Page 27

THE SUN ROSE soon after, and Ve and I were both there to see it, hands deep in the soil, working the garden and speaking of what life would be like when we got to Earth.

“We’ll starve if you don’t stop pulling the plants out,”

I said, snatching a root from him. “That’s not a weed.”

He laughed, which was concerning after I said we’d starve. “I can’t tell which is which.”

He threw up his hands, effectively tossing dirt everywhere, and I ducked to avoid it.

“This one is beet root. It will keep us alive in Danmark. This,”

I grabbed a scrappy knotted root that had taken me several minutes to untangle from the ground, “will kill the beet root, unless you pluck those out first. I’ll make you a picture guide if you need.”

Ve leaned back on his hand. “This isn’t my forte. How about while you garden, I paint pictures of how stunning you are?”

I dusted off my hands. “Can I eat the paintings?”

“I’d rather you not, but I suppose we all devour art in our own way.”

He earned a smile at that. “I’ll fill our house with paintings,”

he went on, coming closer. “Each one featuring you. There will be so many, that they are falling out the door. And when we aren’t painting, we will be hunting together, or training together, or exploring the world. We are going to see it all—every ocean, every valley, every mountain.”

By the time he was done speaking, he was close enough that a tilt of his head brought his lips to mine, and all other words were lost.

He had lofty goals. But with him, it all felt possible.

“First we have to get to Danmark,”

I said, pulling back. “All of us.”

At the mention of Tova, he sobered. “Tomorrow will be difficult. Today will be easier. At midday, Odin is throwing a feast to honor the remaining champions. All are invited. It’ll be another chance to see Tova before she fights.”

I’d take any chance to see her that I could get. But I frowned, wiping my hands on a rag. “Why am I just hearing of it?”

He brought his hands back to the soil, but my mind had already wandered from that. “In case your sister hadn’t made it this far. The feast is celebrating their victory over the ones who are dead, and I wouldn’t want you to endure that if she had fallen.”

“Can I train with her then?”

He shook his head. “I tried to figure out how, but there won’t be time. She’s likely already being prepared for the feast, and offered a bath and washed clothes.”

If she was getting new clothes, they’d find the weapons she’d stashed yesterday. Hopefully she’d already buried those beneath a slab of stone. I could picture her snarling as they coerced her wild hair into dainty locks, painted her lips scarlet, and convinced her into a dress worthy of a final night. For nine out of the ten remaining champions, that was what this was. A final night.

Tonight, they feast. Tomorrow, they fight.

“This is a custom I won’t mind us skipping every decade,”

Ve said, pulling another beet free. I didn’t correct him. The grin on his face was so innocently proud of himself for helping me garden, I didn’t want to dampen his spirits. “But there are other festivals in Asgard I wouldn’t want to miss. Nights of dancing in the sea, feasts at sundown, galas beneath the stars. Those will be worth visiting for, when we are ready.”

My gut twisted. Tell him now. Tell him you will be too old and wrinkled for his taste before long, while he remains flawless.

But I kept my lips tight. Perhaps Aegir would never say a word, and I could tell Ve on my own time. I had no reason to believe Aegir would betray me. My impulse to tell Ve I was not a goddess was dwindling like sparks of a fire going out, replacing themselves with fear that his feelings would change if he knew I wasn’t like him. Soon, fear grew into a roaring flame that consumed all else.

Ve remained unaware of the fight within me. “Are there festivals in Danmark too?”

I snorted, grateful for something else to focus on. “There are, though no dancing in the sea for us. We sacrifice animals before altars a fair amount though. And see who can throw an axe into a tree with the most precision.”

Though it was nothing compared to the tales he told of Asgard, his eyes lit up like I’d just told him we bathe in gold every week. “It’s not an easy life,”

I warned. He needed to understood what awaited him in Danmark. There were no great feasts, no breastplates of silver or temples to sleep in. And no guarantee of safety. “We must work to survive.”

“I can do that,”

he said with resolution. Determination glinted in his expression. “We will work hard, and build a good life.”

He was just leaning over to kiss me when movement over his shoulder caught my eye, like bronze shifting through the evergreens.

Aegir, I thought at first. But it was Balder who stepped forth, with his hair combed back, dressed in as simple of an attire as I’d seen on him yet, holding his distance.

Seeing my attention divert, Ve checked over his shoulder. When he spotted Balder, he stepped back.

“May I borrow our lost goddess before the feast?”

Balder asked.

Ve’s focus flicked to me to check for approval first. I nodded. He kissed my cheek briefly before stepping away.

As he moved, Balder advanced through the gravel atop soft grass, tossing me and Ve a knowing look. I ignored it. “Did you get the message to Trig?”

I asked as soon as Ve was far enough away. He was mounting his chariot now and headed off, with a promise to be my escort for the event later today.

Balder stopped with his hands folded before him, right over the strings of his black tunic. The color contrasted the white of his cloak, with the cowl down. Threads of silver ran through the seam, the only thing to show his wealth. Other than that, he appeared like a mortal, down to the faded leather of his boots. “I did. He was pleased to receive it.”

No reply though. I prayed Trig found the hidden code.

“Things are going well with your fiancé, I see?”

His eye went past me and to Hitta Haven as if wondering what had transpired there between us. Thoughts swarmed through my head—those of kisses and promises and bliss. I kept them all to myself like the beautiful treasure they were.

“I’m lucky to have him,”

I said, then cringed. That sounded fake. Balder tucked his chin in as he studied me.

I feigned an innocent expression. “What brings you here?”

His throat cleared. “I’ve something to show you.”

I cast my eyes around him, but saw nothing. Not even a chariot to bring him here.

“Something in Danmark.”

My blood stilled. A shiver of emotion pulsed through me—anticipation entangled with fright. He was taking me to Danmark. I could escape there. Finally, I’d see the way out of Asgard and be back with my own people again, where I had no fear of the secret motives of the gods. It’s what I’d been wanting since the moment I woke here.

Yet the second emotion hit me harder. I’m not leaving without them.

What if he’d uncoded my message and knew I was searching for the way out of Asgard?

Or that I planned to save Tova tomorrow and take her with me? Or worse—Aegir had found him first, and all the gods knew I was masquerading.

He would punish me by dragging me back to Danmark where he found me, leaving me behind with no way back to my sister.

As my thoughts continued, they grew darker and darker until I was convinced Balder had something terrible planned.

I tried to ease myself.

Vikings get like this before raids—I’d seen it from my faoir enough to know. But I did not have a battle before me today. I stilled my heart.

“What is it?”

Balder watched like he could see all my thoughts. “That,”

he said, “is better for you to discover yourself. Then we will return for the feast.”

Relief hit me. He planned to bring me back, and not abandon Tova here.

At ease, I dug my knife from the dirt and strapped it to my side. If Balder was going looking like a mortal, then I would too. “Take me.”

His look was apologetic. “Not awake.”

Worry coursed through me, but his hand was faster. At his touch, my vision blurred. I fought against it. I must see the way out. But soon I was on my knees, using all my force to keep my head upright to see Balder as he knelt beside me, running a finger beneath my chin and gently guiding me to the ground. “I’m sorry,”

he whispered. “You’re too precious to risk losing.”

I could be here another twenty years, I thought. He was never going to show me the way home.

That was my last thought as my head landed on the dirt.

The air was cold, and that’s how I knew. It wasn’t a comforting breeze that cooled the nape of necks, but a bitter one with more teeth than whispers and a sting that stayed on your skin long after the mug in your hand washed away the chill in your blood. A cold like that wouldn’t be found in Asgard.

I was in Danmark again.

I opened my eyes slowly to dim sunlight pushing through thick clouds, casting the mountain side in hues of gray that matched Balder’s hair. My gaze split downward first. To the fjord. Except, it wasn’t the familiar view. We were over the ridge, on the other side of my clan’s mountain, where the fjord opened to sea and the boundary line for the northern clan lay.

“We are a day’s hike away from my old home,”

I said, carefully adding ‘old’ to show I saw Asgard as home now. Get him to trust me enough to loosen his tongue.

His lips pulled back as if he caught what I was doing. “It is,”

he admitted. “Yet what I want you to see is that way.”

He pointed up. I followed the line. Near the top of the mountain, two plumes of smoke rose like black snakes reaching into the sky.

Balder, who’d acquired a walking stick, plunged it into the ground and started that way. I had to hike my knees to follow through a wild, untamed path. I wouldn’t have noted it before, but Asgard had spoiled me with smooth ways and clear passings, that now the splintered, dull trees, bowed branches, snarly roots, dead leaves, and rampant weeds made my lip turn up. An uncomfortable moisture clung to the air, seeping into my skin.

But a feeling hung in the back of my chest, waiting to be felt. And once I felt it, it consumed me.

I took a step, letting the feeling simmer.

I knew these lands. I knew the people here. The customs, the way of things, even when the rattling branches would bud again and color would sweep through the hills. I knew when the tide would rise and fall and how to not be sucked away in it. And if a creature attacked here, it wouldn’t be large enough to bite me in two with a single snap.

I took another step.

No more twisty gods or dangerous arenas. No more jravn that should have killed me.

Another step.

Wind sliced through, but this time it wasn’t as striking. It was like peeling away the cold parts of myself to take with it, leaving behind what I knew.

Two more steps, and I realized what Balder had done for me, though undoubtedly without meaning to.

I’d wondered where I belonged. Now I knew.

This was always meant to be home—goddess or not. I belonged in Danmark.

Soon, the scent of smoke came freely, and the snap of fire drifted from above. It was a controlled fire, so an altar of sort. My eyes traced downward. No blood forging a path to the sea. If they weren’t sacrificing animals to the gods, then what were they doing?

It was quiet, so whoever had set these fires was praying. I checked to Balder. He had slowed, then nodded ahead. “There.”

The red of the fire showed first. It contrasted the death of trees around us. A closer look revealed figures, six of them. No, eight. The muddied cloaks of my clan blended into the surroundings, but with each second, and as they shifted, the count grew to almost twenty.

I searched for my parents’ faces. When one stood, I found it. My móoir placed herself nearest the flame, taking a moment to look over everyone who had come, then she put a hand to her chest. My heart jumped to my throat. I opened my mouth but struggled to find words. Tova should be here with me. She still faced death.

When Móoir had absorbed the sight, she turned back to pray.

“They cannot see you, nor hear you,”

Balder said.

I shoved my emotions away, the ones that threatened to fill my whole being until there was no room left to breathe. This was my family. No matter the snares in our relationship, I loved them, and to see them but not speak was torture as sharp as my axe. I whirled around and flung out my arms. “Then why bring me?”

“To show you what they pray for. Draw closer.”

I obeyed, more driven by curiosity than anything. That’s when I found my faoir, feeding the flames. They’d lit the altar, I realized. My parents were asking something of the gods.

My feet were bolder than my caution, and they led me though the crowd, passing their bent faces and silent cries like I were naught but a shadow in the night unseen, waiting for the light to become real. My sisters were here as well, all four younger ones. Their cheeks were rosy and eyes wet from tears.

It was from Sigrid’s lips that the first discernable words came. “Return Tova to us.”

Now I knew, and should have guessed. They were praying she returned as the victorious champion.

“She will return,”

I whispered to Sigrid, though I knew she couldn’t see me. I bent until the copper wisps of her hair were close enough to touch my own, even though they couldn’t. “I will bring her home.”

I stood. “I know how important she is to my clan. I am not going to let her die,”

I told Balder. “You needn’t remind me of her value.”

He chuckled, and cast his gaze beyond me. “This isn’t what you need to see. That is.”

At that moment, almost as if she was waiting for his permission to move, Móoir stood and beseeched the clan to follow her up the trail, where Faoir was tending to a second fire.

The entire crowd shifted to this altar, bent their heads, and cried out to the gods.

“Save Rune from the Beckoning,”

they said. “Let her return to us.”

I sucked in a quick puff of air, watching my parents with their noses against the ground, pleading to the gods to save me. Pleading just as hard as they had with Tova. Despair in every note of their wails. I sank to my knees beside my móoir and put a hand on her back, feeling the rough texture of her wooly coat. She gave no indication that she felt me. But I willed her to feel my presence. To know I was okay.

From Tova’s recount, they’d believed I’d run away. I had run away. But then the gods chose their mortals, and I never returned. They must have thought I’d been chosen as well. It was a despairing thing to believe, for if that were true, only one of their daughters had hope of returning to them. We could not both live.

A tear streaked down my cheek. “I am here,”

I whispered. “You have not lost me.”

“I wanted you to see this.”

Balder was at my side now, bent beside Móoir. His eyes were gentle. “I know the Viking way is harsh, and it is difficult to form attachments to something you think you will lose.”

He meant me. I was the thing they thought they would lose when I was little. He went on. “But they care. They’ve always cared. I wanted you to see how much.”

The scene hit me hard—my sisters crying and parents with stiff expressions like they were one gust away from cracking. They didn’t just break for Tova. They broke for me.

My thoughts drifted back to the altar Ve brought me to when he showed me the gifts mortals had left for young Astrid. I’d cried at the thought of love gone wasted when I’d been yearning for it my entire life. Specifically, the love of my parents. I couldn’t know what it was to look at a dying child, and how they must have detached themselves from me to prepare their hearts for loss, but I’d thought the love never returned after that. Worse, I believed I would never have a welcome place in Danmark.

This was only a burning fire, but to me, it was a mark. There would be burned wood, a charred place on the ground, and smoke hanging in the air. A piece of Danmark would be different because of someone’s love for me.

Having someone care for you enough for that love to imprint the world was the greatest form of endearment.

It was lasting. It was eternal. It was like faith that never wavered.

The last idea was a punch to my gut.

My faith had wavered. It more than wavered, it split like a branch in winter with no life to support it. A second tear fell, this one heavier.

“I’d cast it away,”

I said as I stood from my móoir. “I’d thrown away my faith. When you met me in the vineyard, I didn’t believe the gods were real. I didn’t believe in anything.”

Shame plunged a deep knife into my chest until it was difficult to lift my chin to see Balder.

But Balder, instead of rebuking me for such a thing, smiled. There wasn’t a hint of judgment to his tone. “It is natural to doubt.”

“I more than doubted. I cursed you. I hated the thought of gods who didn’t answer prayer, who only took sacrifices and pretty words and gave us nothing. There was no love left in my heart for any of it.”

Even still, his expression was soft. He swept his eyes over the mountainside. “Look at the trees.”

I frowned. “Do you not hear me, Balder? I don’t deserve a place in Asgard. I threw my faith away.”

“Look,”

he said with more force. “Study the pines. Tell me, which did Ve paint?”

For a moment, he sounded like the man I’d met in the vineyard whose words were nonsense. I turned to the trees where wind rattled the branches like shivering bones. “But these aren’t painted. They are real.”

He spread a slow hand around him, signaling everything. “No, we gods paint the world as we see fit. Some of these trees were from Ve’s imagination. Get a good look, and tell me which ones he drew.”

I tried to quickly absorb that while pulling in the details of the trees. As far as I could tell, they were natural pines, with reasonable differences as trees should have, but nothing to tell me whose hand had crafted them. I tried to guess anyway. I pictured Ve with a brush in hand, carefully creating any of these wonders. But Balder shook his head at each one. Finally, I relented. “I don’t know. I’ve never seen him paint.”

His smile told me that was exactly what he was looking for. I still didn’t understand.

“You have never seen Ve paint,”

Balder repeated. “You haven’t spent enough time with him to know what his paintings look like. In the same way, you hadn’t spent enough time with the gods to know the way our hands moved. We moved all around you, but if you don’t know us, how can you see when we act? How do you know what a tender hug from us feels like if you’ve never sought it out? How do you know what our whispers sound like if you don’t know our voice? Spend time with us and you will know it when we move.”

The words sunk in. He was right. I’d been afraid of the gods. Angry with the gods. Tried to please them so I’d have approval. Even demanded things from them. But I never sat to speak with them like a friend. There had been no relationship at all.

Balder had shown me much today. More than I thought possible. I dried my eyes. “You have fair points.”

He smiled. “Good.”

Then he glanced to the sun. “We need to leave the land of mortals now. Are you ready?”

This time, I was. My path ahead felt more concrete. I no longer wavered in what I had to do or where I was meant to be. My life wouldn’t be like it was before, built with callousness and strife—I would seek the beauty, seek the gods, and find room in my heart for my family.

I silently gave my parents my promise. I will return, I promise.

I soaked a final breath of Danmark’s crisp air into my lungs, gave Móoir a last look, and reached my hand to Balder.

Before his fingers met mine, my móoir’s ramblings formed coherent words. “She was a gift from you,”

she said, pleading with the gods. “Please don’t take her back.”

I tried to yank my hand away, but it was too late. Balder’s fingers reached mine, as his other hand slipped into his pocket. This time, there was no slow fade. It was blinding light, a sharp pain, and a feeling like I was being ripped from my body and yanked upward.

It took one blink for Danmark to fall away and Asgard to return. We stood at the same point, right next to the patch of garden Ve and I had been working on, with my head dizzy and mind racing. My móoir’s form was no longer beside me but her words remained in the air, sharp like a sting.

Please don’t take her back.

Balder appeared lost in thought as well, staring in the distance. He must have heard the words too, but he chose not to comment as he shook his head and unclipped his sword from his back. Blue crystals glittered from the hilt. He set it on his lap as he sat with his back against a tree, taking a deep breath.

“When we lost you, we cried in anguish for weeks. We mourned for years. Our home was never again the same, and nothing could have filled that void.”

I sat beside him, unsure why he was telling me this. His soft eyes met my own. “The mortals will never love you like us, because you are not theirs. You are a part of our family, my niece, and we are not whole without you.”

He passed the sword to me. “Odin crafted this for you, with his ring embedded in the hilt. It is a sign of his deepest love.”

I gasped as I held it in my hands. A weapon strong enough to take on the gods. That’s what I’d asked for, and that’s what he delivered. The metal was pure white, the hilt a deep black with pockets of blue, and the weight perfectly aligned for me.

“It is time for your heart to let your family go,”

Balder said, and now I understood. Tomorrow, a piece of my mortal family might die, and he wanted me to remember who my true family was. He was edging my feelings so I didn’t do anything hasty upon her death. Keeping me here. “As they are already letting you go.”

I said nothing as I slid the sword back into its sheath. Balder reached to squeeze my hand. “You have the strength of the gods behind you for tomorrow, but I suspect you do not need it. It is already in your heart.”

He meant I would survive Tova’s death. There would be nothing to survive. It would not happen. I forced a smile to my face. “Thank you for the sword, and for allowing me to see my family once more.”

That seemed to appease him, and he gave a curt nod before standing. “May the sword always protect you, and remind you of home. Farewell, Astrid.”

The sudden use of the name jolted me, and fell over my ears like betrayal. It was a final reminder from him of who I was, but to me, it was a reminder I was an imposter. I kept my face calm as he left, and forced the feeling away so I could go over everything that just took place. It was a lot to take in, but the most important thing Balder had shown me was something he hadn’t meant to. And it changed everything.

He’d been in a hurry to leave Danmark, and in that rested his mistake. For he hadn’t drifted me to unconsciousness first, which allowed me the final piece of puzzle I’d been missing.

He’d touched something in his pocket.

It was not a gate I searched for to get to Earth. It was a key.

The key lay in Balder’s pocket.