Beowulf Berserk finally came with his war band, and she bound him into a blood pledge to defeat Grendel or die. He did so, but it only enraged the troll’s mother, who took vengeance upon the Shieldings and nearly tore Beowulf apart, too. Valtheow built herself a gown of mud and blood and moss, forged a mask of iron, hunted the troll mother down, and faced the monster at Beowulf’s side.
As the Alfather spoke of her, his face lit with longing and perfect joy. It was no expression I’d ever seen on my parents’ faces or even the Valkyrie’s. I did not know it, except that it hurt me with wanting to know it. I wanted to be the one to make him feel that way, and while I thought of it, my wrist burned, my nose and throat were sticky with the smell of my own blood.
I said, Tell me what to do, Hangatyr.
Odin smiled. He touched my nose and ran his knuckles tenderly along my jaw. Oh, little raven, what can you do? Those times are lost to us—to me. And he told me the story of his riddle match with the poet Thomas Jefferson, who tricked him at the founding of the United States of Asgard into the Covenant that stripped all true power and divinity from the Valkyrie.
Odin said, Before that rascal, before his riddles, my Valkyrie were spectacular. Near gods in your own right. You led armies and burned castles to the earth, cast vicious curses and changed the course of destiny with a kiss of my favor to the right king. You rode through the sky on wolves and starlight horses, hunting the most magnificent warriors to bring up to immortality in the Valhol, my heavenly Death Hall. You carried my magic in your hearts, with my wild passions to guide you. You were my immortal queens. You were worshipped even after death. Would that you could be so again.
That was the end of it, but as the sun rose I realized that while he could do nothing, bound as he was by the Covenant, I had agreed to no such pledge. It was in my power to bring the old ways back to the Valkyrie. I could show my sisters what our god truly wished, for Odin’s sake. I would be Valtheow reborn in his eyes, in the world’s eyes, even if I had none of her ancient magic.
I’d prove it through a grand gesture nobody in the whole country could ignore.
For weeks I corresponded with three felons who had written to my Death Hall asking for the Alfather’s absolution, asking me to witness their executions as was their right. I wrote poetry with them, to determine which was most worthy to be my first, and just as my birthday arrived I knew it would be Malchai, son of Elizabeth, convicted of murdering his wife and brother. His rage seeped through his handwriting, and his grief. I wrote to him, I will tell you a secret, Malchai. The Alfather longs for the time before the Covenant, for the days when we sacrificed to him in great celebrations. The laughter in his voice as he speaks of such things teaches me to laugh at them, too, until I long as he does for the sharp scent of blood, the sick, clinging rot of death and battle. To find it and experience it: this moment he speaks of when terror turns into glory, when shaking fear becomes strength. That is the power I will claim, to take all my worries and dangers and transform them. To take your fears, the anxiety of the entire country even, and change them with sacrifice.
He wrote back, Come.
I drove an hour north of Philadelphia to the New Dutchland Royal Penitentiary, a nearly fifteen-year-old Child Valkyrie weighed down by rings and bracelets and an embroidered coat the rich green color of death.
Malchai Elizabethson leaned his elbows onto the table, shoulders strong under the tight blue jumpsuit, wrists at an awkward angle thanks to the handcuffs. He smiled thin and wide like a lizard. His hard face was only softened by a scruff of beard.
I stared into his eyes and saw the rune I needed pressed into his slimy green iris: sacrifice.
“You wish to be hanged instead of put down with a needle like a dog,” I said. My palms sweated and I pressed them against my dark jeans as subtly as I was able. I wore thick black liner around my eyes and a smear of scarlet like blood on my mouth—both to help me maintain this mask of composure, of absolute control. “I want you to go with me to the gallows outside the garden of the New World Tree, walk of your own volition up the dais on Yule night, and let me place the noose about your neck. You will not leap or fall but be lifted up and strangled slowly.” I had practiced this speech in the mirror all the day before, so as not to hesitate or hear my own voice shake at the violence.
He said, “What will this scheme of yours do for me?”
And I slowly smiled. “Here is the magic of sacrifice, the power the god of the hanged gives to humankind: to take your death and tragedy and transform it into prayer, into opportunity. We’ve let go of this power, relegated it to history, when look what it’s done for me, Malchai. My parents died, and from their sacrifice I was reborn the first Valkyrie of the Tree in one hundred and fifty years. What could it do for you? For all the United States of Asgard?”
“But I will be dead!”
Jerking forward, I grasped his forearms. I dug my nails into his skin. Malchai shoved his face into mine, that silver sacrifice rune brilliant as a star in his iris. I could smell his cigarette breath, the bland soap from his hair. All the flaws of rage and weariness spelled out in his heavy pores and the uneven stubble etching the shape of his jaw.
I said, “Your name is a cursed one. A kinslayer you are, with no family to say your name or remember you, no one to kneel at your pyre or scatter your ashes in nine places you’ve never been, as your Lokiskin do. Join with me, let me use your name to resurrect this power, and your name shall also be resurrected. Your glory, if not your honor.”
The guards burst in and dragged us apart, but not before Malchai cried, “Yes!”
And I left with the blood of my first sacrifice staining my hands.
I returned triumphantly to the Death Hall, to discover my eight sisters waiting, ribbons drooping off discarded gifts in the corner of my suite. “Sisters!” I could hardly contain my joy at seeing them, could barely stop myself from crowing my plans. “What are you doing here?”
But my eyes lowered to see all my prison correspondence open and spread across the desk. Cursed evidence of my plotting.
Gundrun Graycloak, the First Valkyrie, took one long step forward and slapped my face. “Get on your knees, girl,” she said coldly.
The words shocked me, harsher than the slap burning on my cheek. I remained standing.
“What were you thinking?” Gundrun demanded. “Your wolf-guard called us, told us where you’d gone.”
Outrage made me yell, “Their loyalty should be to me!”
“To the council, foolish child. You are not one of us yet, and may never be after this.”
The Valkyrie of the East and West threw my letters at me; Myra Quick tore them to pieces, Elisa of the Prairie turned woeful eyes to the ceiling, and Siri of the Ice hissed a line of poetry about Brynhild, who was cursed for disobeying the Alfather.
“It is not disobedience,” I cried.
But Myra snapped, “That is what Kara Neverborn thought as well, and look at her punishment!”
“This is what the Alfather wants,” I said through my teeth. “He can do nothing to bring our power back, but we can. We can bring the old ways back to the Valkyrie.”
“In the old days we died young,” said the Valkyrie of the West.
The Valkyrie of the East put a hand on her sister’s shoulder and added, “In the old days, we were feared.”
“We should be feared!” I said. “We made curses and rune magic and rode with armies. We had power then.”