The Branded Rose Prophecy

by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  “Ugh.” Charlee grimaced. “Why?”

  “He wanted the knowledge and wisdom that would be his if he drank from Mimir’s well, but she told him the price for a drink was one eye. So he plucked it out and dropped it into the well.”

  “For knowledge?” Charlee shook her head.

  “He slept with the daughter of the god of poetry and stole her father’s blood, which he then spat all over Asgard. The dribbles that missed the pots the Asgardians laid out to catch the blood fell upon Midgard, and that’s why humans are blessed with poetry today.” Darwin wrinkled his nose. “That is, if you want to call it ‘blessed’. I read some of that modern stuff they call poetry and have to wonder about that.”

  Charlee gave a short giggle. “Oh my….”

  “Thor was into cross-dressing,” Darwin added.

  Charlee’s giggle became a full-scale laugh. “Cross-dressing?”

  Darwin nodded sagely. “A giant stole his hammer—”

  “The actual hammer of Thor?”

  “The actual hammer. The only way the giant would give it back was if he could marry Freyr, a woman in Thor’s family. Freyr seemed like one of the few sensible gods I’ve read about so far. Guess what her answer was?”

  Charlee smiled. “I’m guessing it wasn’t a resounding yes.”

  “One of the versions I read said that the halls of Asgard shook with the power of her fury.” Darwin lifted a brow.

  “So Thor dressed like Freyr to get his hammer back? Really? Why didn’t he just steal the damned thing?”

  “Oh, it gets even weirder than that. There’s adultery, bastard children, betrayed brothers, chest thumping, rending of garments and all sorts of hysterics.” Darwin sighed. “It’s some of the best melodrama I’ve seen outside of a pro wrestling series. Very entertaining, if you can stop from laughing your head off. But that’s the point, Charlee. If the humans that wrote down all this stuff, such as the Poetic and the Prose Edda and the other fragments that have survived, even if they exaggerated the crap out of what they did know about the gods, once you deflate the hysteria and try to give it a more realistic spin, the gods still end up looking like wayward two year olds in need of a good spanking.”

  Charlee pressed her fingertips to her lips, holding back more laughter.

  Darwin tapped the book again. “Don’t you think that if Odin were still around, we dumb ol’ humans would have noticed? A man-like figure with one eye and supernatural powers, raping human women and making babies all over the place—he would have hit the headlines sooner or later.”

  Charlee’s smile faded. “Perhaps he’s mended his ways since then. It was a long time ago, and the Kine have spent centuries hiding from us. Odin might have applied some self-discipline, and curbed his more extreme habits.”

  “Unlikely, but mildly possible, once you agree that the Kine are really, actually here and not in Valhalla anymore.” Darwin patted the thick leather and brass bound book of Norse mythology under his hand. “Except that if Odin is here, that means the rest of the gods would be here, too, and I don’t for a moment believe they all have managed to behave themselves since they got here. Besides, they’re not all human-shaped. There’s wolves and horses and giants, shape-shifters and serpents…and that’s just the gods. Once you descend to the citizens of the nine worlds, it gets even more bizarre. I think we would have noticed if the gods or the population of the nine worlds were all living here on Earth.”

  “Nine Worlds.” Charlee muttered, frowning. “I’ve heard that before.”

  “If you’ve done any reading at all from my list, then you would have seen it there.”

  “No, someone said something. I can’t remember right now.” She let it go. “I’ll remember it later, and let you know. So who do you think is the leader of the Kine, if it’s not Odin?”

  Darwin shrugged. “It has to be one of their own. An Einherjar most likely. The Norse were patriarchal down to their toes, and the Einherjar all came from times when women were property at the very least—”

  “Why do you say that?” Charlee asked sharply.

  “Why they wouldn’t have a woman as a leader? I’m not being sexist, honey-chile. That’s just the way it was. Is. Probably.”

  “No, I mean about all the Einherjar coming from times long ago. That’s a presumption you can’t make. You don’t know that they’re all that old. The Valkyrie pull fallen heroes from battlefields and they become Einherjar. There have been battles right up until yesterday, all over the world. There’s probably one happening right now.”

  “Yes, but where do the Valkyrie come from?” Darwin asked patiently. “You said that your friend at the house—Victoria—she said that there wasn’t as many Valkyrie as there were Einherjar, and there are fewer every year, or something like that. The Valkyrie numbers are diminishing. If Ylva is a good example, then some of them have given up their Valkyrie status for love and a human life. Others might have died from accidents, or suicide. My bet is on suicide. After thousands of years, life would become a major drag.”

  Charlee’s eyes widened. “Suicide. Or perhaps they distract themselves by diving into drink for a month or two. Or take up with a human that doesn’t know what they are, just to feel normal for a while.”

  “You can’t think you’re just a distraction for him,” Darwin said gently.

  Charlee shook her head. “I might have been, to start with. It’s moved on from there. Too far on.” She smiled sourly and sat up straighter. “So the Valkyrie are diminishing.”

  “Not just the Valkyrie. All of them.” As gently as he could, he said, “No children.”

  Charlee drew in a breath and let it out in a long sigh.

  “They’re immortal beings who are slowly dying despite their immortality, hiding out from humans and with no way to return to Valhalla, or they would have gone back long ago,” Darwin summarized. “Their gods are gone, their powers diminished—”

  “Diminished?”

  Darwin shrugged. “The Valkyrie can’t create Einherjar if they can’t get back to Valhalla. I have no idea how Valkyrie are created, but it’s clearly not possible for them to procreate anymore, so the loss of Valhalla is part of that, too.” He pursed his lips, considering. “Life can’t be happy for them, Charlee. They’re dying, powerless and homeless, living in a world that would be extremely hostile to them if they were discovered. They’ve lived on the knife-edge of imminent discovery for centuries, and you have to admire them for maintaining their secrecy for that long, even if some of the ways they’ve pulled that off were bloody and ruthless.” He looked at her. “It’s not a pretty picture, is it?”

  Charlee pulled her melting bowl of ice cream toward her and picked up the spoon. “No,” she said flatly.

  “The Amica, these human women that serve as paramours and housekeepers—you said that all of them that you’ve met, they’re proud to be Amica?”

  “Not just proud,” Charlee said, and licked the bottom of her spoon. “They all feel special, that they’ve been chosen for a prestigious and glamorous career.”

  “Indoctrination from childhood would help that along,” Darwin muttered. “You said most of them were born into it?”

  “Their mothers and grandmothers and more were also Amica. For most of them, it’s a family thing.” She grimaced. “A family secret. They inherit their role from their mothers.”

  Darwin nodded. “They would have grown up hearing the stories and absorbing the glamour and glory of it all. The Kine would prefer to use the offspring of those already granted access to their world, for the traditions and secrecy would be ingrained.”

  “That’s a cold way of looking at it,” Charlee protested.

  “I was just summarizing. But here’s the thing. Given the grimness of their world, and faced with a long, slow extinction, the Kine must have found the Amica a relief. With them they can let themselves feel human again.” Darwin sat back. “I don’t think the glamour and prestige is purely imaginary, Charlee. I think that for the Kine, the Amic
a are…well, a god-send. I think they might just revere them as much as they do their old gods.”

  “Now I think you’re exaggerating.”

  “I had the pleasure and privilege of living with Anna-Marie for sixteen years. There’s not a day goes by that I don’t miss her, and it’ll be twenty-nine years this spring since she died. She was the engine in my life and she’s still shaping it. I don’t plant petunias every spring because I like them, you know.”

  Charlee smiled softly at him. “Or clean the sink after you’ve done the dishes.”

  “Or drop the lid on the toilet once I’m done.” Darwin grinned. “But that’s just the petty stuff. She was the one who insisted I go back to school and get my degree, and then worked her butt off for years so I could do my Master’s. I’d still be working in a grocery store, stacking shelves with Chinese noodles, if it hadn’t been for her.”

  “I wish I’d met her,” Charlee said wistfully.

  “So do I,” Darwin told her. “She’d have liked you. A lot. It’s just not the way it worked out. But I think I know how the Einherjar might feel about their Amica, Charlee. They’re not just the…what did you call them? The human whores? That’s part of it and it’s an important part, but it’s not just sex, or they would have invented for themselves a whorehouse of prostitutes instead of these gorgeous, highly skilled Amica. Or they’d just slip down to the local red-light district whenever the itch strikes them. But they didn’t. They formed the Amica and I think most of the design came about because the Amica, in a very practical way, saved their sanity. You can’t help but revere a person or an entity that keeps you sane and happy.”

  * * * * *

  Charlee carefully closed the door to the kitchen before she turned on the light. It was three in the morning and Darwin was snoring peacefully in his room. She didn’t want to wake him. Her own sleep had been fractured enough to drive her into an uncharacteristic kitchen run. Darwin’s ice cream beckoned. Somewhere in the back of the freezer there would be a bucket of salted caramel fudge flavor, which was so rich that both of them could only eat a few mouthfuls at a time.

  But when she flipped on the light, she saw her reflection in the window and halted, examining it.

  She was wearing one of her old robes from when she had been living here. It was an inch or so too short for her, made of a pale green polyester that had been designed to look and feel like silk. It had been all that was in the closet and she had brought nothing with her. She had come straight from Wall Street to Darwin’s house, her mind a tumble of pain and the pressure to make a decision.

  What did she want?

  That was the question she had begun the day wanting to answer. What now? She had wondered, with no idea what the rest of the day would bring.

  I’ll commit to you. Body and soul.

  Was that what she wanted? She would get Asher, yes, but none of his life or the things that gave it meaning for him. He would be a shell. A body and mind, but the soul he wanted to give her would be closed off. Unavailable.

  What else was there for her?

  It still wasn’t too late for her to resurrect her childhood dreams. An advanced degree and a career in one of the sciences.

  Or perhaps…history. The past had intruded into her present, and she had a perspective on ancient history now that would make the study of it enticing. But it might be a reminder of what she left behind, too.

  She looked at the reflection in the window once more, cataloguing the changes that had happened since she had last caught a glimpse of herself in this window. Her hair rested coiled on her shoulders in big, loose curls, gleaming in the kitchen light. Ylva had finally managed to tame her wild locks and taught Charlee how to keep them contained and ladylike.

  Was her face thinner? The chin more pointed? Her shoulders more square? She was definitely taller, but her hips looked broader and more rounded, even though her waist was as small as it had been in high school.

  (His fingers sliding around her waist, branding her flesh with his heat.)

  Charlee drew in a sharp breath and headed for the fridge and the ice cream with an impatient sound. She settled at the table with the bucket and a spoon, and her mind slid back into the same weary channel.

  There was no way to have Asher in her life except as a shallow relationship. But if she didn’t agree to those terms, then what?

  The door to the kitchen squeaked as it opened and Darwin shuffled in, rubbing his fingers back and forth through his iron-grey hair. “I guessed it was you. It’s a night for contemplation, isn’t it?” He squeezed her shoulder gently as he moved past the back of her chair and sat in his. He belted the robe more firmly around his middle, then propped his head up with his hand, his elbow on the table. His eyes were still half-filled with sleep.

  “I woke you. I’m sorry.”

  “Sleep gets a little bit more sparse as I get older. Don’t worry about it. I can always snooze my day away on the sofa to catch up.” He tilted the ice cream bucket toward him and inspected the inside of it, then wrinkled his nose and stood it back upright. “Trying to figure out what to do?”

  Charlee sighed. “I can’t seem to move beyond the basic fact, Darwin. I grew up knowing in my bones that Asher was the man I’d be with forever. It was in the back of my mind, always. A fact, just like the fact that I’m right-handed, and can roll my tongue and that math is easy for me. That’s how sure I was about it. I knew that I was red-headed and I knew that Asher was mine. When the other girls at school would talk about dating, or one day getting married and if they wanted kids, I didn’t have to wonder about who I would end up with. I just knew it would be Asher. And I never had to worry about dating, because Asher was there. I can’t imagine him not being in my life, Darwin. But now I can’t have all of him in my life, and I don’t know if I can accept the little bit he can give me.”

  Darwin blinked sleepily. “You love all of him,” he said. “The human side and the hidden side. Makes sense you don’t want to give half of that up.”

  Charlee looked at him, startled. “Yes,” she said slowly, putting down her spoon. “I’m in too deep now.”

  “Doesn’t mean you can’t back out. There’s always a way.”

  “Could you cut off your leg, Darwin? Just to move on to a new life?”

  His gaze was steady. “I guess if I had to, I’d do it.”

  “Would you give up your memories of Anna-Marie, if you were told that’s the only way to live another ten years?”

  “Honey, I’m an old man. I’ve had my time. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you. It’s different.”

  “You’d say no, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yeah, I’d say no.” He grimaced. “Even if it gave me immortality, I’d still say no.”

  Charlee got up and put the ice cream back in the freezer.

  “You’ve decided, haven’t you?” Darwin asked.

  “Yes, I know now what’s next.”

  * * * * *

  Ylva got up from behind her desk and walked over to the window, where climbing hollyhocks were in full bloom on either side of the frame. She liked them around the window because they enticed hummingbirds, she had said once. But now she was looking through the glass and Charlee knew she wasn’t seeing the flowers at all.

  “Isn’t that something you thought might happen when I came here?” Charlee asked reasonably.

  “It’s one of the reasons I let you come, yes,” Ylva said, keeping her back to her. “I wanted you to be able to make an informed choice. But this isn’t what I intended.”

  “You wanted me to learn all about the Kine, so I could choose to forget about them?” Charlee asked, puzzled. “Go off and have a normal, human life as if I didn’t know they existed?”

  Ylva turned and rested her rear on the sideboard under the window. Her hands gripped the edges, beside her hips. “I thought that if you chose to join the Amica it would be a positive thing. But you’re using them to hide.”

  “I don’t think there’s ever been an Amica
who could hide,” Charlee said frankly. “They all tend to turn heads when they walk into a room.”

  “But you think you won’t do that. You think you’ll disappear into their ranks, still a part of Asher’s world, but unnoticed. Because of your scar and because you think you’re unremarkable and ordinary.”

  Surprise jolted Charlee into sitting upright. “I do not think that.”

  Ylva smiled grimly. “You refer to the Amica in the third person. As ‘them’ not ‘us’, despite living among them for so many years. You don’t think of yourself as ever being able to match them. You don’t think you’ll ever really be one of them. But you want to use the Amica as an entry key to the Kine.”

  “Yes,” Charlee said flatly. “I want to be a part of this world. Joining the Amica is the only way for me.”

  “But do you really understand what it means?” Ylva asked.

  “Sexual partners?” Charlee said calmly. “Yes, I understand.”

  Ylva studied her. “But you think you won’t be chosen. That you won’t draw the eye of any of them.”

  Charlee couldn’t meet her gaze. Ylva had spoken aloud the belief she had formed when thinking through this decision. “They’re all so beautiful. Stunning.”

  Ylva shook her head. “And what about Asher?”

  Charlee looked down at her hands again. “I…may see him in the halls.”

  “Charlee, look at me.”

  Charlee reluctantly obeyed.

  Ylva leaned forward a little. “There is no way to guarantee your assignment. You understand that, don’t you? Of all the many halls, you may serve in Europe or Asia or South America. There are halls on every continent, in every country. It will be up to Eira to decide your posting and I have to warn you, Charlee. Eira already knows who you are and your association with Asher. For that reason, she may decide that having you in the same hall with him would distract you from your assignment. You would be there to serve. With Asher nearby, you would be distracted from your work. It’s quite likely that Eira will find you an assignment a long way from New York.”

  Charlee’s heart hurried along. “I guessed that might be how it worked. I understand.”