Valkyrie Rising

by Ingrid Paulson

  He was right. And it was written all over my face. My lips curved into a smile at his word choice. Invincible. It felt too good to deny, the surge of power and knowledge. And as the rest of what he’d said hit me, I realized that accepting what I was didn’t necessarily mean I was evil, like Margit said. Because I was still me. Ellie. The violent voice yielded to me when I stood up to it. My Valkyrie instincts were an adviser, not a dictator. If my grandmother could control them, so could I.

  Loki was grinning ear to ear, as if my thoughts were being posted on my forehead like a stock market ticker.

  “Of course you can choose your own path, Elsa,” he told me. “You haven’t made any promises. You owe Odin nothing. And I’d advise you to keep it that way. Unless you envy Astrid’s state of servitude.”

  Tuck had an odd, pinched expression, like if he scrunched it up tight enough, the truth wouldn’t be able to sneak its way into his ear. For once, his face was all too readable. He frowned as all the weird things I’d done replayed in his mind, settled into place, and fitted Loki’s explanation just perfectly.

  I held my breath, waiting for him to react. Given what he’d seen that night, I couldn’t blame him if he was angry I’d lied. Or was afraid of me. But Tuck met my gaze as he said, “Let’s focus on the real issue here—it’s got nothing to do with what Ellie and Hilda are or aren’t.”

  Loki scowled, disappointed by Tuck’s reaction. Or lack thereof. “By all means, enlighten me,” Loki snapped. “What is the real issue? Other than the amazing creature standing next to you.” Something dangerous flashed in Loki’s eyes when he looked at me. Greed. Like I was a precious museum piece.

  Tuck and I exchanged a nervous glance. “We need your help,” I said. “Valkyries took my brother.”

  “That wouldn’t surprise me,” Loki said, losing his last remaining shred of interest in the conversation. “Any grandson of Hilda’s would be a great hero. I’m sure he’s in Valhalla as we speak. How did he die? Was it noble? Brave?”

  “Die?” The word was thick as peanut butter on my tongue. “Graham didn’t die. He was out at a bar with his friends, and these girls, Valkyries, they just came and took him. One of them was Astrid. And I want to get him back.”

  “Astrid.” Loki grinned lasciviously at some memory I sincerely hoped he wouldn’t share. “It’s been centuries. Lovely girl. I haven’t seen her since the time Odin had me chained and tossed into the ocean—right into the Mariana Trench. It took a decade to get out of that one. She tied me so deliciously tight.” He tugged at his chin with his index finger and thumb. Then he stared at me with a disturbing intensity, as he finally processed the rest of what I’d said. “Your brother was alive when Astrid took him?” Loki’s tone made me flinch, even though I was pretty sure his anger wasn’t directed at me.

  “Yes, of course,” I said. “Otherwise I wouldn’t exactly be able to get him back, would I?”

  Loki’s features were a mood ring. His face twisted into a mask of abject fury. “They’re allowed to take only the dead to build their army—that truce is three thousand years old. Astrid knows better.” He paced around the room.

  “Well, apparently she doesn’t,” I said, standing up straighter. His outrage introduced the hope that maybe he’d help us. “She took my brother and our friend Kjell. And I want them back. Along with all the other living boys they’ve taken. Because there are a lot. Who do I report this, um, truce violation to?”

  “Me,” Loki said in a flat, even voice. “Astrid would never do something like this on her own. That means Odin is awake. And, once again, he thinks he can take whatever he wants.”

  “That’s what my grandmother said, too,” I whispered. “Right before she disappeared.”

  Loki’s eyes finally focused back on me, like he’d just remembered I was in the room.

  “And Hilda would know,” he muttered. “No wonder she let them take her prisoner. She’s so predictable. Even if what she’s probably plotting works, it won’t be enough to stop Odin. He’s a complete maniac. Obsessed with an archaic prophesy about the end of the world that clearly didn’t come true.” He regarded me with thoughtful eyes, as if he was weighing the various courses of action laid out in front of him. “Given the state of modern warfare, at least he won’t get too far outside this county. I’ll make sure of that.” His clothing shifted into a military uniform. The kind that high-ranking officials wear, weighed down with stripes and gaudy medals. “I’ll keep it old-fashioned. Ground forces and light artillery. Out of respect for the elderly.” His eyes were glittering with a caliber of excitement that made my stomach drop through the floorboards. “Besides, smart bombs are so anticlimactic,” he added as an afterthought.

  “What about my brother?” I challenged. “You just said if the Valkyries took Graham, he’s with Odin. You can’t attack him. Graham could get hurt.”

  “It’s not a possibility,” Loki murmured. “It’s a certainty. He’s as good as dead already, if he’s in Astrid’s hands. She was always Odin’s favorite general. Because she’ll fight to the very last soldier.” Loki paused and squeezed my arm. “At least he’ll have a glorious death. Astrid has a flair for the dramatic.”

  Amazingly enough, Loki seemed to think that would appease me.

  “I’m afraid that answer won’t work for us,” Tuck challenged him. “We need Graham back alive.”

  Loki laughed. “Maybe I should ship you off to Valhalla too, little boy. Takes some nerve to stand up to me, but then again, you don’t really know what I’m capable of, do you?”

  My new, sharper instincts confirmed that Loki was more venomous than a snake and every bit as slippery. I took a step forward, just enough that I’d be able to intervene if he tried to hurt Tuck.

  “If you want Graham back,” Loki said, “you’ll have to get to him soon. I don’t have time to trifle with one measly soldier’s safety. How very selfish of you to forget all the other boys and innocent bystanders who’ll die if Odin makes his move. Is Graham more important than they are?”

  “No,” I said. “We want to save them all.” I had to believe there was a different solution, something that would save all the kidnapped boys. “We have to stop Odin before it comes to a fight.”

  I glanced down at the image of my grandmother in her Valkyrie glory. I wished with all my might that she’d appear right then and save the day. But she didn’t. For the first time in my life, there was no one there to fix things but me. And now it wasn’t just Graham and Grandmother I had to worry about. I had to save the innocent people who were getting tangled up in Astrid and Odin’s net.

  As I stared at the book in my hands, sifting through every scrap of information I’d collected over the course of the past week, a word on the opposite page caught my eye: Loki. It was all Norwegian, a tangle of words with too many vowels, and armed with umlauts. But as I stared, the words connected themselves with meaning in my mind. Not a translation, not the way it was when I read Spanish in class. I recognized the words just as surely as I knew my own name.

  Two paragraphs were dedicated to the moody madman standing in front of us. Loki was a jokester, a prankster. He was the Norse god of mischief and could change shape at will. But like all other Norse gods, he had a healthy streak of war-loving Viking violence. For centuries he and Odin were locked in a battle of wills, of cruel pranks and brutal retaliation. Vying for control. And bragging rights.

  It was pretty clear that Loki was looking forward to this opportunity to crush his nemesis.

  As sister to the most popular boy in the world, I’d known plenty of guys like Loki over the years. Arrogant, conceited boys who always got their way. While Loki was more dangerous than your average lacrosse player, a boy is a boy, and I knew better than anyone how to manage their raging egos.

  “Loki, wait,” I said as he sidestepped around Tuck, who had shifted back into Loki’s path, bracing for a confrontation I preferred to avoid. “I know the stories about you and Odin,” I bluffed. “Your history of fighting. Back and f
orth for centuries. And it seems to me you need an outside perspective. You haven’t exactly been able to keep the upper hand for very long on your own. You’re gonna just take out his army when you know he can’t do much damage anyway? Not all that humiliating, if you ask me. Not flashy enough. He’ll just come back for more one day.”

  A shadow passed across Loki’s face. Apparently someone didn’t take criticism very well.

  “This time you need to hit him where it hurts,” I said.

  Loki’s eyes betrayed a glimmer of interest. “I’m listening,” he said.

  I inhaled, steadying myself. Then I caught Tuck’s eye and held it. He winked—so calm and collected, no matter what was happening around us. Or at least pretending to be. It gave me the infusion of confidence I needed to deliver my next words.

  “We’ll free the soldiers who are still alive, who’ve been kidnapped, and we’ll lead them against Odin. You can bet they’ll be pretty mad, right? I mean, this is beyond military conscription, and people get pretty worked up about that. Having all those people he kidnapped inside his army, inside Valhalla, would be like a Trojan horse he built himself.” I paused, scrambling to throw this plan together on the fly. “Odin would be humiliated because a bunch of kids beat him, and you would prove once and for all that you’re more than some silly prankster he can just dismiss. You’re a military mastermind who can beat him at his own game.”

  Loki narrowed his eyes. “You overplayed your cards,” he said. “I can spot manipulation a thousand miles away. I invented the concept. Yet your idea amuses me. Tell me, Elsa Overholt, how would you propose to free so many mortals, with Astrid and the others there to undermine your efforts? You do realize all those boys aren’t just lounging around playing video games. Astrid keeps everyone on a very tight leash. Her influence gets stronger with each passing day. Graham and the others will be completely loyal to her.” He leaned against the door frame, his features settling into arrogant perfection.

  “Easy,” I said, bluffing with the best of them, even as his words made my heart crack. “I’ve done it twice now—stolen a boy right back from under Astrid’s nose. I’m stronger than she is, and she knows it.”

  Loki laughed. “Maybe in five hundred years you could challenge her, but not a moment sooner. What if she just decides to kill you? Or your brother? Don’t tell me you think you’d be a match for her in a fight. I’ll know you’re lying.”

  I couldn’t help it, my eyes widened at that. I remembered all too well the feel of Astrid’s bone-crushing blows.

  Loki laughed even louder. “It might be worth my while to let you try. Better even than the Battle of Bayeux, perhaps.” He sized me up lazily. “What would humiliate Odin more than destruction at my hand?” He chuckled to himself. “You have until Thursday at dawn.” His tone made it all too clear that he considered it the most lavish of favors. Even though his deadline was only twenty-seven hours away.

  “What happens at dawn on Thursday?” I demanded, mentally adding “… if I fail.”

  “If you keep wasting your time interrogating me, there’s a good chance you’ll find out,” he glanced at his wrist even though he wasn’t wearing a watch. “Tick-tock.”

  As Loki turned to leave, for real this time, his face rearranged itself into that of a boy I recognized from Graham’s pickup soccer games in town. He grew three inches all at once. With a quick bow and an even faster smile, he disappeared down the hallway.

  “Loki?” I called after him. “Wait! One more thing.”

  “You already have everything you’ll get from me today.” He gave me a slow once-over that sent all the blood in my body straight to my face. “Although I could come back when you’re alone and let you practice your powers of persuasion.”

  I swallowed my disgust and chased after him down the hallway, catching his arm. “Wait. Loki, please. How do we find Odin and Astrid? Where is Valhalla? How do we get there?”

  He paused. “Your grandmother didn’t tell you?”

  I shook my head.

  “Wonderful.” Loki’s grin was cruelty incarnate. “If you’d told me that from the start, I wouldn’t have thought twice about approving your proposal. Fate is truly on my side this time.” His eyes glassed over, lost in thought. “Yes, my second plan is even better. Genius, if I do say so myself. And I have remarkably high standards.” He turned away, not bothering to explain whatever second plan he was talking about. “I’ll await you at the finish line—or at your brother’s funeral. If the two aren’t inextricably intertwined.”

  Loki snapped his fingers and disappeared into thin air, leaving me standing there, utterly confused, confounded, and without the slimmest sliver of hope.

  WHEN I RETURNED to my grandmother’s room, Tuck’s mouth was drawn into an uncharacteristically grim line. “How do we start, then?”

  “Start?” I repeated numbly, feeling like a deer caught between headlights and a high-power rifle’s scope.

  “It’s Valhalla or bust,” Tuck said, a spark of his usual fire flaring beneath his somber surface. “Until we wake up from this acid trip, I guess we play along? Please tell me your new Spidey senses will tell us what we do next.” He pointed at the alarm clock on Grandmother’s bedside table. “It’s midnight. Dawn on Thursday is barely more than a day away. Good news is, I’m fantastic under pressure.”

  I’d never in my life been so grateful for Tuck. For his confidence—even when it defied logic. He looked like he was unraveling at the seams, but he was making a valiant effort to hold those edges together. And that was enough to snap me into gear.

  Even though Grandmother had told us to wait here, there was no way we could obey. She hadn’t known Graham would be taken or that Loki would appear, claiming he knew her plan would fail.

  “My grandmother would know—apparently she had quite a life before my father was born. Maybe we can find something that will point us in the right direction.” I glanced around the room, grasping for something that would point me in any direction.

  A floorboard had been pried up at one corner. A thin metal rod was wedged underneath, propping up the wooden slat just enough that I could see beneath it.

  “Tuck, c’mere,” I said as I tugged at the board, dislodging it the rest of the way. The nails made a stripping sound, like Velcro, as they were wrenched from the subfloor. Before Tuck had a chance to reach me, I’d already pushed the board aside to reveal a hidden compartment below.

  Inside was a sword. It was ancient looking, with crude carvings along the blade and handle. They were difficult to make out underneath a layer of dust as thick as frosting, but at first glance, it almost looked like the engravings told a story—with scenes and characters arranged in panes like a stained-glass window.

  I lifted it out of the concealed compartment, and a scrap of paper followed, fluttering to the ground at my feet, faceup. Grandmother’s handwriting was scrawled messily across the page in a rush. Judging by the torn edge, she’d ripped it hastily off the corner of a larger page.

  YOU MUST BEAT ONE OF US BEFORE YOU CAN JOIN US.

  VICTORY LIGHTS THE ROAD TO VALHALLA.

  “She left this note here for me,” I said. “Left the board wedged up like this so I’d find it.”

  “A sword?” Tuck said. “And a cryptic note. Well, now I’m not worried at all. We’ll have Graham back in no time.” I shot him a nasty look, and he muttered, “Sorry, but maybe she could have been more direct.”

  “She was,” I said. The scribbled words just confirmed that things had changed in the last hour. Even if she’d originally told me to wait here, she’d left another, more important message since. “She wants me to fight Astrid. Beat one of them. It says it right here,” I said. Even though we still didn’t know where she’d gone, I was sure she’d left this here for me to discover. Her coat and glasses were discarded messily on a chair. She’d left in too much of a rush to be any clearer.

  “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” Tuck said. “Astrid just pulverized you. Your
grandmother wouldn’t put you in that kind of danger—with some antique to defend yourself with.”

  “She wouldn’t have left that note here if she didn’t think I could do it,” I said. But I didn’t tell him the rest of what occurred to me as I stared at the blade. Maybe she didn’t have a choice. When faced with the danger Graham and the other boys were in, maybe Grandmother thought it was worth risking my life for a chance to stop it.

  And I agreed.

  A moment passed in silence. I knew Tuck was waiting for me to figure out what we should do next, and I was stalling, not wanting to tell him that I really had no idea. I thought about the way I felt in Astrid’s presence, the unity. I was a part of something that was larger than myself, a network of shared energy and camaraderie that flowed between the Valkyries. I wondered how my grandmother had hidden from the others for so long, if that was truly what she’d been doing. Because even as I stood there, most likely miles upon miles away from Astrid and the others, I could feel the space they’d occupied in town a mere hour ago. Traces of Astrid’s presence lingered, dissipating into the night but still present enough that I could reach out with my mind. And suddenly it seized me, like a super-sized wave at the beach, knocking me off my feet and sucking me under into the darkness.

  “Ellie? Are you okay?”

  I tried to tell Tuck to back away. I had no clue what was happening to me. But my tongue was frozen in place, every muscle in my body held rigid, waiting, as a thought that wasn’t mine wormed its way into my brain. Unlike the voice that couldn’t decide if I should crack Astrid’s skull or join her, this was completely external. Alien.