I fall asleep wondering if my sisters know where I am.
Soren’s already up when I wake, boots scuffing slowly against the loose dirt and frost here at the top of the cliff as he works through a set of offensive postures. I sit, folding my legs up to my chest, and watch. His body is like one thick muscle, all shifting as one. It’s a different grace from Unferth’s, who was tight, fast motion. Soren is smooth and appears relaxed, though the sweat glinting in his buzzed hair and heat radiating off him are a sure sign otherwise.
He comes to a center pose, legs spread, hands together, and blows a long string of air before opening his dark eyes to look at me. In the bright morning sun it’s no easier to read his face than it was in the bare starlight. No expression but for the wrinkle between his eyebrows. It’s nearly a frown, but maybe that’s just how his face rests. I smile wryly, though he surely won’t understand why.
“Morning,” he says.
“Morning.”
Going to his SUV, he digs into the backseat, then tosses me a can of coffee. I catch it, startled by the cold metal. The logo is fancy, declaring, EVEN THE GODS CAN FIND HEAVEN IN OUR BEANS.
“Sorry it’s not hot. If we build a fire I have some real grounds.”
I raise my eyes to his and pop the top. “This alone is the nicest breakfast I’ve had in weeks.”
“Ah, Baldur bought the supplies.”
My laughter even surprises me with how merry it sounds. Soren’s mouth presses into a line. “Do you mind if I finish my routine?” he asks, then drops down to impress me with the speed and number of push-ups. I stop counting at forty-seven.
“Can you do the thing where you clap between each one?” I tease, but he pauses to say, “I’ve never tried.”
He does, and it makes a huge dull thump against the ground. He lifts his head to smile a little.
“What about pushing up from a handstand?”
Soren actually laughs. There’s his sense of humor: in his muscles.
I drink the smooth canned coffee and share my protein bars with him. As we pack up, I realize there’s no doubt in me that we’ll be hunting together now.
All morning we continue winding farther south than I’ve ever been, off the north peninsula and out of the tundra. The spruces gain strength and the ground grows thick with moss and ferns. The ocean flashes in the west, but in the east fog hugs the earth, clinging to the pockets between mountains, obscuring the sun to make our task more dangerous. The long highway twists inland, just south of the Lonely Shadow, the tallest mountain on the island. I hate being confined by the roadways and would rather cut straight there, because if I were a troll wanting to hide, the mountain is where I would go.
We stop for lunch by a lake that’s meadow on one side, hard, climbing cliff on the other. Sunlight has burned off the mist so the water shines blue. As we eat I tell Soren what I know of greater mountain troll–sign: scoured trees and disturbed rock scree, boulders with no cracks in them, caves that appear full of stone, a stripe of lichen that ends abruptly. Vaguely man-shaped boulders, for the younger trolls are less capable of calcifying into a decent disguise and tend to hunch over to hide their faces and hands. Water is everywhere here, so it’s useless to remain close to any particular body of it.
It relaxes me to be the teacher, though I find I can’t put the words into poetry or riddles, and instead let them fall explicit and dull from my mouth. My mind turns to Unferth again and again, his troll pads, his spears, the dangerous curve of his smile.
I fall silent, listening to the gentle lap of lake water against the pebbled shore, when Soren says, “I never expected to find any trolls. Baldur gave me the Mad Eagles’ report, and they believed they destroyed the entire herd but for the mother, who surely returned to Canadia. There was no proof they were right, though.”
We sit on two camp chairs unfolded from the trunk of his SUV. Mine creaks as I lean toward him. “You came hunting to appease Baldur’s conscience.”
“It lit him up when I suggested it. He wants to be sure the troll mother is gone, that they’re all gone.”
“I’ve seen signs of her periodically, and I’ll find her.”
“How do you know?”
“She’s my destiny. The Valkyrie of the Tree will prove herself with a stone heart.” I say the riddle up at the stratified stripes of the cliff across the lake. Green lines of moss highlight the jagged nature of it, and the top is flat, bare of trees. “Hers. Her heart. It’s my answer and my blood price, all wrapped into a tidy package.”
He grunts.
“What?”
Those big shoulders shrug. “I don’t trust tidy packages. Especially not when they come from the gods.”
“What do you trust?” I ask sourly.
“Not a what, a who.”
“Yourself?”
“Hardly.” There’s even a tinge of sarcasm in his voice.
I wait.
He says, “Baldur, and … her.”
“Not the Lokiskin girl? Who’s a berserker now?”
“That’s Vider.” Soren stands up. He goes to the pebbles at the edge of the lake and sifts through them until he finds one round and the size of an eye. Rolling it between his palms he says, “I trust that she would mean to do her best for me, but she serves Odin now and chose it.”
Offended on my god’s behalf, I throw a balled-up MRE wrapper at him. It unfolds in the air and floats down to the grass harmlessly. “There are trustworthy Odinists, berserker.”
Soren glances at me over his shoulder. “Most of you are selfish, or mad, or racist.”
I jump to my feet. “I’m only one of those things, and it doesn’t make me untrustworthy.” I slap dirt off my hands. “Coming?”
He gets up more slowly. “Which one?”
I slam back inside my truck.
Two hours before sunset we find a shattered cluster of rock that looks like a dead troll. It can’t be her because there’s no bone jewelry or any trace of the ivory tusks. I walk into the forest about a kilometer off the road, trying to smell her or see if she really came this way. It brings me to the edge of a narrow, long lake, where I find a deep claw print with two little birds bathing in it. As the sun sets, we drag our equipment out to it and make camp. If she’s sleeping at the bottom of the lake, she’ll rise with the moon and we’ll be ready.
I breathe carefully around the thrill of excitement and tell Soren to go ahead and build a small fire. She won’t be scared away by it. Maybe it will be a beacon.
We eat and then wait, alert into the night.
Soren spends the time rubbing down his sword with an oilcloth. Its well-worn sheath leans against his thigh. The lobed pommel is plain metal, but etched into the crossguard are runes and small knot-work animals. The hilt is wrapped with something smooth and gray, and its overall design is from the Viker era, not as old as Unferth’s but old enough.
“Was it your father’s?” I ask. A side note to the story of Baldur’s rescue revolved around Soren’s infamous father, a berserker who lost control of his madness and murdered ten or so people in a mall.
Soren flicks his fingers against the hilt as one would pet a touchy cat. “Yes.”
I bite my tongue to keep from interrogating further. My own father had ashy hair like mine, long fingers that helped me paint ponies and long elegant trees. I remember a cold smear as he drew color down my nose. “My parents died when I was young, too.”
“My mother is still alive, somewhere.” His hands pause in their work; his eyes remain locked on the blade. “But I don’t have a family at all anymore.”
“Loyalty ties us together as well as blood,” I offer. It’s a Freyan proverb, and I hope he doesn’t recognize it as such.