point, everyone in the crowd recites it with me, even the smallest children. The Valkyrie’s Prayer is one of the first we learn as children, regardless of what god we most worship. The audience’s repetition of my words rumbles through me, becoming a familiar eight-count rhythm that sounds in my ears, like a pounding heart or Odin’s eight-legged horse running through my bones. It’s more exhilarating to lead the performance than I expected.

Holding up my spear, I call for silence. “Tonight is Baldur’s Night—tomorrow we will celebrate his return to us. But do you remember when he died? Do you remember the wailing and tears?” I lower my voice just a tad to say, “I remember, I remember every prince’s death, and this one we all dreamed!”

“What did you dream, Valkyrie?” calls a man with a little girl in his lap.

I point at him with the tip of my spear.

“I dreamed I rose before dawn

To clear up the Valhol for the newly slain.

I woke the Lonely Warriors,

Bade them up to strew the benches,

Clear the ale horns,

And my fellow Valkyrie to ready the wine.

I dreamed the arrival of a prince

Like no prince we had known before.”

I push through the crowd to tell them what runes I see and use my calligraphy set to paint binding runes and poetry onto their faces and hands. Rarely do I see actual runes in the faces of these tourists but only pretend I do for the act, for the game. When I can, I scare them with prophecies of death and gruesome visions.

One of the serving women brings me a goblet of mead and I drink it down before slamming the goblet onto the nearest table. The yellow honey alcohol sloshes over the sides and splashes onto the worn wood, and I cheer—the audience cheers with me.

I sit back in the throne as Rome takes over again and encourages two performers to act out a boasting game while everyone eats. Unferth joins me, lounging against the side of my knee, and I once or twice take a thin braid of his in my hand, curling it possessively through my fingers. We cheer the competition, Rome and I, with Unferth crying insults to the losers while rubbing the ball of his hand into his cranky right thigh.

George stands up from among the actors playing King Hrothgar’s retainers. He says his name is Beowulf and challenges Unferth’s poetic prowess with a boasting poem about how strong he is, how he swam through the ocean strangling sea monsters. Unferth snarls back, perfectly in character, calling George a liar and a coward with florid language.

Just as their spar grows too heated, just as Rome and I pretend to consider intervening, a great low roar pierces the hall.

We freeze in exaggerated poses. It comes again. Red Stripe, exactly on the poetry cue Unferth’s been repeating for days. George/Beowulf draws his sword as Red Stripe bursts through the foam-brick wall to the north of the thrones. I scream as loud and horridly as I can, drowning out the troll’s war cry.

The audience screams, too.

Red Stripe charges in, taking prompts from Unferth, who’s shifted to the back of the hall, using blunt-tipped spears to poke and prod his thick skin. Rome yells to George, “No sword can penetrate this beast’s cursed hide!” and George throws down his weapon. The retainers join him, but it’s George alone who throws himself at Red Stripe, gripping the papier-mâché prosthetic arm we tied to him. The two grapple and dance, fast and grand in the firelight.

It’s all I can do not to laugh with delight.

Unferth yells, “Grendel!” and Red Stripe roars again, throwing George away. Red Stripe turns to the audience and opens his mouth hideously wide. Children scream and many of their parents, too, but there’s clapping and gasps of amazement. Nobody runs. They know this is a show, despite the terror blazing through the atmosphere.

George leaps onto Red Stripe from behind, grasps the immobile prosthetic arm, and tears it off with a berserker roar of his own. Dark purple corn syrup—my idea—splashes in an arc like arterial spray, pumping as George squeezes it from a hidden trigger.

Red Stripe crashes to his knees, but is up again and runs away with a long, sad moan, his footsteps shaking the hall. Unferth slips after him through the ruined wall of our false Heorot. George lifts the dripping fake arm over his head, and I climb onto my throne to begin the applause.

Great bands of laughter and cheering hit me, hit all of us. George and the retainers nail the arm to the wall behind the thrones and Rome calls for celebratory dessert.

The crowd is loud with chatter and wonder, cheering us and digging into their tarts and ice cream. I sink into the throne, hot and alive, a grin splitting my face so hard my cheeks ache.

After dessert I stand up and crow a harsh poem Unferth wrote about living on a rock of ice like ours, about how badly we need the coming dawn to drive the trolls away and for Baldur the Sun to bring joy back to the world. Rome waves a ring-adorned hand for dishes to be taken away and every goblet replaced with a paper lantern and an apple. The lantern is for releasing when the sun sets, to light Baldur’s path home. The apple reminds us of our mortality, that like Baldur we will all die some day without tasting the Apples of Youth that give eternal life to our gods.

I eat my apple wildly. I destroy it like it’s my enemy, letting juice run down my chin to a roar of approval from the actors playing Rome’s warriors. They pound their feet and I pound mine back, every grain of the wooden throne pulsing beneath me. Rome laughs, a comforting old sound, and the audience laughs with him, children joining me in messy eating; apples and apple juice stain the tables.

We release the crowd, Rome and I, crying out a closing prayer together. Rome invites them into the meadow for bonfires and a mummer dance before we release the lanterns at sunset. I toss the last of my mead into the fire and it bursts into sparks and snaking smoke.

Out in the meadow, I grab a mask from the communal box and dance as eagerly as any Freyan born. The bonfires remind me of harvest dances from my childhood, of my parents and colorful autumn leaves.