I smile as I scratch at his broken arm with the broom, where it itches the most. My fondness for the beast wells up and I’m glad we’ve already discussed with Rome leaving Red Stripe here when Unferth and I go. He’s a welcome attraction, given how rare it is these days to find greater mountain trolls in captivity. There are laws, I’ve learned, against hunting them in the Rock Mountains or near Montreal because of those old treaties between the troll mothers and Thor Thunderer, and when they wander farther south they’re destroyed almost immediately by militias. When they die they turn to stone, so almost nobody in the world knows what their living skin feels like, or the color of their eyes, or how well they communicate. Tonight will be a revelation for the festival guests.
“You’ll be happy here with Rome,” I say, patting Red Stripe’s cool arm. He heaves a massive sigh that fills the room with his hot, saccharine breath. It disrupts the motes of dust that hang lazily in the shaft of sunlight cutting past his head. I feel as he must, trapped and slow-moving, made to perform the same steps again and again. Now that the snows are melting, now that Baldur, the god of hope and light, is coming back to us, I’ll shake off my stone dust and explode back into the world with my stone heart.
Chaos is here to remind me: I’m going to change my destiny again.
The festival feast hall is modeled after the ancient kings’ halls of Old Scandia; a massive single room of wood and sod, with pillars holding up the roof, intricate ironwork thrones, long tables and benches, and painted round-shields hanging from the rafters. Three nights a week the tourists can buy a seat and a meal, complete with the sort of entertainment they might have found had they lived a thousand years ago and sworn to a Viker king.
My wish-father, Rome, plays the king, in a yellow and red wool shirt and trousers and a heavy fur cape latched with golden brooches. He has on a wide leather belt and bracers, with massive copper rings around his upper arms. The Freyan charms braided into his reddish beard glint in the false firelight as he welcomes the tourists back to Old Asgard, where please may they yell and cheer, please may they stand with a poem to share, and all give thanks to the great god of Vinland, Freyr the Satisfied.
Tonight he calls himself Hrothgar Shielding, the great king of Daneland, and welcomes the crowd to the golden hall Heorot. Unferth will play the poet as usual; I will be Valtheow the Dark, queen of Heorot. The beefiest of the actors, George, wears bearskin and has painted a spear onto his cheek to play the hero, Beowulf. We’ve created a breakaway section of wall for Red Stripe to burst through for the finale. He waits behind it now, with two clowns holding UV lights on his legs.
Once the welcome and the opening prayers are over, Rome exhorts his poet, Unferth Truth-Teller, to entertain his company while the meal is served. Most nights there’s roast boar and cured ham, apple tarts, salted cod, a not remotely authentic spinach salad, six options for beer, free honey soda for the kids, and plates of cheese. But as it’s Baldur’s Night, we have mead for toasting out of great cauldrons, and the trays are loaded with candied apples and bacon-wrapped apple sausages.
Unferth rises from his crouch beside the carved thrones to call out a song about Pol Darrathr, a son of Odin who lived hundreds of years ago and earned himself immortality and the name Baldur the Beautiful.
I listen for my cue while hidden behind the thrones and don’t wait for him to finish before I throw aside the curtain and stride in, arms spread. “Listen to the Valkyrie’s Prayer!” I cry.
Unferth flicks his hand dramatically at me, and I just as dramatically ignore him to take Rome’s hand and step onto the queen’s throne.
From here I can see out over the long tables, meet the eyes of families and guests spread out on benches with their plastic goblets lifted. Hot orange lights flicker like fire from sconces, gleaming against the snakes and deer and running wolves carved into the rafters. There are men of our company seated among the crowd in the hard leather and metal armor of a great king’s retainers grinning at me, and the serving women stop with hands full of mead and food to watch.
I slam the butt of my spear onto the throne three times before crying,
“Hail, day!
Hail, sons of day!
And night and her daughters now!
Look on us here
With loving eyes,
That waiting, we win victory!”
At the halfway point, everyone in the crowd recites it with me, even the smallest children. The Valkyrie’s Prayer is one of the first we learn as children, regardless of what god we most worship. The audience’s repetition of my words rumbles through me, becoming a familiar eight-count rhythm that sounds in my ears, like a pounding heart or Odin’s eight-legged horse running through my bones. It’s more exhilarating to lead the performance than I expected.
Holding up my spear, I call for silence. “Tonight is Baldur’s Night—tomorrow we will celebrate his return to us. But do you remember when he died? Do you remember the wailing and tears?” I lower my voice just a tad to say, “I remember; I remember every prince’s death, and this one we all dreamed!”
“What did you dream, Valkyrie?” calls a man with a little girl in his lap.
I point at him with the tip of my spear.
“I dreamed I rose before dawn
To clear up the Valhol for the newly slain.
I woke the Lonely Warriors,
Bade them up to strew the benches,
Clear the ale horns,
And my fellow Valkyrie to ready the wine.
I dreamed the arrival of a prince
Like no prince we had known before.”
I push through the crowd to tell them what runes I see and use my calligraphy set to paint binding runes and poetry onto their faces and hands. Rarely do I see actual runes in the faces of these tourists but only pretend I do for the act, for the game. When I can, I scare them with prophecies of death and gruesome visions.
One of the serving women brings me a goblet of mead and I drink it down before slamming the goblet onto the nearest table. The yellow honey alcohol sloshes over the sides and splashes onto the worn wood, and I cheer—the audience cheers with me.
I sit back in the throne as Rome takes over again and encourages two performers to act out a boasting game while everyone eats. Unferth joins me, lounging against the side of my knee, and I once or twice take a thin braid of his in my hand, curling it possessively through my fingers. We cheer the competition, Rome and I, with Unferth crying insults to the losers while rubbing the ball of his hand into his cranky right thigh.
George stands up from among the actors playing King Hrothgar’s retainers. He says his name is Beowulf and challenges Unferth’s poetic prowess with a boasting poem about how strong he is, how he swam through the ocean strangling sea monsters. Unferth snarls back, perfectly in character, calling George a liar and a coward with florid language.
Just as their spar grows too heated, just as Rome and I pretend to consider intervening, a great low roar pierces the hall.
We freeze in exaggerated poses. It comes again. Red Stripe, exactly on the poetry cue Unferth’s been repeating for days. George/Beowulf draws his sword as Red Stripe bursts through the foam-brick wall to the north of the thrones. I scream as loud and horridly as I can, drowning out the troll’s war cry.