The United States of Asgard Book 3:
THE APPLE THRONE
By Tessa Gratton
The Apple Throne
Copyright © 2015 by Tessa Gratton. All rights reserved.
Cover design by Saundra Mitchell
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author or publisher.
There is only one person in the whole world who remembers the famous prophet Astrid Glyn: the berserker Soren Bearstar.
Ever since Astrid agreed to give up her life, her name, and her prophetic dreams to become Idun the Young, the almost-goddess who protects the apples of immortality in a secret mountain orchard, she’s been forgotten by everyone. Everyone except Soren.
For the last two years he’s faithfully visited her every three months. Then one day he doesn’t come. Though forbidden to leave the orchard, Astrid defies the gods by escaping with a bastard son of Thor to find Soren. But ancient creatures are moving in the mountains beneath the country. They are desperate to leave the shadows and Astrid’s quest might be the key they need.
Not-quite-a-goddess, but no longer only a girl, Astrid must choose a path that will save herself and the people she loves without unraveling the ancient magic that holds the entire nine worlds together.
For Maggie and Brenna, my writing comitatus.
“And someone called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.”
—William Butler Yeats
“I am fire and air; my other elements
I give to baser life. So, have you done?
Come then, and take the last warmth from my lips.”
—William Shakespeare
Table of Contents
Part One
Three Nights | Seven Nights | Eleven Nights | Fifteen Nights | Twenty-One Nights | Twenty-Seven Nights | Twenty-Eight Nights | Thirty-Three Nights | Eighty-Two Nights | Eight-Four Nights | Eighty-Five Nights | Eighty-Six Nights | Eighty-Nine Nights | Ninety Nights
Part Two
Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five | Chapter Six | Chapter Seven | Chapter Eight | Chapter Nine | Chapter Ten | Chapter Eleven | Chapter Twelve | Chapter Thirteen | Chapter Fourteen | Chapter Fifteen | Chapter Sixteen | Chapter Seventeen | Chapter Eighteen | Chapter Nineteen | Chapter Twenty | Chapter Twenty-One | Chapter Twenty-Two | Chapter Twenty-Three | Chapter Twenty-Four | Chapter Twenty-Five | Chapter Twenty-Six | Chapter Twenty-Seven | Chapter Twenty-Eight | Chapter Twenty-Nine
Part Three
Chapter Thirty | Chapter Thirty-One | Chapter Thirty-Two
About The Weight of Stars
Acknowledgements
Also By Tessa Gratton
PART ONE
The Lady of Apples
Three nights.
It has been three nights since I’ve dreamed.
My entire life before, I dreamed both sleeping and waking, seeing the future any time I closed my eyes. Two weeks before I had my ears pierced, I dreamed of the woman who would hold the needle. I dreamed of a cobblestone courtyard with a fountain of Sigurd Dragon Slayer before I even knew about the school where it existed. I saw visions of things I would never personally witness: the crack of a fist against flesh; the shine of an unsheathed sword; the last breath of a man in a faraway kingstate; the first kiss of a girl I’d not met. One night, I dreamed of a boy with dark honey skin and a spear tattoo below his left eye like an inky tear. And always there was an unending orchard of apples, filling the cracks and shadows of my dreams with a rainbow of promises.
I stand in that orchard now, alone with the trees for the first time since Freya, the goddess of magic, made me an offer: become Idun, the Lady of Apples, and protect this orchard or watch Baldur the Beautiful, god of light and hope, die forever.
It was an impossible choice.
If I chose to become Idun, my name would be torn from the world and forgotten by anyone who’d ever known it. Friends and family, all of history would forget me, and I would look into even Soren Bearstar’s eyes and see no hint of remembering.
But also, if I chose to become Idun, I could serve the gods I’d always loved, I could take my place in this apple orchard I’d dreamed of my entire life. I would save Baldur the Beautiful from unjust death and be the keeper of the apples of immortality. I would come to know Baldur and Freya, Odin Alfather and Thor Thunderer, Tyr the Just, Frigg Cloud-Spinner, Freyr the Satisfied, and Loki Changer. All the gods of the United States of Asgard.
Since I was a child, I had thought to serve my gods and my country as a seether, a prophet who sees possibilities and futures in her dreams. I thought to spend my life among frenetic crowds—reading runes to help people, seeking answers, dreaming and dancing and traveling as my mother dreamed and danced and traveled, being known across the country as my mother was known. I would be loved for my gifts, for my name. I would be Astrid Glyn, prophet and shining strand in fate’s web.
I never imagined serving in any other way until that moment when Freya made her offer.
I say it was an impossible choice, but that is a lie. It was really no choice at all. I could never consign Baldur to death and Hel forever if there was anything I might do about it. I was born to be Idun, ushered here by fate and dreams. So my name would be forgotten? So my past would be erased? So I would lose my friends, and Soren? The god of light would live for my sacrifice. It would be hard, but faith is hard. Life is hard. Love itself is the impossible thing. I would still be myself. I would still remember. And I would build myself into this new destiny with faith and devotion and hope.
I chose. Baldur the Beautiful came back to life, and Soren made a bargain of his own so as not to forget me.
But I haven’t dreamed in the three nights since.
That wasn’t part of my bargain.
I do not know if losing my name and past somehow stopped my dreams, or if I was given this gift of dreaming the future only to bring me here to my destiny, here to the orchard, and now that I’ve arrived, I need my dreams no more. But if that is so, shouldn’t I at least have a normal girl’s dreams? Fears and hopes, random images and memories, fever dreams and imagination?
Perhaps it’s only weariness, change, or trauma, and my dreams will return to me some night when I’ve settled.
I want them back, even if they have no power. I thought my dreams would connect me to the world I left behind, would keep me myself. Who am I without dreams?
And the orchard itself is so very dreamlike.
It sprawls in a colorful valley, cupped by a circle of purple mountains. Rows of trees stripe the land, some braided together into thickets of apples, some straight and proud. Because it is spring, ghostly blossoms tangle in the wind and the leaves are sharp green. Most of the orchard will follow the seasons, Freya told me, and I may tend it as I wish or let it grow wild. A few limbs hang with fruit now, but in the summer, the apples will crowd out the sky: yellow and bright red, palest pink and green like emeralds.
It is only the tree at the center of the orchard that grows fruit every day of the year.
I kneel before it.
The apples of immortality are puckered little things adorning the squat, twisted tree. They’re ugly and fit five in the palm of my hand. It’s charitable to call them golden; their wrinkled skin is nearer a filthy yel
low or the unpleasant color of the sky before a tornado.
Who could imagine inside each one is a seed of life-eternal?
I asked Freya this morning, as the sun rose and we sat together at the hearth of my small cottage beside the tree: What is the magic in them? Will you tell me how it works?
And the goddess of witches, of magic and fate, told me a story.
Long ago, she said, before the age of humans, we gods lived under the mountains, hidden in the shadows and under the ice. We were one with the frost giants and one with the elves—all of us a secret people together, apart from humanity. So long ago there are no hints of our ancient words in these modern tongues, we argued amongst ourselves. Those who became the giants wished to conquer and own the new humans. Those who became the elves wished to maintain our secrecy and quiet worship. Those who became the gods wished to emerge into the light and befriend the people, nurture and teach them and see what wonders we might create together.
There was war, as always follows new thought and change. The frost giants broke away first, driven high onto the ice sheets, and my brother Freyr and I, along with Tyr and Odin, founded Old Asgard where we might be discovered by humans. For a time, there was peace. But there were so few of us Asgardians, and we were vulnerable to the giants. You see, we do not grow old, we hardly age, but we can die. It was our greatest weakness.
The giants were great in number and the elves hid themselves deep in the honeycomb mountains, but we lived vulnerable under the sky with humankind. Although we learned much power and magic, death culled our strength. We could not convince our cousin-elves to ally with us, for their fear of dying on a field of battle or in a mortal king’s hall was too great.
We needed something to regain balance, to strengthen us against our enemies. For one hundred years, I gathered the necessary elements: heartwood from the World Tree, the breath of babes, hair from the most ancient giants and the most beautiful elves, scales and fossilized heart-stones from long-dead dragons, the coldest ocean water and the ever-renewing fire of the earth, a thread of Fate itself, a tooth from the mouth of Hel.
On and on I gathered elements you’ve never known and those barely whispered of in our oldest tales. And thus I wove the greatest charm in all our history before and since: an apple tree that would bear fruit to rescue my cousins from death. Once eaten, for a year’s time, the apple will revive anyone from death into life again.
But the tree was weak and decrepit. Though its roots were fed by the energy of the Nine Worlds, still it did not flourish. I spent much time tending it, watering and feeding, trimming and singing and pushing what love I could into the life of the tree.
My charm was missing a key ingredient: death itself and the promise of death.
I thought of it one cool autumn day: only youth that will fade, a life that will end, is enough of a knot to bind this power.
So Idun the Young was born. A girl from the human race, chosen by fate to tend the apple tree, to breathe her unique life into the leaves, to stomp her ever-nearing death into the roots beneath her feet.
She is a renewable resource, as you say now, for when one Idun grows old or dies, a new young girl is called to take her place. Always youthful, always reborn, Idun is the paradox of life and death united: truly immortal and always dying.
Freya the Witch knelt at my side; my heart turned to fire as she took my hands in supplication. Her gray eyes seemed almost warm, and the right side of her face tightened with her Hel-mask—her shrunken, black, death-goddess skin. “You, my beloved, are the center of Asgard’s life. Your hand gives us the apples, and your life binds the charm. That unique spark within you, so long as you burn with it, makes you Idun. So long as you are here to tend your tree, the apples flourish.”
I shuddered, awed and excited. For a moment I felt it, that spark of magic tingling in my heart and in the palms of my hands.
The goddess of dreams said, “Give yourself to the tree, to the apples. Befriend it, speak to it, or sing—whatever makes you feel as though it is your friend. You will hear it, feel it, in return, like it has become a piece of you.”
Sinking out of my chair, I grasped at her cold hands. “How long?” I whispered. “How long does this magic burn in me?”
She smiled, and her death-mask shifted away until she was only a beautiful woman, glimmering with inner light. “I cannot say, beloved. Some of my Iduns grow old by their fifteenth birthdays, and others are young still at fifty years. You will feel it before I know, and then a new girl will be called by fate.”
My throat was hollow with expectation and a thrill. I remembered my lifelong desire to serve and this was making myself like a fruit for the gods: they could not live without me.
Freya said, “You can do this, Idun. You were chosen because you can.” It was a soothing voice, as cool as a lullaby. She took my face in her hands and kissed my lips and my cheeks and my eyelids. A benediction from my goddess, a promise, a prophecy.
And then she stood, leaving me on the floor of my cottage.
I am the center of Asgard’s life.
I am the knot.
The apple tree is my charge, to love and care for so it will thrive. Without me, the gods would not rise from death and our world would shatter.
It settled like a mantle over my shoulders.
Surrounded now by apple trees, by an orchard that is my new home, I breathe deeply. I long to tell Soren what I feel, what I know. He would understand the heaviness, the weight of this promise. But the price of his remembering me is that we only are allowed one day together four times a year. I must wait almost three months before he is with me again.
I should be dreaming of him, at least.
The thought is a sudden and bitter thing, and I do not want it affecting the tree or the apples. So I stand. I should have asked her before she left, asked Freya if she knew why I had not been dreaming. But it has only been three nights, and I am not sure I wish to know her answer.
Quietly, while spring birds chirp in the orchard and clouds billow overhead, I wander my garden, plucking vines and flowers, leaves and twigs. As I go, I braid them into a crown of apple blossoms: beauty and responsibility like I have never known. Better than dreams, better than my future that might have been.
Kneeling beside the apple tree of immortality again, I set the crown on my head and weave my hair into it until no one could read where my dark hair ends and the crown begins.
Seven nights.
The cottage is small and warm and filled with relics of Iduns before me. Their magazines and DVDs, their art and books and dried-out markers. Over the hearth hangs an oil painting of the orchard, thick with layers of green, signed Idun, and not more than a hundred years old. There is a bird mask mounted on one wall, and a child’s wooden sword rests in the corner. I wonder how it happened those girls arrived here with such things. I have my seething kit, my old boots, and a black necklace of plastic pearls my mother gave me. When I go, perhaps the next Idun will like the look of them at her throat.
Under the bed is a long box of paper, and upon every page is written a single name. Marly and Bridget and Edie and Anna. Serena, Signe, Hedvig, Christina, Louise, Perdita, Diane, Torgunn, Yrsa, and on and on until they are too faded, too old to read. I sit on the wooden floor, surrounded by the names of my predecessors, empty of everything but wonder. I search the small secretary desk for pen and paper, then carefully write Astrid. Maybe for the last time.
I tuck it into the box and slide it back beneath the bed.
I am part of something amazing.
My heart tears suddenly, and I drag the box open again, pulling out all the papers, hunting for one name through all the rest. I read them out loud, I whisper them, I line them up in alphabetical order, but as the sun sets, I must acknowledge: Jenna is nowhere to be found. My mother, who was Idun just before me, did not put her name down. Five years ago, she borrowed this destiny from me, bargained more time for me to live my life, so she did not consider herself part of our line. Her nam
e did not vanish from the memory of the world. It does not belong in this forgotten box.
Did my mother ever lose her dreams? I wish I could ask her.
Once, I raised Soren’s dead father from the grave to ask him a question. I slide my gaze to the leather roll of my seething kit where it leans beside the bed. I’ve not touched it since arriving, and I am afraid to now. Seething and dreams are woven together, born of the same cold universe of stars in the heart of every prophet. I haven’t dreamed in seven nights, and if I open my kit now, throw runes, taste the bitter corrberries, but am unable to reach into the future, I will know certainly and irrevocably that my dreams are gone. My power is gone.
I can’t. I can’t. Not yet.
For the first time since Soren left me, since my mother died, I curl over my knees and cry.
Eleven nights.
When I forget for a while that I’ve had no dreams in eleven nights, I find it more than peaceful here. The loveliness of the orchard is energizing. The air itself draws me out, and I run through the trees, swing up into their branches, laugh at the antics of squirrels and the small gray cat that has appeared. I do not get tired easily, no matter how far I run, and my endurance for weapons practice is three times what it was. I raid the closet of my predecessors, take up that child’s sword, and perform the seven-point dances of offense and defense to keep myself in shape. I decide to see if I can train myself to do a pull-up on the low branch of the red apple tree nearest my cottage.
I read the magazines and books left behind. I learn the paths through the orchard. I make a list of what I need:
Thick kneesocks
Exercise bra
Hand weights
An oven? Possibly? To make my own bread?
Music, but the old sort from Appalachia or Scandan.
Paper
Soren
Freya told me I might ask for anything, though she left me only a basket of food and simple clothes. A disir will come gather my laundry once a week and bring clean things from Bright Home. There are movies to watch in the player, though I don’t get cable TV here or the interweave. It’s all right. I don’t think I want to know about the world outside.
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