With that stain of blood, I draw Strange Maid onto my thigh.
Valtheow the troll mother stares back at me. The same battle raiment of blood and pain coats her body. Her shoulders heave; so do mine. Her mouth spreads over spiral tusks into a wicked smile; so does mine.
Before me stands the monster that I might become if I push toward death, toward screaming and violence and pain, the raw pieces, the blood and skit of hanging, the broken, flawed beauty I thought was the strongest core of my god.
She is the answer to my riddle because I was always on the path to her.
But I’ve found something stronger.
Here’s Soren standing before me, his father’s blade bare in his hand, hero burning in his dark eye like a brand.
Here is Ned Unferth, staring like he wants to devour me. Here’s Rathi Summerling with old-brown eyes, and Darius and Thebes, and Sharkman crushed on the sand. I whisper Precia and Myra Quick and Elisa of the Prairie. Siri and Alanna and Gundrun and Aerin and Isabeau. The names of my sisters. I whisper Astrid, too, and my wish-parents’ names, Rome and Jesca. They all tether me here. I belong in this place that I’ve made. I’m strong enough to bear the weight of the troll mother’s stone heart because of these people.
I look up at the troll mother. Lesser trolls shriek from outside the UV circle.
“Valtheow, I want your heart,” I say firmly, glad my voice rings out boldly.
She smears blood off her stomach and writes a rune between her breasts: Strange Maid.
The troll mother roars again, louder than a hurricane. Soren winces and Ned presses his fists to his ears, blades sticking out like spikes.
The roar spreads out like an explosion, a mushroom cloud of noise, shoving back at everything. I dig my boots in, but the lesser trolls scatter. Thebes crouches over Sharkman’s bloody body to protect it. Darius and Soren brace themselves. Rathi screams. Ned falls to his knees, back bowed.
At the center of it, the troll mother shivers and shakes. Her roar lifts into a scream and she flings aside her arms.
It’s a woman there. White as the moon, with black hair falling in strings about her face, thick with stone dust and salt. She’s naked but for iron and bone necklaces, a belt of steel that hangs with claw charms and silver rings and strips of fur. Tusk bracelets curl around her forearms, and her fingers end with thick, twisting nails. Her skin is cracked, and purple blood seeps between her teeth.
I tighten my grip on my seax. “Give it to me.”
“You take it,” she says, her voice a grating thing, too big and low, like it comes from the earth, not her mouth.
When she charges me, she’s a meteor of rage and fire. Terror blazes down my spine, but I don’t move; I don’t run. Her feet shake the earth; her searing white body becomes my entire world.
I scream at her, teeth bared, bones shaking, because I am the Valkyrie and she is the monster.
She reaches me and I drive my seax into her stomach with both hands. Valtheow grasps my wrists, locking us together with the seax in between. Her grinning mouth is near mine, her breath hot and sour as a back alley. Those bright eyes blaze with power, and runes: stone heart, death maid. I jerk at the seax, but her grip is perfect; her claws dig into my skin.
Her blood pours over my hands and I’m bleeding, too—purple and bright scarlet together.
The blood hardens.
I bash my forehead into her face, there’s a flash of wicked pain, and she lets go of one arm. She slaps her hand onto my cheek, smearing our blood across my face.
The runes in her eyes turn black.
Hot pain bows my spine. My knees go weak.
“Signy,” she murmurs, drawing me into her embrace. The pommel of my seax presses into my diaphragm. Her arms are hard and cold, and there are her lips on my cheek, on my lips. “Take it,” she whispers.
I hear my name from Ned and Soren, from Darius. But all I can do is hold on to the seax, force my legs to stand.
There is a pounding in my ears, that eight-count rhythm of Odin’s pulse, and with every beat my bones grow colder. My fingers stiffen. I can’t blink.
Darkness surrounds us. But our mingled blood glows like lava.
“Take it,” she whispers again, hissing the words into my open mouth. “Swallow it. My heart that was her heart, passed from the first mother to her daughter, to her daughter and then to me. Now to you, daughter of Odin, greatest of Valkyrie.”
But I cannot move.
I use all my strength just to close my eyes.
It’s bright in my own mind, and here is the roaring of my own blood. My skin turns to stone, but inside I recognize myself. I am strong; I have changed my fate before. This stone heart cannot destroy me.
“No,” I say, lips cracking.
My stone skin shatters and Valtheow shoves me back with a scream.
I hit the hard sand, dazed. My hands are coated with dark troll blood.
The troll mother looms over me, huge and bulbous and monstrous again. There is no sign of Valtheow. Her massive, moon-bright body blocks the last of the bright violet sunset, the first evening stars. She is my entire world.
And here are Soren and Ned appearing beside me to drive her back. Their swords together are like fangs, my warrior and my poet.
The UV lights are gone, bulbs blown out, and lesser trolls swarm around. The Mad Eagles and even Rathi bat at them, cutting and slicing.
Ned cries out as the mother cuffs him away; his sword flies. But Soren shoves his sword into her throat. He lets go of it, buried up to the hilt in her chin, and swings to grab up Ned’s lost sword. With it, he slashes at her belly, at her thighs and groin. His dance is so fast he’s a blur of steel, hacking at her, dodging her claws. She bleeds from every limb; from her chest and sides bright purple blood spills.
He stabs her again, all the way through, with a cry like a lion.
I get up as she struggles to remain standing. There is a gaping wound that gushes in the rhythm of her heart, where my seax remains lodged.
I reach into the wound and tear my blade free.
The troll mother falls.
My heart rages and sings, but my mouth is a line; my eyes do not burn.
Soren pins her to the mud with two swords; his breath harsh, hers like a sigh. Ned staggers to us, catches himself on her great shoulder. He leaves a violet handprint like a bouquet of flowers.
I kneel at her head, and I kiss her brow.
“It screams,” she whimpers.
“It’s supposed to,” I return. I climb onto the boulder of her chest, push aside iron necklaces, chains of bone, and with both hands I thrust the blade of the seax down into her again.
She crumbles beneath me, chunks of marble and bone falling away, in a puff of sweet breath. The moonlight finds rainbows in her breaking flesh: amethyst and emerald, ivory-white and lines of pink rubies, trails of gold, the oily sheen of obsidian. Up to my elbows in sticky dark blood turning to powder and tiny sharp crystals, into flakes of glass that cut my knuckles, that bleed my wrists.
It throbs in the center, small as a pinecone. A sharp rock of fire, hot to touch. I gather it in my palms and cradle it to my chest. It reaches hot fingers through my skin, teasing at my breastbone, calling at my heart with tingling pleasure.
There is no poem I know to describe it.
Like sunlight and kisses, like Ned’s tongue on my skin.
I close my eyes, let my head fall back.