Page 7

A THROBBING ACHE in the back of my head dragged me into a bitter consciousness. From the trickle of a breeze and the glaring light, I guessed I was outside, but the softness beneath my body wasn’t right. I stayed still while every sense came to life and went on high-alert. Hearing was the most important one, and it was only when I was certain there was no other sound of life around me that I pried my lids open.

I was lying on something soft, like a fur. A thin, purple blanket covered my body—one far finer than anything owned by my family—and it matched the cushions behind my back. I’d been settled across an open sided couch in the middle of a grand room with marble walls and a sweeping staircase along the side that met at a set of long, wispy curtains hanging over enormous windows. Buttery light seeped across the room. The floors were golden with filigree embossing, and polished so bright they were difficult to look at.

A rhythmic tap came from the side. Pacing.

A man had taken me. He said he was bringing me to Asgard.

With difficulty, I tilted my head ever so slightly. That same man stood across the room now, basking in the shimmery light of towering windows and pacing along the golden floors. My hearing had failed me then. I was not alone. He still wore his white tunic, now with a blue sash along his waist, clad in bronze shoulder plates and an iron sword. A shield was strapped to his back, and it almost hit the wall as he turned to continue pacing.

I wiggled my fingers awake and traced them to my dagger. The man’s attention snapped up as I moved, and I shut my eyes quickly.

I held my breath. After a few moments, his footsteps came nearer, and I formed a quick plan of attack in my mind. I’d fight him, escape this odd prison, and find my way out. He was old and couldn’t have dragged me far. I’d be with the clans again before nightfall.

The footsteps came closer, and closer. My breathing evened and years of training calmed me until at last, he stood at my side, carrying the scent of the vineyard and gentle hum in his throat.

“Such a little one,”

he whispered. “I searched so long to bring you home.”

The cushions shifted as he sat down beside me and placed a warm hand against my forehead with a tender touch.

Every part of me wanted to pounce, but I bided my time until he’d turn away.

He didn’t turn.

Instead, his fingers traced the scars on my arm. My blood heated. I didn’t even let Trig touch those.

I jerked my arm back, grabbed my dagger, and stabbed.

My knife was aimed for his chest, below his shoulder plates, where it should sink into his skin. My aim was true. But his hand was quicker.

Without so much as blinking, he flicked his hand upward and caught my wrist with a crippling grip. I winced.

His expression didn’t waver as he tightened his grip further until I thought his fingers might find my bone. I leaned my weight into the knife to bring it closer to his chest. By the time the blade touched his shirt, he was squeezing so hard my hand could fall off. And he did it all without a speck of emotion. His face was irritatingly patient, like he’d been expecting this.

“I am a god, not a savage mortal. Your knife won’t take me down.”

We would see. I sighed with defeat and dropped the knife.

As it fell, I grabbed it with my other hand and drove it into his thigh.

This time, the blade connected with tissue and the dagger sank in. The man’s face pinched in pain, and I scrambled backward while leaving the knife there. Now I’d flee. My boots made loud thuds that echoed in the high-ceilinged room, and I crossed the distance in half the time I usually did. Gold was easier to run on than sand. I grabbed the handle to the main door. I spared the man a last glance. His face had relaxed again and he calmly drew the blade out as a single drop of dark red blood ran down his leg.

I shivered. Then I flung the door open to run.

I stopped.

This was nowhere near the seven clans of my people. The fjord was gone, the vineyard, and the little huts we’d huddle in when the winter came. The clouds were gone too.

No. Not gone. They were there, just…in the wrong spot. Clouds should be up. We should not walk upon them like a wool throw.

My head spun. I should flee. But…

I stood at the threshold of a clandestine marble porch with chiseled pillars holding a flat roof that blocked the sunlight. A mountain ridge stretched outside, but not the cold mountains of my land—these were lush, bursting with green and speckled with marble temples, each one more glorious than the next. Ravens flew, chasing each other across the treetops and swooping down to glide their feathers over shimmering pools.

I wouldn’t know which way to lead me home. I wouldn’t even know where to start.

“It’s quite different from the harsh land which you have been stranded upon.”

I jumped at the man’s voice. He stood behind my shoulder showing no signs of pain. I glanced at his thigh. The cut at the bottom of his tunic wasn’t bleeding.

He claimed to be a god. So far, that claim held well.

He held my dagger out. “I trust you won’t stab me again.”

“I haven’t decided yet,”

I said. But when I reached, he let me take it.

I still wanted to run, but now I feared I wouldn’t get far before he caught me, and what he might do to keep me from running again.

“I’m going to invite someone in,”

he said, walking toward the side of the room to the expanse of floor-to-ceiling windows. “Try not to stab her either.”

Then he said in a lower tone, “Though she could use a good jab.”

Before I could decipher his words, he flung back the door.

“Be gentle with her,”

he said. I didn’t know if his words were for me or the woman he let in.

If it wasn’t for her brilliant white hair or the wrinkles across her friendly face, I’d never guess her age. She wore tight pants with knives strapped to her thighs, a mid-length ruby-colored tunic, axe at her side, and leather boots strapped up her calves. My own meager blade was weak in comparison to her weapons. Fear flooded me, and I shifted my weight to the balls of my feet.

Despite her tough appearance, her movements were timid. She eased herself into the room at a sluggish pace, hands folded in front of her, and eye twitching with uncertainty.

She paused only a few steps in. “Is that her?”

“What do you mean ‘is that her?’ There is no one else in the room, Frigg. Of course that’s the child.”

“But how can you be certain?”

“I watched her eat ten grapes from the Vineyard of the Gods without repercussions,”

the man replied. “I am certain.”

My heart stuttered. He had seen me, after all.

The old woman, Frigg, brought a shaky hand to her mouth. Then she let a single tear fall down her cheek. In a trembling voice, she cried out, “I have waited so long to see my granddaughter again.”

My stomach sank. I’d seen my grandparents. This was not one of them. “I’m sorry, I’m a little lost,”

I confessed. I tucked my dagger away and kept under the doorway. Ready to run at a moment’s notice. I could make it to the mountains and track a way home from there, or I’d follow the stream southward.

For now, neither of them appeared in danger of harming me. But they were looking at me with an odd expression, like I was fragile and they wanted to protect me.

The man cleared his throat. “This is Frigg, wife of Odin. But I think the better question you have is who you are.”

His gaze swung to me. “You, little warrior, are the granddaughter of Odin and Frigg, my niece, daughter of my brother Hedir and his wife, Rava. You were stolen out of Asgard as a toddler and we have been searching for you ever since.”

I stumbled back until the doorframe pushed against me, while Frigg came nearer. Wife of Odin, my mind repeated. My grandmother. Odin, my grandfather.

They were very mistaken.

Frigg reached up and caught my cheek. Her thumb rubbed the skin, while her soft blue eyes took in my own.

I could do nothing but remember how to breathe and figure out a way to escape all this. No amount of training with Tova could have prepared me for the absurdity of this, nor teach me how to duel a god.

“She looks like Rava,”

Frigg said. And as if that settled it for her, she dropped her hand to pull me into a hug.

Saying I resembled a goddess was the kindest thing anyone had ever said of me, and it pained me to pull back from her gentle touch. “I am not who you say I am.”

“The clan gave her a new name,”

the man explained. “They kept her shielded from us, so I could not find her as I passed through the towns. I have not seen this girl before, not at any of the altars nor in any of my travels.”

Guilt warmed my cheeks. He hadn’t seen me at any altar because I’d stubbornly refused to worship any other than Aegir. And he hadn’t seen me in the towns because I was usually in the fields.

“I am Balder,”

the man finally told me. “What was the name you’d given me?”

I thought back to the vineyard when I’d been mocking the gods. I shut my eyes. I brought this upon myself. I am Rune, goddess of determination and wit.

“Rune,”

I answered through a dry throat.

“Ruin,”

he repeated, taking what he could from my northern accent. I almost corrected him, but that sounded about right. Ruin fit me. Balder held his hand over me. “The goddess of determination and wit.”

The goddess of I’m-in-trouble and this-is-not-going-to-end-well.

“She knew,”

Balder explained to Frigg. “Somehow Ruin knew who she was, and she had traveled to our vineyard to call upon us to take her home. And look, she bears the mark.”

He grabbed my hand and held it up for Frigg to see the scars on my arm.

For the first time, someone didn’t wince at the sight. They brightened. My scars were not wretched to her, nor another sign of my weakness. Frigg was looking at me as if I were the first light of morning after a stormy night and that with me, all her prayers were answered.

It was the way many looked upon Tova. Like she herself was a goddess. “Astrid had that mark,”

she said. “She was born with it. We never guessed it’d be the key to finding her again.”

She smiled and clasped my hands. “You are home.”

I eased my hand out from Frigg’s and stepped out onto the porch to get some air. I steadied myself against the marble pillars, while staring over the land. “You’re telling me this is Asgard?”

“I’m telling you this is home,”

Balder corrected from behind me. I couldn’t see them, but their presence was overwhelming, like I would never be able to forget two gods stood paces away.

A sliver of me believed their claims. The majority of me wanted to. But all of me knew one thing: this was not home.

The mountainside appeared like one from an oil painting, not the frozen ones I was used to. It rolled endlessly in every direction, stretching as far as I could see. I stood at the cusp of stairs, looming in the threshold of a small temple crafted from marble and gold, with balustrades of twisting, sculpted ivy.

Balder came to my side and stared over it all with me. “Your parents are not here,”

he said as if that was my question. Astrid’s parents hadn’t crossed my mind. Surely they’d know I wasn’t their daughter from the first look.

“Where are they?”

“They left in search for you as soon as you went missing. They never returned.”

His voice dropped with the memory, and he sucked in his chest. “I’d always hoped they’d found you and were living a quaint life somewhere…”

He cleared his throat. “You’re here now. They’ll feel your presence and be summoned back home.”

I tried to imagine what they’d gone through here. Losing three people all at once and not knowing where any of them are. It was a sad thought, but it begged the question: How could they lose three gods?

They must not be as powerful as I’d thought. Especially if they thought me to be one of them. I was hardly worthy of being a part of my clan; I certainly didn’t fit into a coven of gods.

Balder faced the mountains, where a crisp breeze trickled down the slope to catch on the branches and create a melody amongst the leaves. The land called me to explore it; I’d love to hunt those woods or farm on land such as this. If I wasn’t afraid for my life right now, I’d be running through the hills. It was more serene than I imagined Asgard to be, until I turned northward.

There was the city, and it stole my breath.

Palaces, cathedrals, a citadel in the center and turrets upon the corners. Everything adorned with golden banners and ruby crusted plates. I was instantly grateful I’d been brought here instead of there. Still, I shouldn’t be here at all. “I shouldn’t be here,”

I told him plainly.

“You belong here.”

As if that settled that, Balder swung to face Frigg, who still stared at me. “And we must celebrate the return of our lost goddess.”

Frigg nodded as her eyes welled with tears. The look she gave me was so tender, it brought a sting to my own eyes.

I should turn away, but for one guilty moment, I absorbed that look. I allowed myself to be adored. Just a moment though. That’s all I allowed myself. This was not the truth, and I would not be so dishonorable by taking the place of this goddess as if it was mine to claim.

I opened my mouth to deny them, and explain I vividly remembered my childhood. More than that—I thought as the proof against their claims stacked up—I looked very much like my siblings. Móoir showed me the scar from how I came out of her as the only one of her children to not come easily. It was not possible for me to be anyone other than Rune, the diligent Viking who minded her business in school and training.

Then I clamped my mouth shut.

A story had circulated through the clan when I was younger, and the uniqueness of it stayed with me, for not many stories tell of a man entering Asgard. But one man did, a man determined to beg the gods to bring his wife back from the dead.

The interesting part was how he got into Asgard. He pretended to be a god.

What happened to him? I’d asked.

He died, our teacher had told us. And was thrown from Asgard. No one pretends to be a god and gets away with it.

Dizziness clouded my head.

I am Rune, goddess of determination and wit.

I had done the same thing.

I had become the man from the story, and if I made a wrong move, I’d end up just like him. Killed, and thrown from Asgard.

It would be better to slip away quietly. They’d lost a god once; they could easily lose a mortal.

I plastered on a smile that I hoped looked grateful and overwhelmed all at the same time, and put a hand to my chest. “I don’t know what to say,”

I lied. In truth, my knees were shaky and all I could think of was how each of them were strong enough to break me with the snap of their fingers.

He grinned, and whispered so Frigg couldn’t hear. “Perhaps don’t tell anyone you renounced the gods. It would not be a good look for you.”

I risked a smile. “Noted.”

My voice was clear. “Thank you for bringing me home.”

Already, I was planning my escape.