The Apple Throne

by Tessa Gratton

Behind me, Sune calls, “We’ll look around the woods, lady.”

  I climb in, leave the passenger door hanging. Gently, I touch the glass apple and sigh his name like a prayer. Sunlight makes the yellow glass glow. Settling into the seat, I glance into the side pockets, but there’s nothing, no trash even. There are a few leaves and a crumpled paper at my feet, but it’s only a gas receipt. I pop open the glove compartment to find his cell phone. There’s no charge left in the battery, so I slide it into my coat pocket. Hopefully, Amon or Sune will have a power cord to fit it and we can see who he’s called recently. For a moment I just sit there, blow out a long breath that turns to fog before my face, and imagine Soren beside me, heating the cab with his frenzy. But I have to keep moving if I want that to be real.

  My boots hit the ground, jarring my bones a little, and I catch myself against the cold metal as I go quickly to the tailgate. A tarp is snapped over the entire bed, and it takes a moment to dig my fingers under the corner to rip it all up. Supplies fill the truck: bottled water still in plastic wrap, MREs and canned coffee, several round shields, sleeping bags, a green tent, spears and practice swords, and the dull glint of familiar black leather.

  I heave into the bed and push aside Soren’s great coat to get to the pile of swords. There at the bottom, sheathed in tooled black leather, is Sleipnir’s Tooth, his father’s sword.

  My fingers hover over the sheath as my heart pounds. He left it buried here before going to Evan Bell’s. Why would he do that? He never went without it, not even to come into my orchard where he’d never need it. This sword is like a piece of his body. I lift it up, surprised as always by the heft of it, and set it onto my thighs. I caress the old fashioned knotwork of the leather and slowly curl my fingers around the sharkskin grip. It’s so cold. The crosspiece, with its Odinist runes, gleams like a mirror.

  A crack of dry leaves startles me. Something sharp presses my hair to the side of my neck.

  “Don’t move,” a woman says behind me.

  I open my mouth in surprise, tighten my left hand around the grip of the sword. It’s not my dominant hand, but maybe if I leap forward, I can kick her back and have a chance to draw it. There are spears beside my lap, a shield propped against the wheel well.

  She presses the side of her blade to my neck. “Turn slowly,” she says.

  “You drop your sword,” says Sune behind us.

  There’s a moment of dead silence but for the whisper of distant wind.

  “Do it,” Sune insists.

  With a hissed curse, the woman tosses her sword away. It hits the earth beside the truck with a dull clang.

  I turn around to see Sune standing strong at the tailgate, pistol raised and pointed at the head of Signy Valborn, the Valkyrie of the Tree.

  The Valkyrie’s wide green eyes stare at me with unadulterated shock. She’s in a dark canvas coat, with a hoodie pulled up around her faded blond braids. Her jeans and boots are scuffed, and the cuffs a little ratty. There’s a scar lined over her right eye like a second eyebrow. I’m used to seeing her from a distance at Bright Home, carrying mead for the gods at holidays, in brilliant makeup and fancy dresses, chin up and haughty, staring around the crowd as if she owns us. Now, other than the gold rings stacked on her fingers, she seems more like a street cat.

  “Astrid?” she says, frowning.

  Soren told her my true name.

  Sune’s eyes flicker from Signy to me, and I nod at him. He lowers his gun, but keeps it out at his side, arm straight. Amon is jogging over from the far edge of the campground. I lift my hand to let him know all is well and look back to the Valkyrie. “Sune Rask, meet Signy Valborn, the Valkyrie of the Tree.”

  The hunter’s jaw clenches, but he holsters his weapon. “Valkyrie.” He bows perfectly.

  She tilts her head like she’s cracking her neck and puts her hands on her hips. “Nice ink, major.”

  The title surprises me, though I shouldn’t expect a Valkyrie to be as ignorant of rank insignia as I am, even for the Thunderer’s Army.

  Amon steps up to us. “The Valkyrie of the Tree,” he says.

  “Yes, we’ve covered that,” Signy says dismissively. “You’re…” She narrows her eyes as she peers up into his.

  Amon says nothing, just crosses his large arms over his large chest.

  “Child of Thunder,” Signy mutters. “Well, then, you must be Amon Thorson.”

  I stand up in the bed of the truck and loop Soren’s sword over my shoulder by the sheath strap. Sune moves to the gate and offers his hand. I take it to hop down.

  “Is that Soren’s sword?” Signy says, voice higher. I meet her suddenly frightened gaze and nod.

  “Skit,” she says, kicking at the brown groundcover.

  “I take it he wouldn’t leave it behind?” Amon says.

  I rub my thumb along the strap. “He must have when he went to Bell’s, but it surprises me.”

  Signy strides up to me, close enough to loom. “What are you doing here? Aren’t you stuck in your orchard?”

  My name rings in my ears. “A goddess is stuck nowhere,” I say coolly.

  “That isn’t the impression I got from Soren,” she responds.

  I remember it—the first time I met her, in a garden in the Old Quarter of Port Orleans, six weeks after Soren and I saved Baldur. I helped her, gave her advice when she was struggling. And now here she is with her face in mine. “Perhaps you got the impression I wished for you to get, Valkyrie.”

  “Back up from the lady,” Sune says to her, hand on the butt of his gun.

  Signy’s mouth curls into a smile. “The Thunderer providing guard dogs for you these days?” she asks me.

  “Where are your berserker bodyguards? I think we out-match you.”

  Amon scoffs. “Are you two actually fighting about something? Please tell me it’s not the ragging Bearstar.”

  I realize my cheeks are burning. I touch them before I can stop myself. Signy looks away from me, then back up with a rueful tilt to her smile. “That’s not a battle worth fighting if you’d ever heard him talk about Astrid,” Signy says. She holds her hands up in surrender.

  Taking a deep breath, I ask, “When was the last time you saw him?”

  There’s a pause, then she says, “He was in Philadelphia, but left with Pilot three weeks ago.”

  “He had Pilot with him!”

  “Who is that? Someone who might’ve helped him escape?” Sune asks.

  Signy’s shoulders pull back. “Escape?”

  I shake my head. “No, Pilot is only…twelve I think? A very young berserker. But Soren wouldn’t have left him in danger, either. He must be someplace safe.”

  Signy says, “He’s back in Philadelphia. Arrived on a plane the day before Yule and called my berserker captain. Soren knew he was heading into trouble.”

  “Did Pilot know anything?” Sune asks, and Signy says no.

  I touch her hand. “I don’t know how much you know, but Soren was arrested for killing a man named Evan Bell.”

  “That’s why I’m here,” Signy says. “I traced his cell phone signal before it died.”

  “That can’t have been legal,” Sune says, and the Valkyrie lifts her chin for a fight. But Sune leaves off.

  I lean forward. “Soren’s not in the militia prison anymore.”

  “Where—”

  I put my hand out to stop her. “Somebody broke him out. The militia and Thor’s Army are combing the Jotunwood north of Eureka. There might be a connection with elf gold. Did Soren ever mention that to you?”

  She purses her lips. “He’s not a talker.”

  Amon, who’s only stood there with his arms crossed, says, “What are you wearing around your neck?”

  I look at Signy’s throat and see nothing but the collar of her hoodie. But she puts her hand over her heart, gripping something through her clothes. “A gift from the Alfather. How did you know?”

  The godling shrugs, and Sune says, “Amon has an affinity for etin-made items.”
r />   Signy sneers. “Giant-made, my ass.”

  “Much of the gods’ magic smells the same,” Amon admits.

  The four of us stand quietly, staring at Signy’s fist, wrapped around this pendant through her hoodie. She must care deeply for it.

  “Oh,” I say. They all turn their attention to me. “Sleipnir’s Tooth. There’s nothing better for seething Soren.”

  Amon winces mightily. “Bad idea, jill.”

  Sune snaps a glare at the godling, who refuses to apologize for the epithet.

  “Why’s it a bad idea?” Signy asks excitedly. “She used to be a prophet!”

  Amon meets my gaze. I lift my eyebrows, and he says darkly, “Because it keeps sending her into a berserker frenzy.”

  Both Signy and Sune start talking, and I shake my head, holding my hands out flat. “Stop—I don’t know why it’s happening. It shouldn’t, but I’m out of practice and haven’t had all my tools. I do know where he probably will be, but it’s only a basic image: a cave, and he’s in chains, going berserk. The more I see, the better picture we can have. Where is the cave? Is he in it now? Or will he be very soon? Maybe there will be others with him, or maybe I’ll see Sune find him or—or anything. But more clues are better than none. The sword will help me focus and maintain control.”

  “And if you can’t?” Amon says through his teeth.

  “Then you’ll catch me again,” I say softly.

  Sune says, “May I speak with you privately, lady?”

  Amon rolls his eyes, and Signy looks skeptical. I say, “Will you two gather firewood? I want a full seething circle.”

  They pause, eyeing each other. Signy says, “Where do you want the fire?”

  I point to the massive redwood stump. “There. That will be my altar.” The words are out of my mouth before I feel the rightness of them. Sunset should be in about two hours, exactly the best time for dancing up to the stars.

  Amon and Signy move out, but not before Amon shoots Sune a warning glance. Sune remains calm, his shoulders straight and head bowed just slightly to watch me from those hooded vulture’s eyes.

  I sink to the ground, crossing my legs, and pull Soren’s sword back into my lap like a shield. “What is it, major?”

  He grinds the heel of his boot into the ground, then abruptly crouches before me. “Lady, my god personally directed me to aid you in this hunt for Soren Bearstar, and I don’t question his will. You’ve been introduced to me as Idun, the Lady of Youth, and I won’t accuse you again of being otherwise. But you must have noticed that I’m a hunter because I see things, and everything I see about you is a contradiction. You will seeth, and I haven’t ever heard of a goddess seething. Amon and the Valkyrie called you Astrid. You don’t smell of apples like the other gods I’ve met.” His sharp eyes are direct, his lips thin. He leans his forearms onto his knees and relaxes his hands, fingers woven together. “I want… I need you to tell me what you are.”

  “A reasonable request, Sune.”

  He nods once, agreeing with me.

  “I have a question for you, too,” I say slowly. When he only waits, I ask, “What is it between you and my friend Amon?”

  Sune freezes for a spark, lowers his eyes, and then pulls his lips into a line. It’s my turn to wait until he lifts his gaze again and says, “I kissed him once.”

  “Oh my,” I say before I can help it. “That is not…what I expected, though it explains much.”

  “It wasn’t what Amon expected, either,” he says, deadpan.

  I laugh lightly, and he flashes me the first smile I’ve seen on his face. It makes him look younger, but it fades rather quickly. I say, “I am Idun the Young, Sune, but I was born to a mortal mother eighteen years ago. Idun is always a human girl, but a new one every generation. She’s like the answer to a riddle: her name is immortal and her heart is always dying.”

  The short but rather complicated answer softens his shoulders, pulls down the corners of his mouth. “So you are exactly what I thought: a contradiction.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re in love with Soren.”

  “I knew him…before.”

  Sune stands and paces away from me, then back again. “It does not seem like a thing that needs to be a secret.”

  I shrug one shoulder, not willing to give away the true secret: that without Idun, the apples of immortality wither. If the world knew how vulnerable they were, the entire pantheon would be in danger. I only say, “Like you, I never questioned my goddess’s will.”

  “Freya the Witch.”

  “Yes, as I am a seether. Or I…was. Lately, I don’t know if I’m the goddess they named me or just a girl.”

  He looks down at me for a long moment, then offers a hand. I take it, and he pulls me to my feet. “It seems to me, lady, that we’re going to find out if you can be both.”

  TEN

  My hands tremble as I unroll my seething kit beside the small fire.

  Overhead, the first stars poke through a pink circle of sky, the empty hole of canopy where this redwood used to grow. The surface of the stump is smooth with moss, dangerous to spin on, but a perfect window into fate: both alive and dead, rooted in the world and gone from it, with living green spreading over its bones. My altar, my ladder to the upper worlds.

  Signy and Amon and Sune stand on the ground, faces level with the top of the stump. Amon had to boost me up here. The Valkyrie has painted thick black lines around her eyes, which make her seem feral as she stands waiting for me to dance. Sune has buttoned the high collar of his uniform coat up to his chin and wears his double-axes again, as if going into battle. I rub my hands on my thighs and quickly shrug out of my coat. I toss it to Amon, who snatches it in one hand, then lets it hang to the ground. His expression remains dark. In the growing shadows, I can see the flash of lightning in his eyes. But he holds out the web of yarn, corrberries, and the rest of the tools we raided his van for: a black boot string and a permanent marker.

  Kneeling on the stump, I set the yarn and plastic bag of corrberries aside and uncap the marker. Hesitating, I glance at Signy. “What runes do you see in my eyes?” I bend toward her as she leans up onto her toes.

  “Fate,” she says quietly, and then she purses her lips as if surprised. “Truth.”

  “I don’t know how to draw truth,” I admit. It’s not one of the basic twenty-seven I learned for seething. The Valkyrie grunts and impatiently holds out her hand for the marker. I give her both it and my hands, hanging half off the stump for her. She expertly draws fate onto my left palm and truth onto the right. Then she pulls my hands closer and kisses them, breathing hot breath across my skin. A Valkyrie benediction.

  Abruptly, she lets go, and without another word, I get to my feet with the corrberries and red yarn. I spread out my yarn web and drop the center over my head. It falls to my waist, and I tie it there like a top skirt, making me the center of fate, not only a player within it.

  Raising my face to the sky, I touch the horn-bead necklace Soren gave me and take a deep breath to relax, to squash the tight cord of fear curling around my spine. I don’t want any of them to see it; I wish I could hide it from myself. It isn’t fear of seething or fear of the answers I seek. It’s a cold, trembling fear of the berserker frenzy. That deep shaking rage, the blackness, losing control of my body, flailing and lost.

  I breathe evenly and upend the corrberry sack into the palm of my hand. I lick several off and toss the rest into the fire. They spark and crackle red; the flames reach for me. Closing my eyes, I crunch the berries between my teeth. Their bitter flavor runs down my throat. Ready to separate me from this world.

  Crouching, I reach for Sleipnir’s Tooth from Signy. She offers it hilt-first, and I wrap my hand around the grip, then tug it free of the sheath. The wide fuller catches orange firelight, glinting like blood.

  I stand and with the boot string I tie a knot around my left hand and the sword, weaving the blade to my wrist. Swaying slowly, I begin to hum an old prayer that’s ju
st invocations of disir names over and over. I whisper the names and begin to dance slowly in a circle around the tiny fire. The toes of my boots slip on the moss. The stars overhead bleed together.

  My invocation grows stronger, becomes a chant of disir names; my breath grows shallow, and my vision blurs from the corrberry poison.

  I look into the fire and thrust Soren’s sword against the tips of the flames. They flutter around the steel like petals in wind.

  “Freya, Feather-Flying Goddess of Dreams,” I call. “You know me. I am Astrid Glyn, the Lady of Youth, Keeper of the Apples of Immortality. I am Astrid Glyn, daughter of Jenna, daughter of Ariel. I invoke thee, and I invoke the mothers of all fate. I call on Urtha and Verthandi and Skuld who feed Yggdrasil, the Tree of Worlds which unites us all. Mothers, giants, women of the past, present, and future, I call on your names to guide me.”

  Raising my left hand up to the stars, I say, “Here is Sleipnir’s Tooth, forged of steel and madness, blood and fire. It is a piece of me, and it is a piece of my heart’s heart: Soren Styrrson, called the Bearstar. We are bound together, Soren to steel, steel to hand, hand to heart. Show him to me, let me see his thread. Separate it—separate it from the weave, glowing gold, for me. I…” My words thicken as my tongue melts from the poison. Beneath my feet, the stump goes slick and soft. I turn in a slow circle, eyes closed. The yarn skirt twirls heavily. My feet move, but it’s the Middle World that spins around me, counterclockwise, a backward tornado.

  “Soren,” I say again, as the corrberries distort my awareness, as the sword weighs down my arm, as the acrid smoke burns my throat and the turning-turning world slows and freezes.

  That thread of seething power creeps up my gullet, expanding in my skull in a haze of red delirium, and I feel myself spread outside of my own skin, rising, rising, rising—

  And—

  Light surrounds me.

  I stand, only myself, in a cool forest clearing.

  I’m barefoot, in an old favorite sundress and violet cardigan, my curls soft beside my eyes. Silver moonlight streams through plump summer leaves. I breathe easily; my hands are empty.