The air smells of old beer and molasses, with an acrid undertone I choose not to dwell on. Littered in the gutters are beads and torn streamers making half-rune signs, and everything is slightly damp, though I don’t think it rained.
We find cold coffee to keep me awake and share a basket of airy doughnuts as we walk down the center of Prince Street amidst a throng of not only tourists but Disir Day celebrants.
Disir Day is a festival of the goddesses and all disir: women spirits and the ghosts of our mother-ancestors. Temporary shrines are stacked haphazardly on the sidewalks, glowing with elf-lights and crowded with seven-day candles, tiny goddess figures, bells and charms, and laughing patrons. Crepe flowers drip from the balconies, adding rainbows of color. I’ve heard Port Orleans does this for every holiday, and even some outside the Asgardian purview. The stories of Port Orleans at Hallowblot especially titillate, what with the Old Quarter transforming into a giant goblin playground, with masks and costumes and a three-kilometer-long parade.
I keep my eyes stripped for a very specific sort of vendor who’s likely to be nearer to the hanging tree, but in a place such as this they might have permanent shops. It’s not easy pushing through, and we’re forced to a leisurely pace. Street performers clog the corners, and people with plastic cups of icy alcohol stream like private parades between the pubs. If Soren and I had our weapons, we’d be able to cut a better path, but as it is we don’t stand out—Soren blends in better than in any place else I’ve seen. There are every sort of people here, speaking different languages, with every kind of god’s jewelry and tattoos and fashion. It seems to relax him, or at least balance out his aversion to crowds. I feel entirely on edge with questions, eyes burning from lack of sleep, while sweat prickles my scalp and the jeans stick to my thighs.
Rathi doesn’t help by droning on and on about the history of Port Orleans and how it became so religiously diverse. It was the largest port in New Asgard two hundred years ago, until the end of the Thralls’ War, when it divided into the formerly rich and the newly freed. Almost immediately Li Grand Zombi became the first non-Asgardian deity officially acknowledged by Congress, though only as an incarnation of the World Snake. The shock of it drew men from all churches, and Biblists in particular, hoping for similar success. But the voodoo queens had managed the politics by embracing the variety of our gods and finding mirrors in their own spirituality, “while compromise,” Rathi says disapprovingly, “was never a Biblist strength.”
Rich, coming from a Freyan, Unferth whispers.
He won’t leave me alone, either.
It isn’t until Rathi, thanks to encouraging grunts from Soren, is speculating on why Port Orleans voodoo is so compatible with Freya the Witch’s magic, that I see what I’m looking for. Several piles of wire cages spill out of a storefront, holding rats and sparrows and squirrels.
When I stop, Rathi nearly runs into me but grips my shoulder tightly. “Oh, Signy, really?” He gazes past me at the martyr shop. “I thought you were only going to the hanging tree to speak with the Valkyrie.”
“I can’t approach the hanging tree on Disir Day without sacrifice.” I irritably shrug him off and head for the nearest stack of cages. The tiny white mice crawl on top of each other, whiskers twitching slowly. There’s a pair of albino pigeons cuddled together sleeping, and a long gray rat watches me. Soren comes up behind and softly says, “I haven’t done this since my dad died.”
“I’ll be out here,” Rathi says, waving his hand at the street itself.
Soren and I duck into the shop. “Weak stomach?” Soren asks.
“Delicate Freyan sensibilities.”
Soren’s eyes crinkle. “I thought everyone made sacrifice.”
“On Yule they hold their noses, but the branch of Freyan Rathi is—all the Summerlings and my family, too—say life is too valuable for such a thing.”
“That’s the point of sacrifice, though.”
“I know.”
The shop is livid with animal calls and stinks like bleach and wood shavings and urine. Cages hang from the low rafters, decorated with ribbons and rune flags. There are inkpots and rune brushes, feather fans, penknives and silver throat daggers. A family of four studies the rodent wall as their father points out the coloring on various mice to his two daughters and what the differences represent. A single woman with an iron collar studies a molting crow in a too-small cage. I head for the counter while Soren picks through a stand of prayer cards.
A little man with skin like concrete nods at me from the register, milky eyes fluttering. His left eyelid is tattooed a solid though fading gray. “Lady?” he says in a small, rough voice.
“Do you have any kissing doves?”
“Oh surely, right in the back. How many do you want?”
I glance at Soren as he joins me with a small shake of his head. “Only one.”
“I’ll take one of the little black mice,” Soren says, pointing.
The keeper shuffles behind a violet curtain, and while we wait one of the little girls peeks around her father’s hips to stare at Soren. He doesn’t smile or even soften his expression. I poke him in the ribs and his eyes pop. It makes the girl giggle and hide. “A smile goes a long way,” I whisper at him as the old Odinist returns with a round wire cage holding a gray kissing dove with peach feathers at her breast. He hands Soren a mesh bag and tells him to go fish out his mouse.
As I open my calligraphy bag to pull out some notes, the man cuts his hand between us. “This is no charge,” he says quietly, “not for the Vinland Valkyrie and Bearstar. You honor my martyrs by choosing them.”
I pause in an attempt to hide my shock. Not at being recognized, but at being recognized and honored. I lift my eyes to his slowly, thinking of that Lokiskin pawnshop owner who refused to buy my seax, who barely admitted what I was. I hear Precia say, You could hold the country in the palm of your hand with your story now. “Thank you, sir,” I manage. “May the finest blessings run through your blood and the blood of your sacrifices.”
The keeper pats my hand with his gnarled fingers. “Keep it up, Valkyrie.”
I carry my dove before me as we go outside, still stunned. Soren seems unfazed, cupping his mesh bag gently against his chest with both hands. The mouse must be smaller than his thumb. Rathi finds us, glancing mournfully at my dove, but says nothing as we make our way to the square.
The Sanctus Louis temple shines white and tall, with dark stained-glass windows glittering in the thick sunlight. Spreading out from its huge double doors is the green square, with a crooked hanging tree in the center and a marble statue of Odin’s wife, Frigg Cloud-Spinner. She’s been draped with flowers and plastic beads, her hands holding them as if to weave them into one of her rainbows.
A line has formed, perhaps a dozen people long, before the sacrificial station, where three hooded death priests help people tie prayer cards to the martyrs they’ve brought, mark them with their rune wishes, and then direct them one at a time to the trunk of the tree, where the Valkyrie waits.
To my surprise, Rathi stays with Soren and me as we move up the line. He’s unable to stop himself from cooing at my dove. She cocks her head and blinks at him from one little brown eye. “Hasn’t there been enough death?” he murmurs into my ear.
At the long wooden table set up as the prep station, the first death priest smiles out from her green hood. A raven half-mask is tattooed across her face. “Welcome. What prayer will you tie to your martyr?”
Soren steps forward first and quietly speaks to the priest. She uses red ink to create a prayer card for him, tiny as my fingernail, to tie to the tail of his mouse. The rune on one side is lady and on the other youth. It’s a prayer to Idun the Young, keeper of the apples of immortality. Very appropriate for Disir Day. He scoots down to make room for me, turning toward the hanging tree.