The audience screams, too.
Red Stripe charges in, taking prompts from Unferth, who’s shifted to the back of the hall, using blunt-tipped spears to poke and prod his thick skin. Rome yells to George, “No sword can penetrate this beast’s cursed hide!” and George throws down his weapon. The retainers join him, but it’s George alone who throws himself at Red Stripe, gripping the papier-mâché prosthetic arm we tied to him. The two grapple and dance, fast and grand in the firelight.
It’s all I can do not to laugh with delight.
Unferth yells, “Grendel!” and Red Stripe roars again, throwing George away. Red Stripe turns to the audience and opens his mouth hideously wide. Children scream and many of their parents, too, but there’s clapping and gasps of amazement. Nobody runs. They know this is a show, despite the terror blazing through the atmosphere.
George leaps onto Red Stripe from behind, grasps the immobile prosthetic arm, and tears it off with a berserker roar of his own. Dark purple corn syrup—my idea—splashes in an arc like arterial spray, pumping as George squeezes it from a hidden trigger.
Red Stripe crashes to his knees, but is up again and runs away with a long, sad moan, his footsteps shaking the hall. Unferth slips after him through the ruined wall of our false Heorot. George lifts the dripping fake arm over his head, and I climb onto my throne to begin the applause.
Great bands of laughter and cheering hit me, hit all of us. George and the retainers nail the arm to the wall behind the thrones and Rome calls for celebratory dessert.
The crowd is loud with chatter and wonder, cheering us and digging into their tarts and ice cream. I sink into the throne, hot and alive, a grin splitting my face so hard my cheeks ache.
After dessert I stand up and crow a harsh poem Unferth wrote about living on a rock of ice like ours, about how badly we need the coming dawn to drive the trolls away and for Baldur the Sun to bring joy back to the world. Rome waves a ring-adorned hand for dishes to be taken away and every goblet replaced with a paper lantern and an apple. The lantern is for releasing when the sun sets, to light Baldur’s path home. The apple reminds us of our mortality, that like Baldur we will all die some day without tasting the apples of youth that give eternal life to our gods.
I eat my apple wildly. I destroy it like it’s my enemy, letting juice run down my chin to a roar of approval from the actors playing Rome’s warriors. They pound their feet and I pound mine back, every grain of the wooden throne pulsing beneath me. Rome laughs, a comforting old sound, and the audience laughs with him, children joining me in messy eating; apples and apple juice stain the tables.
We release the crowd, Rome and I, crying out a closing prayer together. Rome invites them into the meadow for bonfires and a mummer dance before we release the lanterns at sunset. I toss the last of my mead into the fire and it bursts into sparks and snaking smoke.
Out in the meadow, I grab a mask from the communal box and dance as eagerly as any Freyan born. The bonfires remind me of harvest dances from my childhood, of my parents and colorful autumn leaves.
I drag tourists into the dancing with me, hold their hands and spin and spin. The clown Peachtree leaps onto me from behind, enveloping me in a monster hug. “That was amazing!” she shrieks. “Stay with us, Signy!” Her hair flairs blue and pink around her head and a hundred tiny plastic sequins stick to her face for a mask. I only laugh, and she flaps at my boring raven mask. We share a plastic glass of mead before diving back into the dancing.
Fiddles make raucous noise, and shrieks of laughter carry it along. Everyone wears a mask: some are plain from the bin like mine, some feathered or long-nosed, others bejeweled, painted, or scattering glitter with every step. Who can tell tourist from townie? Husband from wife, or Odinist from Freyan? We all crowd together on Baldur’s holiday, dancing, drinking, and readying paper lanterns to send up into the sky as a trailing beacon to guide Baldur home at dawn.
The raven mask lets me be one of them, not Signy Valborn, if only for a night.
Jesca bustles through the crowd, her hair uncharacteristically loose and a flute of champagne in her delicate hand. “Signy!” she calls out. Her hip bumps into the woman beside her, and she playfully apologizes before reaching for my hand. I kiss her cheek, and she says loudly in my ear, “I just spoke to Rathi before the feast! He’s accepted a summer fellowship at a church in Mizizibi; isn’t that wonderful! He said they fought for him!”
I look into her bright eyes and see only home there. Only a tipsy glaze and happiness. She pushes my mask off my face to better study it. “He’ll be here next week to visit, and I thought perhaps you might want to wait for him, to stay just a little bit longer.…”
“Jesca!”
“You two were always so good for each other.”
“We were little kids; that’s not who we are anymore.” My vivid joy is sinking away, but I cling to it, wanting to keep hold of this high bliss as long as I can, before I have to go away tomorrow and leave this perfect night behind me.
Jesca touches my cheeks. “That isn’t what he told me last summer, maidling.” But she shakes her head before I can answer. She kisses my cheeks and murmurs, “Happy Baldur’s Night,” into my ear.
She vanishes into the crowd again and suddenly I’m desperate to find Unferth. Where did he disappear to? Isn’t he finished putting Red Stripe to bed yet? I turn in a full circle, scanning the crowd.
Thin, straight clouds point toward the vanished sun, dragging lines of pink with them. The air is cold but bright and very much alive. People smile at me, hold out hands to pull me back into the dancing. They call her name, Valtheow! or Vinland Valkyrie!, not Signy. They want me to join them, offering another drink or piece of roasted apple. I take it all, eating from their fingers, drinking the mead or sparkling wine until my head spins.
What I want is Ned Unferth, right now. I want him to see me being part of all this, bright and heady like he was at the Shipworm, a piece of this whole.
I hurry toward the boundary of the meadow, heart beating harder than it should. The evening presses in and I blink fast, trying to find my best balance. I search the shadows for him, the edges of the crowd where he must be if he’s not in the center of it all. “A creature of thresholds.” I whisper a drunken poem to myself. “Spiritless because nothing exists between nothing.”
There he is, standing on the slope of the moor, flask in hand, still wearing his feast costume. A green goblin mask covers his face, with apple-round cheeks, crescent eye slits, and a wide, clownish nose. But under it is his dangerous smile, his sharp white teeth.
“Finished gaping?” Ned says lazily, one corner of that smile hooking up.
“I don’t think I am,” I whisper, stepping forward. I snatch his hand and pull him farther up the rocky slope to where the shadows dance, too. The beak of my mask is too long for what I want, and I shove it up over my forehead, catching it in my hair with a tangle. Ned widens his colorless eyes but says nothing as I pull off his mask. It leaves two small red lines on his cheeks where it pressed.
He’ll never be beautiful, never free of the gouges pain leaves around his mouth. Always tight angles and narrowed eyes. But there’s a charged string connecting us and it’s the only thing I understand at all.
As the firelight flickers across his thin lips I hear nothing but the howl of blood in my ears. I kiss him.
His chest is hard against mine and he touches my elbows. I cup his face; my fingers skim the rough edges of his jaw. A tiny sigh escapes him, and the moment he breathes into my mouth I sink in, dropping forward forever, but not like falling. Like floating.