The Apple Throne

by Tessa Gratton

  All Gunn-Elin’s gifts and the fine silk of the elves goes in a pile for burning, and I stopper the sink to let my rings soak away as much blood as they can, except the elf gold ring that is a part of me now. I shower quickly before dressing, lost in snarled thoughts of the future, of Eirfinna and Signy and that heart pulling hotly between them. The under things and dress and heavy cardigan fit me perfectly, and I should not be surprised Sune managed so well. I might have chosen the style and colors myself. The rings remaining to me I pat dry and replace on my fingers before going out to the kitchen.

  Sune is there, flinging open rather empty cabinets.

  “Do you still have Soren’s phone?” I ask Sune. He goes to his bag and gets it from an inner pocket. There’s just enough charge for a phone call. I flip through the contacts and press Call when I reach Signy.

  As the phone rings, I wander through the living space to the front bay windows of the apartment, which actually look out over the rear of the house and its yard that stretches haphazard fingers into the forest. Frost tinges everything like diamonds, and in the silver day-shadows, I search for elves or goblins. There’s a young woman methodically scraping ice off the windshield of her station wagon, next to Amon’s van.

  “Soren?” Signy cries over the line.

  I press my forehead to the cold pane of glass. “It’s Astrid and—”

  “Do you have him? Why isn’t he the one calling me?”

  I hesitate, for mine is no news to give over the phone. “Signy, listen to me. I gave him an apple of immortality, and he will be fine.”

  “Astrid!”

  “He’s dead.”

  Silence as loud as the ocean. Then her breath, shaking. She whispers, “Dead. You let him die. You swore to me. Who killed him? Tell me what happened!”

  “The apple will bring him back,” I say firmly.

  “When? How? Odd-eye, are you sure?”

  My hesitation is too long. She cries wordlessly, her fear and frustration weakening my knees. “I’m sure,” I say. “I’m bringing him to you. We’ll be there as fast as we can. The morning after tomorrow.”

  “Astrid,” she says, but adds nothing.

  I ask, “Will you give that heart to me?”

  She’s silent, and I focus on the cold seeping into my skull from the windowpane. Finally, Signy says, “No.”

  “Even if I have a very good reason? Even if lives depend on it?”

  “What reason? Whose lives?” Her voice is sharp, suspicious.

  I take a long breath and let it out. “I’ll tell you everything when I get there.”

  I hang up. And I turn off Soren’s phone.

  My heart pounds, but I know I was right to call. I would want to know, and I had to ask. I have to be prepared with some plan for the heart. Signy must be convinced to give it to me or swallow it herself.

  In the kitchen, Sune perches on a barstool with his uniform coat unbuttoned, elbows leaned back onto the counter, as Amon cooks. The godling’s got water boiling for macaroni, a sagging bag of frozen peas beside the stove, and is currently upending a huge tin can into a pot. Something brown and covered in gelatin slides out sickeningly. Sune notes my expression and says, “He calls it duck in a can.”

  Amon looks over his shoulder, prodding the gelatin with a wooden spoon. “Disbelievers! This is gonna blow your minds.”

  Sune offers me a warm bottle of beer, and I take it, despite the temperature. I hitch onto the counter beside him, otherwise I’d have sunk to the floor. We stare in fatigued silence as Amon cooks.

  Twenty minutes later, I’m salivating as the godling sets a plate of duck, buttered macaroni, and steaming sweet peas before me. I’ve eaten half the soft, perfect meat before I even think to tell him how good it is, but Amon grins at me as he scrapes clean his own plate.

  I set down my fork and down the final swig of my beer.

  And I tell them everything I know about the first troll-mother’s heart.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Despite my sense of urgency, I fall asleep beside Soren. I dream an endless field of silver-gold wheat grass, rolling peacefully as the land will do in eastern Nebrasge—the first place I met him in the flesh.

  And there are apple trees. Short, gnarled ones and taller-then-life trees hung with heavy fruit in every color. Some spread wide and offer glorious shade from an ever-present sun; others crouch too low to the earth, like dark mushroom caps against the fields.

  There is nobody wandering but me.

  I walk and walk, toward the bright sun, and find myself in a meadow of thick green lawn and nodding yellow wildflowers.

  Soren is there, with Baldur the Beautiful.

  They lay side-by-side, shirtless and barefoot. Soren has on cargo shorts and Baldur some medieval-looking trousers that tie at his hips and knees. Soren’s hair is short as it should be, only a buzz of black over his skull, while Baldur’s golden blond hair puddles around him. The god smiles at the brilliant sky, though both men have their eyes closed. Sunlight pours over them, and sheens of sweat gild them both.

  My heart is explosive with giddy relief, and I dash to them, kneeling at Soren’s shoulder. I say his name.

  Soren sighs happily, but his eyes remain shut. He stretches his arms wide and then folds his hands under his head.

  “Do you remember,” Baldur muses, “that time you watched me climb onto the roof of a barn, nervous as an old goat?”

  Soren laughs, relaxed and deep. “Is your memory only a history of sunbathing?”

  “Little else worth remembering.”

  “I was right to be nervous. You would have died forever if you’d fallen.”

  Baldur scoffs. “But then I’d be here, all the time.”

  They do not know I am here. This is a dream: one of the truest I’ve ever known. I feel the pressure of sunlight, smell grass dust and warm wildflowers, and the breeze curls gently against my skin. Here in this meadow of Hel, there is no tattoo on Soren’s face or his right arm.

  I put my hand over his heart, feeling the warmth of his skin, and he puts his own hand over mine—but it settles through me as if I am a ghost. He says, “I remember a face—her face, and her voice, like she’s always in my dreams. Doesn’t it scare you sometimes?”

  “Nothing is real here.” Baldur shrugs. “You’ll remember when you wake up.”

  I startle awake with a hand on Soren’s cold stomach. His dead body.

  I freeze. Everything here in Amon’s room is cool, icy with winter, and I regret the loss of that perfect summer meadow with every fiber of my body. But when I sit up, my heart is more at ease.

  There is plenty for me to worry about: the heart, Signy, the trolls and Eirfinna, getting to Philadelphia and wrapping all of these threads into a binding knot of life instead of death.

  But Soren is not one of those things. He will come back to me, and until then, he is with Baldur.

  “Thank you,” I whisper, thinking of Freya, the goddess of Hel.

  The sun is an hour set, and Amon and Sune have already packed the van. By the time the moon rises again, we’re driving east across the prairie. All night the three of us take turns driving and sitting in the rear with Soren’s body. I doze against his shoulder, drawn into more dreams: I see Eirfinna in a top-down convertible, driving under a blazing winter sun. I see an older man with intricate blond braids sitting between the branches of the New World Tree. I look down and see hands crusted with golden rings. The rings melt into a golden gauntlets.

  By the time dawn hits, we’ve made it far past Westport City at the border of Kansa and into the Ozark hills. Sune parks the van at a pancake house, in clear sight of the broad windows. We eat quickly, and I take my turn to drive as the silver sun glares straight at us, through a thin scattering of clouds. The highway here is rough and narrow, and I’m hemmed in by semi-trucks no matter how fast I go or who I pass. We swing around Sanctus Louis and into Illinwe kingstate and my head is aching again. According to Sune’s GPS, there’s nearly thirteen hours left and I d
on’t relish arriving at the Death Hall in the middle of the night, but I want to get there well before Eirfinna. Sune believes she can’t move faster than us, that she relies on vehicles or her own two legs to travel just as humans do or—he says when Amon protests—she wouldn’t have needed to steal Amon’s van last year.

  When I can drive no longer, I find a gas stop to fill up and switch. The hills are pulling flatter here, pocketed with leafless winter trees and family farms without troll walls. The gas stop is half-convenience store, half-chili restaurant, dressed up like an old-fashioned stave church with steep, layered roofs and goblin-shaped water spouts. Behind it all, atop a low hill, is a massive hammer built of aluminum siding. Glaring white and taller than the tallest nearby tree, it casts over the farmland like a sentinel or a promise. This is my country, it says. We need no troll walls, for Thunder will keep us safe.

  I toss the keys to Amon and say I’m going to stretch my legs.

  The wind is cool and wet, but does not feel like winter to me. A week past Yule, I expect more of a bite. But it suits my walk, and I scrape my way up an unkempt gravel path toward the hammer monument, swinging my arms to loosen my shoulders. The scent of burning leaves wafts toward me, and distantly I hear the rush of the interstate traffic.

  A woman in overalls and a heavy coat tends to the weeds clinging to the base of the monument, kneeling in the damp dead grass. There are crescent moons in the tread of her heavy boots. I forget what brand that is.

  She ignores me as I circle the base. It’s as wide as one of the jotunwood trees, and the corrugated metal is almost like slick white bark. I tilt my head to stare up at the spreading arms of the hammerhead. From this angle it looms over me, unbalanced-seeming and ready to topple onto me with the slightest wind. I say, “Its root must run deep.”

  The woman sinks back to her heels and brushes loose gray hair off her forehead with the butt of her muddy hand. She glances all the way up at the top, squinting at the shine from the morning sun. “An eagle has a nest there.”

  I pull the sides of my thick cardigan tighter, fastening a couple of the buttons. My coat remains covered in dry blood, folded awkwardly in the van. I haven’t decided if I’ll scrape it clean or burn it, too. The woman stands, brushing her hands on her overalls. Her mouth is level with my eyes, full and lovely and makeup-free.

  “Where are you on your way to?” she asks.

  “Philadelphia.”

  “That’s not your home,” she says, as though she’s certain.

  “No.” I glance east. The sun is high enough it doesn’t bother me, but the horizon is hidden behind the next line of hills. Cold wind blows dead leaves across my feet, and I think it’s an odd time to be weeding.

  “Well,” the woman says, “where is home?”

  I peer up at her pale eyes. “Are you from here?”

  Her smile quirks. I know that smile, and I see the flash of moon-silver in her irises.

  “Freya.”

  The goddess of dreams reaches for my hand. “You’re taking his body to the Valkyrie?”

  Letting her comfort me, I nod. I lean toward her, and on impulse, I put my head on her shoulder, my arms around her waist. She returns the embrace with a small sigh. Her mouth touches my hair, a gentle kiss. “I know you gave him an apple. I felt it when he stepped into my Hel.”

  I pull back to look at her face. It has become the face of my goddess again, lovely and remote as the moon, though she still has her hair in a messy bun and wears the muddy overalls. “When will he come back to me?”

  Freya strokes my cheek. “He will rise with Baldur in the springtime, beloved.”

  My head falls forward in relief, and she hugs me again, murmuring, “It will be a media nightmare.”

  It is such a comfort to sink my forehead against her neck, breathe in the moonlight and fire smell of her, the sharp yew, the ancient earthen reek. Freya the Witch murmurs, “You need to go home, Idun.”

  “I can’t yet.”

  “You must, and quickly. When you deliver his body to the Valkyrie, go home.”

  There is a tremor in her, more than an urgency for the apple orchard. “Why?” I say to her throat. I put my hand against her chest, the bib of the overalls over her heart. “Is it the apple tree? What is wrong?”

  “You are in danger. I worry for you.”

  “But you can’t see my fate.”

  “No.” Freya steps away, taking both my hands again. Her skin is cold as ice, the silver of her irises sharp, still, distant as the moon or diamonds. She whispers, “I have seen a twist in the fate of an eleven-year-old girl, grandchild of my prophet Winona Smyth, and in it she takes up a long road to a secret orchard. Soon. Days from now, Idun, only days.”

  I open my mouth, feel breath on my tongue, but have no words for a long, cool moment. “A new…a new Idun, you mean.”

  Freya’s brow falls, her lips turn down. “It is not what I would wish for, but it must be done, for there must always be Idun,” Freya says, as if she is cursed for it. She takes my face, stares into my eyes. “I cannot see how or the moment, but there is a strong knot in fate and its cause is what awakens the granddaughter of Winona.”

  “My death.” A knot in fate. Me and the troll heart.

  The goddess shrugs, smoothly, helplessly. “Go home, Idun. Return to the orchard and be safe.”

  I turn away from her. I could take Soren to my orchard and burn him there with my Bears, a pyre exactly where Baldur’s was and my mother’s, in the most beautiful valley in the Middle World, at dawn. I could wait in peace for them both to rise in the springtime and let the world move on as it wills, affected by men and women in it.

  We walk outside of fate.

  But I stepped back into the world. I don’t want to return to my garden of memory and trees because I’m only just beginning to understand what Idun is. A knot in fate.

  She is human and god; she is immortal and always-dying. A unique spark. Not outside of it, but a knot. I cannot leave the world behind again, even if it kills me.

  And I gave Eirfinna a promise. I must be there when she faces Signy.

  “I care too much what happens in the world,” I tell my goddess.

  If anything, the sorrow on her face intensifies. “I understand,” she says mournfully.

  “You feel the same way.”

  “They tell me I’m just a meddler,” she replies.

  I smile. “I will be careful, Freya.”

  “Do that, sister. I should not like to replace you so soon.”

  Sister. I take one of her hands and kiss it. Below us, at the foot of the hill, Amon stands with his hands on his hips. He yells my name. I lift a hand and wave at him. Freya and I begin the walk down the old path toward the gas stop and van.

  I hurriedly say, “I told Eirfinna, the last queen of the elves, that she would only have the troll heart from my own hand.”

  Freya pauses. “I know of her. I have seen her in fate. She wants to save the trolls? She held Soren prisoner? She…caused him to be shot when she aimed at Sune Rask?”

  I nod assent.

  “She is wild, Idun. Better to give the heart to me. I will find another to consume it, to be transformed by it.”

  “Eirfinna longs for it—and longs to bring her people out of the mountains, as you did in your story of creating the apple tree.” I feel strange defending her, but would not take back my words.

  Freya frowns. She steps away from me as her eyes unfocus and she holds out her hands, fingers moving as if she plays a piano. She hooks an invisible strand of air, then flicks it away, reaching for another, then half-turns, before her gaze snaps clear and sharp on me again. “The heart of fire and earth that I made longs for what it has lost. It seeks life and power; it seeks earth and sunlight, though it is trapped in a cage of iron by the Alfather and his Death Chooser. I see it remain with the Valkyrie. I see it destroyed. I see it lost. I see it changed and changing. I see an army of mothers. I see…gold. And…”

  A shudder rips through he
r body, and she sheds the mortal form: strips of overalls and winter coat flutter away like petals to reveal the silver moonbright, elegant lady beneath. Though her eyes are gray and her teeth like mine, if she stood beside Eirfinna Grimlakinder, they would not seem so different. Her voice emerges deep and dark and strange: “Be wary, Idun of the Apples, for we choose the monsters we become.”

  I clasp my hands together, and Freya the Witch, my feather-flying goddess of dreams, vanishes into a vortex of icy winter wind.

  Shivering constantly, I make my way carefully down the gravel path to the waiting van. Amon frowns behind me, eyes narrow as he searches for something past my shoulders. I touch his chest as I pass, and he blinks, startled. “What the rag did I just see?”

  “Freya,” I say.

  “You shiny?”

  I nod distractedly, rubbing the center of my golden scar, thinking of the goddess’s words. Not only the prophecy she offered me, but the earlier ones, the promise of an Idun to come. I know I’ll tell Sune and Amon the all but the death part. They would argue, understandably so, and be overly protective as men can be and as friends can be. And I know better than ever now that I must see this through. We choose the monsters we become.

  I climb into the van, gently avoiding Soren, and find my blood-crusted white coat. As Amon and Sune get into the front and we pull away, I unfold the ruined white leather and pull open the front pocket. Tucked in the corner, hiding and wrinkled, is the final apple of immortality I brought with me from my orchard.

  The troll heart hungers, and Idun feeds. She gives.

  I can feel it, as I have felt little in years: my destiny and that heart are twined together.

  TWENTY-FIVE