He holds out a hand for my silence. “And she was everything a Valkyrie should be. Strong and vicious and mad, like a great ocean storm in a tiny, dark creature. She read runes and fought me in poems, ruled that place more surely than Hrothgar could. She is the one Beowulf came to serve, and she was the reason the trolls were there at all. In the end she was too dark, too mad, for her own good.”
I draw my knees up to my chest and hold myself tightly together. “What happened, Ned? How did you—That was so long ago!”
In the darkness, his eyes glint like elf-gold. “That damned berserker Beowulf lost my sword at the bottom of a lake, and I did not have it to defend my king when our enemies came. I died truly. Only this time it was at my king’s side, fighting with Hrothgar in defense of our hall. That was an honorable death, and the—the Valkyrie came for us.” His eyes drift closed. “Dancing out of the stars, screaming and bloody, they came.”
“Odd-eye, you said you aren’t a Lonely Warrior.”
“I,” Ned says, fist pressing hard into his wounded thigh, “I am a kinslayer, and not worthy of such glory. Yes, I was taken to the eternal battlefield. I fought every battle again and again, but we who are dishonorable, who deserve no grace, we do not drink nor feast with the others. We only fight, long battles that last not merely a day but days and days, until every last one of us has died again. We are kinslayers and oath-breakers, who have broken the greatest covenants of warriors and men. When we wake, my dark brothers and I, it is only to fight again, starved and thirsty, weary on our feet. I am no Einherjar.” His voice hushes in a way I’ve never known.
Sadness drags down my shoulders and mouth, and Unferth sees it. “You understand. It was so long, so many centuries of fighting and dying again and again. There is nothing in the nine worlds that could be pleasant for so long, without peace, without variation. Nothing.”
I reach for his fist and cover it gently.
“Do not be kind to me, Signy,” he murmurs. “Not until you’ve heard it all. In life I lost my father, killed my brother, and was plagued by pain, by trolls and hardship. In death there was no reprieve, not ever. And so when I woke one morning into comfort, into a meadow of sun-warmed flowers, with a breeze blowing against my face that smelled of sweetness and the sea, not blood and vicious rot, I would have agreed to anything to remain.”
Elf-kisses rise on my neck, my arms, for here is a familiar story rhythm. I know what comes next in my cold, knotted guts.
“A woman lay beside me, beautiful and soft, caressing my cheek and lips with her shining hand. I’d never known such bliss, such freedom from the pain in my bones and my heart. She looked at me, and said, Truth-Teller, I want you to do something for me, and as a reward, this will be your heaven. Her eyes were the color of the moon and half her face shadowed—exactly half, split down the middle.”
“Freya the Witch,” I whisper.
“Yes.” Ned’s shoulders tuck together and he shudders. “The queen of Hel and magic had plucked me from my death and brought me to her bed. I immediately said I would do anything for her. It curved such a smile across her face I might’ve died again in her arms.”
I crawl nearer him and take both his hands. I squeeze them in mine and raise his knuckles to my mouth. Ned watches me and does not pull back. “Freya took me to an icy country, pointed to a lonely troll mother as she crept through the moonlight, hunting polar bears. In this mother’s heart rages the fire of all trolls, the heart of stone. In one year, you will find the Child Valkyrie and tell her this is the answer to her riddle. You will tell her nothing of yourself or of me. You will teach her and guide her, prepare her for the troll mother. She will face her destiny and end your suffering.”
My hands are shaking and I’m glad for the pretense of comforting Ned so I can grip him tighter. He smiles grimly. “Freya said, If you speak of this to the Child Valkyrie, if you give her any of my truths or change her destiny, if you distract her or if you love her, Ned Spiritless, you will lose heaven. She is meant for someone else.”
“Someone else!”
He turns his hands to wind our fingers together. “She gave me my sword back, that had been lost in the mere, and everything I needed to acclimate to sixteen hundred years of change. I read and learned; I focused on the history of the Valkyrie, on new poetry and legends about them. And you, of course. I looked up Signy Valborn in old newspapers and online. Then the final thing Freya the Witch said to me was You will know you are finished when the sun is lost from the sky and the troll mother comes for the Valkyrie’s heart.”
Ned closes his eyes again and we ride in silence.
The troll mother comes for the Valkyrie’s heart.
A mirror riddle. My mouth is dry.
Freya wanted the troll mother and me to come together, and so she dragged Unferth out of Hel and offered him heaven. It was all her. Where does my god fit in to all of this? “How did you know what Odin calls me? Little raven?”
Without looking, he says, “I told you the truth of that. Even Valtheow was called Hrafnling when she was young. It is no secret name for you, but what the god of the hanged calls his favorites. A lucky guess on my part.”
“A lucky guess determined the whole course of the past half year.” I let go of him. I press the balls of my hands into my eyes.
He says, “I should have confessed it all when you told me Baldur was missing. I should have. The sun was lost from the sky, and so I knew the trolls would come.”
“You were forbidden by a goddess to warn me, to warn my family. I don’t know what I’d have done with a challenge like that.”
“But I know.” He touches my bottom lip with his thumb. “You would have rung the warning bells; you would have evacuated; you would have made certain a hundred berserkers waited for the herd, to save your family, your home.”
I take his hand, drop it into my lap. “Maybe.”
“Most definitely, Signy, for you are brave where I am not, you are wild and a little crazy and you would have told Freya to hang herself and assumed you could find another way out of Hel when the time came, or maybe not even thought of yourself at all. You’re not as selfish as you presume to be.”
“Ned,” I whisper.
“I told myself that when you met the troll mother, that would be the end of it. You would be the Valkyrie of the Tree, and you wouldn’t need me. Freya would overlook my feelings for you because the job was finished, and I could enjoy the heaven she’d prepared.”
“But that isn’t what happened,” I whisper.
“No. I woke up buried under leaves, as if the troll mother had tried to keep me safe. She was alive; I was alive—you hadn’t killed her. She heard the heliplanes coming and charged back to the valley. I tried to follow, but was too late. It was over, and I barely found her again. I convinced her to wait, to bide her time until the berserkers were gone, that she could only get to you when you weren’t with them.” Ned’s speaking faster and faster, losing all semblance of storytelling. “But she was desperate—I don’t know what Freya did or said to make the troll mother want your heart as fiercely as you want hers, but she does, Signy; she wants to kill you. Or worse.”
“Worse!”
“Make you like her, Signy. Turn you into a monster.”
I scoff.
He glares at me but keeps pushing. “I went to Vertmont and Ohiyo to draw you out in those hills, to get you away from Vinland, where all the attention of the world was turned. She came after, slowly because of the wights crowding around and making it harder for her to hide. But she’s calling them, because her heart is the heart of all trolls. She saw you in Ohiyo, and after that it was all I could do to keep up with her. She’s only been waiting in the swamps for a sign of exactly where you are.”