I describe my dream this morning, my feeling that the woman was the troll mother despite her lovely Valkyrie appearance. That if this mother is the first troll mother, perhaps this was her face before Freya put the heart into her chest.
Ned’s lips tighten as if he disagrees, but he only says, “We should be ready before twilight. I’ve seen her walk under cloudy skies and rise when the sun still burned in the west.”
“Is that because of the heart?” I ask. “If I’m right, it lets her use rune magic like the ancient Valkyrie could, like Odin and Freya do. That might be one reason why it’s my riddle’s answer—so I take that power from her, to use it myself, or … give it to Odin.”
“That’s just a story,” Rathi scoffs. His eyes are dark and warm as the earth. It dawns on me he’s not wearing his contacts. “You’re forgetting the fossil record.”
I laugh. Rathi sniffs and regards me with the familiar brown eyes from all my best memories.
But Ned says, “This troll mother isn’t the original troll mother.”
“What?”
He only gazes at me as if I should already understand.
“How do you know?” asks Darius.
Ned twists his mouth, and his hand tightens on his knee, knuckles whitening.
Impatiently I say, “He knows because he’s the original Unferth Truth-Teller. Raised from the dead by Freya to lead me to the troll mother. Ned, are you sure? I thought she told you this troll has the heart from—”
Sharkman surges to his feet. “Freya!”
“You knew Hrothgar Shielding?” Rathi interrupts. “Of the great Freyan kings? You were at Heorot?”
Darius quietly says, “Beowulf Berserk.”
Rathi stands up to, too, towering over Ned, and the sunlight gilds the smooth waves of his hair. “That’s why your version was different in places, like I’ve never seen or heard before. You wrote the poem!”
Of course my wish-brother resisted the legend of the first troll mother being true, but he believes this with only scant linguistic evidence.
“Sang it. I sang it,” Ned snaps. “When I was a poet, when I was a man, we didn’t murder poetry by carving it onto stone. It lived in the air or not at all.”
There’s a long silence as everyone studies him.
I rub my rune scar. “Ned, how do you know this troll mother isn’t the first?”
He slowly turns his gray eyes to mine. “The same way she knew me, when she saw me. We are old friends.”
“Grendel’s mother?” Darius asks.
Sharkman says firmly, “She died. Beowulf killed her.”
Suddenly I know. My rune scar. Strange Maid. Ned told me the answer months ago. And again last night: In the end, she was too dark, too mad, for her own good. I splay my hand and thrust to my feet. “Rag me,” I whisper. “Valtheow.”
My troll mother. My mirror self, the monster of my dreams. Writing my name again and again, carved into her stone chest. But not my name. Her name. Valtheow.
I push through the men and look down at Ned. Truth truth truth flickers against his pupil. “You lied,” I whisper, hoarse and shocked.
He says numbly, “That poem was the worst thing I’ve ever done.”
“What?” Rathi demands.
“He made it all up,” I say. “What happened at the mere. The story of Beowulf.”
“No. Most of it is true.” Ned blinks, staring at a thing from the past. “The berserker killed Grendel. But it was Valtheow who destroyed the mother and saved Heorot.”
Darius puts his hand on Thebes’s shoulder as if to steady himself. Sharkman’s face is blotchy around the spear tattoo on his cheek. Bright sunlight pours down through the tarp, turning everything a haunted blue.
“He’s our greatest hero,” Thebes rumbles.
“But why?” Rathi whispers. “Why lie about that?”
“Grendel’s mother had the heart,” Ned says, his voice hollow. “The magical stone heart from the very first troll that Signy was talking about. It’s what made Grendel’s mother so powerful. The trolls had passed it down, mother to daughter, over the ages.”
I sink to my knees beside Ned’s camp chair. “Valtheow took it.”
He says, “Because she made herself into a mirror of the creature, she recognized the heart. She felt its power and coveted it. She ripped it out of the troll thinking she could control it. Thinking she was strong enough alone. She wasn’t. The heart destroyed her, turned her into a monster in truth.”
“You lied to protect her legacy,” I say.
“I had to, didn’t I?” he begs. “I couldn’t let anyone know; I couldn’t make that her immortality. She was magnificent, but she … fell. She lost herself to the worst parts of her nature: vengeance and passion and the darkness that had always drawn her.” Ned grips my wrist. “Signy … you’re drawn to those things, too.”
I push up and away from him as my heartbeat thunders in my ears, counting that old eight-point rhythm like Odin’s own pulse.
“It’s happening again,” Rathi says ominously. “We have all the pieces: berserkers and Valkyrie, the poet and his king named Hrothgar. A troll mother. Even a one-armed troll-son.”
“This isn’t Heorot,” Ned says irritably.
It’s Thebes who rubs his scarred temple and says, “I hope it goes better for us.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
AS THE SUN slides in its arc across the clean blue sky, I stand outside the fort at the edge of the ocean.
Valtheow.
My palm tingles when I think her name, and I rub the rune scar. My Valtheow the Dark, transformed into the troll mother who destroyed Vinland, who nearly crushed me in her arms.
I shudder and close my eyes. I can’t hold my fingers still; I can’t stop the chills screaming up and down my spine.
I can’t tell if this is bliss or terror.
Her aquamarine gaze was so sharp and clear when we met, and in the dreams, too. She was a Valkyrie but fell completely into monstrousness. Could the same happen to me? Signy, you’re drawn to those things, too.
But how can I take my seax and shove it into the heart of Valtheow the Dark? Won’t that be like cutting out my own heart?
A strangled laugh falls out of me as I remember putting my seax to my chest at Baldur’s ball and saying, Before I would cut out his heart and offer it to the Alfather, I would cut out my own.
Soren, as if sensing the rising panic, comes and takes me gently by the neck to go with him and check that all the weapons are ready and placed where we can easily get to them.
“This changes nothing,” I whisper to him. “I still have to take the heart. Make her pay.”
“Work,” he says, “and distract yourself.”
Sharkman and Rathi sail to Mizizibi for some heavy nets and a second generator so we can reposition two of the UV lights to shine south over the island. We expect her from the north, to rise directly out of the water, and I take off my jeans to wade with Darius around the circumference of the fort, since the piece of the wall that dives into the ocean is the most likely place the troll mother could surprise us, if she stays underwater that long. Darius checks for weak spots, especially around the small drainage holes where the brick meets the concrete foundation. I draw invisible protection runes with seawater and spit, and imagine them being more than prayers, more than poetry, but feel silly.
When I have the heart, my runes will have true power. I can have everything I wanted when I was younger.
Is that what Odin always wanted? He must have known what happened to his Valtheow, whom he loved, whom he spoke of in such passionate terms. And when Freya offered him this prophecy, he knew I was Valtheow’s perfect heir.