The Strange Maid (7 page)

“Tell me a moment you did feel alive,” he finally says.

“You first,” I whisper.

He sighs as if letting go of a great weight. “The first time I faced a troll, swallowed his hot, rotten-berry breath, felt his iron claws scrape my bones hard enough to spark. Little feels as real as your own blood on your hands. Or the blood of someone you love.”

“Is that why you limp?”

“Among other things.”

I glance at him, still standing by my first assessment that he’s only five years older than me—if he’s not immortal. “I can’t think of a troll attack in the past ten years, not a bad one where people died.”

Unferth is silent. Because that was no actual question. I ask, “Where were you attacked?”

“On the ice,” he murmurs with a tiny smile.

I groan. “What ice?”

“The long-since-melted kind.”

“Unferth.”

“Your turn. A real moment for a real moment.”

The first thing that occurs to me is awful, but I spit it out. “Sitting on Rome’s—on my wish-father’s—lap when he told me my parents were dead. There was a tiny blue horse charm tied into his beard, and I stared at it and stared at it. He stroked my hair and it was like I could feel every individual strand where it connected to my scalp. I thought I might die from the pressure of it. I was so alive.” I touch my chest with my middle finger but don’t need to hold anything in. That desperation passed a long time ago.

“I remember when my father died,” Unferth says. Before I can press, he flips on the headlights and peers at the gages on the dash. “We need more gas.”

We sleep that night inside the protection of a walled gas stop. Its tanks are refilled once a week by a convoy out of Toronto, Unferth explains. I’ve hardly slept at all when the day begins with a muffled dawn. Clouds cap the sky, but there’s a line of violet and silver at the eastern horizon. Today we’ll reach his base at the ruins of Montreal. As we drive, Unferth murmurs under his breath. It’s Old Anglish, like his name, and I know many of the words but am not fluent enough to parse the meaning beyond that it’s a prayer.

“Teach me?” I ask, late in the morning.

He darts a glance at me; I’ve surprised him.

“I pray,” I mutter.

“I have a better idea,” he answers, and starts in with the first lines of
The Song of Beowulf.

Over the long hours of the drive, he recites the entire three-thousand-line poem.

I put my feet on the dash and close my eyes. The vibration of the truck and cold, lonely wind lulls me into a space between waking and sleeping, where Unferth’s poetry invokes imagery of Heorot, the great hall of King Hrothgar Shielding, and the tragedy of its occupation by the monster Grendel for nine long years. The devastation and hopelessness of his people and retainers, the fury and desperation of his wife, Valtheow the Dark, who sacrificed and prayed to summon the power to defeat Grendel. Unferth shows me their relief when Beowulf came from over the sea to save them, and he twists his words as if drunk to voice the protestations of his namesake poet who challenged Beowulf’s worthiness before giving the berserker his own sword.

I see the torn limbs and hear the wails of grief; my heart breaks when Grendel’s mother sings a lament for her dead son. I imagine Valtheow herself as she brings a goblet of mead to Beowulf in celebration.

After lunch Unferth recites the confrontation between Beowulf Berserk and the troll mother, Grendel’s dam who attacked Heorot in revenge. How Beowulf and Unferth and Valtheow followed her to the cave under the mere, and with Unferth’s sword Beowulf slew her. From my Unferth’s lips, the song describes their battle like a dance, like a meeting of lovers, and tears dampen my lashes when the troll mother dies. I can hardly believe he’s made me mourn the monster.

There are lines I whisper with him, my favorite passages about Valtheow or the Frisian funeral, with its meditation on the glory of battle verses the viciousness of war, but his version differs slightly from the standard. His adds words or half lines to complete the alliterations or perfect the caesuras, as if his version was written in Modern Anglish instead of translated from more ancient tongues. The eloquence of his rhythm never falters, like it’s his natural way of speaking, and I realize that
this
is his accent: not a lilt of regionalism or upbringing. Ned Unferth talks as if he’s always reciting poetry, even when telling me how many kilometers to Montreal or ordering me to remove my boots from the dash.

As the sun sets he dives into the final part, years after Beowulf defeated the trolls, when he goes as an old king to face the woken dragon. The rhythm of it shifts, not quite as eloquent, as if it were penned by a different poet. But my thoughts are all dragon fire and gold hoards, and though I have to pee, though my stomach reminds me it’s been hours since lunch, I wouldn’t interrupt him for even Odin’s sake.

He finishes the song quietly, not with the excitement or awe I’m use to but with a sour note, as if the hero Beowulf does not quite deserve his final praise.

We’re silent, and the lack of poetry is like a roar. I turn away, watching black Canadian forest pass by, ignoring any thought in my head as I cling to the poem, to the experience of it. If I do anything else, or look at him, I’ll stamp his name against my heart forever.

FOUR

UNFERTH’S BASE IS
an abandoned meadery outside the ruins of Montreal. There’s broken asphalt underfoot when we park, an hour past sunset, and Unferth surprises me by taking my hand to lead me through the darkness toward the black shadow of the building. I stop, though, to stare up at the brilliant stars. They’re thick as spilled salt in the freezing night, and without being told I recognize the Milk Path for the first time. A sliver moon hardly disrupts the glorious heavens, and I’m dizzy as I stare at it all, at the huge arc of sky, because there’s more stars than earth and for a moment I don’t think anything is real except those billions of tiny lights.

Unferth squeezes my fingers. “Here the mask of daylight stripped away,” he murmurs.

“What poem is that?”

“It isn’t one. Yet.” He smiles briefly so his teeth catch the moonlight.
Truth
shines silver beside his pupil. A star itself, caught there forever.

“Why do you always tell the truth?” I ask.

His good mood breaks, and he lets go of my hand.

I press on. “Is it to build trust? To make me trust you?”

Though only the stars are watching us, he backs away from me and murmurs, “Perhaps you shouldn’t, little raven.” He walks swiftly away, limping toward the abandoned meadery and the doors leaning off their hinges.

The danger implied by his answer makes me recall what the Alfather said to me:
fear and excitement belong in the same breath.

I hurry to follow him inside. There are no lights in the lobby, and dim moonlight presses its way through cracks in the roof to reveal a long counter and dusty old shelves where once bottles would’ve been displayed, and cups for a mead-tasting. My boots crack against broken glass, and even decades later a sour honey smell hangs in the air. It seeps into my hair like sticky smoke. I breathe deeply. The broken glass shimmers in the moonlight, and I decide this beauty in abandonment is a good sign in favor of this quest.

Twelve rickety stairs lead into the cellar, where Unferth keeps only a cot and sleeping bag, plus a short table and stools, tin coffee mugs stacked beside one, and a gas stove sitting in the middle of the floor.

Thick wooden beams hold up the plaster ceiling, and the floor laminate curls in the corners. An elaborate copper distillery covers the rear wall, where Unferth uses the pots and tubes to make some kind of street-shine. Smells like corn mash, which we’d have sold fingers to get ahold of in the Chicagland alleys. Three oak barrels tuck into the corner, one of them tapped with a thin spigot. We won’t be thirsty.

It’s warm, and behind a thin plywood door is a toilet and crudely rigged shower. I hang my coat on a nail and am moved in within minutes. All my possessions fit into the pockets of that coat: tightly rolled shirts and panties, toothbrush and hairpins, a comb, camping tools like fishing wire and matches, and a variety of oddities. Some notes and coins. Two slim books. While Unferth unloads his truck, I shower awkwardly and slip into the sleeping bag. I hear him clattering around but keep my eyes pressed shut. He doesn’t complain I stole his bed.

And good thing, too, because at dawn he knocks me out of it and stuffs me full of coffee and protein before dragging me up to the empty display room to assess my combat skills.

To my pleasure, I hold my own. I can box and have a strong front kick, I’m excellent with the seax, and I can run and climb trees and lift rocks as long as he likes, though my endurance turns out to be the only thing Unferth bothers to praise. He’s appalled I only know how to use a sword in combination with a round-shield, which a troll will break in seconds, and sneers at my hand-to-hand, says it’s built for speed and escape, not taking on an enemy of any stature. “You must be stronger to face the mountain trolls,” he says, “or use the right techniques to fake it.”

I’m so determined to prove him wrong that I gather bouquets of blisters on my palms from his heavy troll-spears. Unferth is a fast and cranky teacher, voice impatient when I don’t angle my hips correctly or shift my alignment to something more comfortable. He unceremoniously grabs my shoulders or slaps away a hand when he needs to, grunting with exasperation at my
fancy Valkyrie-style
footwork. It might look impressive on TV, he says, but it won’t hold for two breaths against an opponent with the bulk of a greater mountain troll. They use their fists like hammers and will rush forward, knocking anything out of their way. Running or climbing to higher ground is usually the right course, but in my case to kill one I have to learn to use physics in my favor.

He stomps the spear butt into the cold ground, secures it with the sole of his boot, and points the wicked blade up at forty-five degrees with a sharp war cry. I copy him, minus the cry, and he says, “No, little raven, no. Vocalize! Focus your energy and aggression with your voice—give the Alfather the wordless poetry of battle, scream for him, cry for him!”

Unferth provides workout clothes for me, and a sturdy hunting outfit. I try to hide my relief at fresh new clothes. It’s been weeks since I had anything not worn thin from rough hand-washing.

At night when I’m too exhausted to move, he breaks out a flask of his home-brew. He offers it to me, and I take too large a swallow, gasping and tearing up at the burn. “It’s called screech,” he says calmly, rubbing rough circles against my back as I hold on to my knees in an awkward crouch.

We feast on jerky and dried fruit, oatmeal we cook on the gas stove, or rehydrated stew and canned chili. As we nibble and drink, we flyt. It’s an elaborate game of back-and-forth riddles and insults, the more rhythmic and poetical the better. Unferth introduces myth and history into it right away, so we’re not insulting each other so much as creatively dragging Sanctus Grim’s parentage through the mud or making fun of Fafnir and Loki and Sigurd Dragonslayer or, more frequently than is fair, Thor Thunderer.

The game continues until I fall asleep in the middle of his triumphant verse, and we pick it back up in the morning. Between laps, between sparing matches, we keep up the back-and-forth, though he wins every time.

On the third afternoon he takes me out for tracking. He shows me how the forest should look, what’s normal as a baseline, before he starts pointing out deer paths and scat and frost-covered tracks. We spend little time with such signs, as trolls themselves are both exceedingly more obvious but nearly impossible to detect.

I’m to look for exposed rocks first of all, as trolls turn to stone under the sun and prefer to find natural stone where they’ll stand out less. A giant boulder in the middle of a field won’t keep any troll safe. When there’s no stone in sight, I should begin with water, since like all living things they have to drink, and soft earth holds footprints. If there’s a deep-enough river, a troll may even hide from the sun below the surface. The oldest may go hours without air. He’s heard of troll mothers pushing their already-calcified youngest sons into lakes and rivers to hide them from other trolls or Thor’s Army. Not this far north in the winter, he adds, because of the thick ice.