The Lost Sun (16 page)

Baldur crosses his arms, but not in resistance or anger; his hands cup his elbows as if he’s offering himself support. “In Astrid’s story, I was a man, and then Odin made me a god
by giving me the apple and holding me at his table. Now I am mortal and have no memory of sitting at the high seat. Even if I was once the god of light, can I still be so?”

The idea is like a cliff crumbling beneath my feet. I shake my head. “You have to be. But you know already it doesn’t matter to me so much what you say, that it’s in your actions if you’re a god. And yesterday, you fought me over that very thing. Your honor was at stake, and you proved it true. The essence of you is here. If you’re only a man, you’re a good one, and I will still help you get to the end of this.” It’s the most I’ve said to him in one go, and I hope that proves to him I mean it.

He looks east toward the dawn. I would have to wince away from the sun, but he stares full on. That his eyes are immune to the brightness should be evidence enough. “Thank you,” he says after a moment, and picks up the jogging again.

Three pensive laps later, Baldur asks, “What sort of god am I?”

How I wish he would ask Astrid these things. I continue at the same pace and say, “Warm and bright. A warrior. Everyone loves you, and although you have a reputation for loving back a little bit, erm, too much, few fault you for it.”

“Too much?”

I twist my lips, not wanting to be blunt. But there’s no helping it. “You fall in love with a different woman pretty much every year. Sometimes more than one.”

“Oh.”

The tone makes me glance at him, and he’s wearing a
bemused smile. I roll my eyes. “See, you do remember.” And I remember how Astrid watches him.
It won’t happen to her
.

“Not really. Though … it always ends badly, doesn’t it?”

“They have an exclusive support group, I hear.”

Baldur laughs, and I find myself laughing a little with him. Not because it’s funny, but because of all people, it’s me explaining to Baldur what his love life is like.

We jog on, and I think about the kind of god Baldur is. A lover and a strong fighter, outwardly, but his rebirth in the spring is our most beloved celebration. The moment all of New Asgard waits and breathes together. As I lead us back toward the far corner of the lot for a spar, I admit, “You’re hope, Baldur. That’s what you are.”

He has nothing to say to that, except he cannot meet my eyes.

To soothe us out of the serious conversation, I offer to teach Baldur a few sets of partnered yoga. For a beginner, he’s well balanced, good at finding the energy flow. I shouldn’t be surprised. In return, he shows me something he says he thinks must be his favorite boxing warm-up. “It feels like a favorite” is what he says. My training hasn’t included much hand-to-hand, since berserkers in general don’t have to worry about being disarmed. Odin’s way does not include fisticuffs.

I relax into his instruction, finding myself enjoying the pattern of back-and-forth. It’s been too long since I’ve relaxed as I exercised. I know not to go at him with full strength now, because I can’t risk hurting him, but even just as men we’re well matched.

Astrid arrives to watch. Clean and changed into a pleated skirt and violet sweater, she leans against the hood of the Spark. Her hair is combed straight back into a thicket of curls at her neck.

I am so distracted by her sudden appearance, Baldur slams through a punch I should have easily stopped. It lands against my bruised ribs and I double over. “Soren!” he says, shocked, and grips my elbow.

“I’m all right.” I wave him away. “Maybe more sore than I thought. I should have stretched more.”

Baldur is frowning at me in confusion. “I’m sorry.”

“No, no. We should get going anyway.”

Astrid is beside us. She touches my ribs, right over the bruise, then pulls away sharply. Ignoring me, she asks Baldur, “Did he tell you we have no idea where to go?”

“No.” Baldur glances at me. “He said you did know where.”

“I meant,” I say, to Astrid as much as to Baldur, “that we know we have to take you to Idun’s apple orchard, where you can eat one of the apples of immortality. But we don’t know where it is or how to get there.”

“Ah.” His expression brightens and he puts one hand on her shoulder and the other on mine. “So it’s both things.”

Leaning closer to him, Astrid says softly, “We have a more immediate problem, however.”

I spin in a circle, searching for trouble. The highway is quiet, the sky clear, and there’s nothing in sight but a few cars. Even the gas stop is dark.

Astrid says, “We have no money. Just enough for some more gas. I don’t want to ask my uncle to wire more, because it
matters now that we aren’t tracked easily. The front page of the newspaper in the lobby said an old woman was killed in Mishigam yesterday because her neighbors decided she was hiding something about Baldur.”

I crouch, balancing with my fingers splayed and barely skimming the asphalt. It makes me feel less like I’ll fall over. “And they closed the gate to Bright Home because a man killed himself there,” I add.

“My god,” Baldur says, horrified. He doesn’t even know about the trolls.

Astrid touches his arm. “It’s bad, but not your fault,” she says. “The way to fix it is to get you home.”

Baldur hisses through his teeth.

From the ground, I say, “I don’t have money. All my father’s went to his victims, and I have a state trust that pays for school. I can’t touch it.”

Baldur and Astrid stand so close their shadows are one thin blur reaching toward me. He asks, “Do I have marketable skills?” It makes me laugh. Just once, and with little humor. Baldur shouldn’t need money. But we do.

Fortunately, Astrid has an idea. “We only need to find a market or festival site where I can perform a seething. A few hours, and we’ll have enough to last a couple of days.”

I raise my head. The sun glares just over their shoulders, a brilliant silver light between Astrid’s head and Baldur’s, turning them into dark silhouettes.

Baldur and I shower and pack, then we’re on the road with empty bellies and the half-f bottle of mead left over from Astrid’s dinner.

We head north, edging along the red-and-gray foothills of the Rock Mountains, which stretch from the center of the USA into the Canadia Territories and Trollhome. Astrid remembers traveling between Bright Home and the great Dragon Geyser in Montania, and that there were plentiful campgrounds and trading posts. We’re bound to come across a likely venue sooner rather than later. I only hope people are calm enough to admit us.

The sun shines through white clouds that billow tall like a separate range of sky mountains. Astrid turns on the radio. We need to know what’s happening, and as the news reels off dire warnings about trolls, about angry people and desperate pilgrims, Baldur grows paler in the backseat. He scoots to the passenger side, where there’s a hint of sun coming through the window, and presses his forehead to the glass.

The news hour ends on an upbeat, though, with a story of a girl in Philadelphia who climbed high into the New World Tree in order to tie a prayer card in among the bare branches. People saw her and reached in through the iron fence to hand her their own prayers, tied with ribbons and bells, which this girl then took with her back into the tree. For two days she’s been papering the tree with colorful prayers, and the reporter says it has made the New World Tree blossom with hope.

Signs for Ashdown Fairground begin to appear before we cross into Cheyenne, but it’s almost two hours before the flat
grassland curves toward foothills again. The highway’s not crowded, thanks to the troll warnings no doubt, and most people are going south, against us.

To distract Baldur from his dark thoughts, Astrid climbs into the back with him and begins telling him the story of how Freya agreed to teach Odin her magic only if he lived a mortal life as a woman for seven years. She mentions her mother, and Baldur interrupts to ask, “Where are your parents?”

She tucks a curl behind her ear. I struggle to keep my eyes on the road and not constantly stare at her reflection. “My father I never met,” she admits, “though Mom made up stories about him whenever I asked. I’m not certain she knew his name, or his family. They spent a Yule night together, and she told me Freya herself arranged it, under the sacrificial banners, to enjoy the feasting and dancing, and to bring me into the world. Then my mother disappeared one night, Baldur, and no one has seen her since. They believe she’s dead; everyone does. But I’ll find her again someday, when fate allows.”

“When fate allows,” he repeats, making it more true. After a pause he says, “And you, Soren? Your parents?”

“Father dead. Mother … gone.” I don’t elaborate, and neither pushes.

We’re nearly to a town called Laramie when the Ashdown turnoff beckons with its cracked sign. Someone has erected a temporary plastic arrow declaring the Half-Serpent Trading Company is in town for the semiannual bazaar.

A haze of dust billows behind us as I veer off onto the poorly kept county highway. Baldur leans forward, his arms
hanging over the passenger seat. Through the windshield all we see is scrub and the wide-open sky, with snowy peaks far in the distance, until suddenly the ground drops away and we’re curving down into a pocket valley full of color.

Cars loll in the bright sunlight like painted lizards, sprawling haphazardly in a field of crushed grass. Beyond is a gathering of trailers and tall tents, ringing a central open space that’s been filled with booths and blankets. Surrounding it all is a high loop of green cloth, strung on poles and fluttering in the wind. It’s representative of the World Snake, and this is a caravan of Lokiskin.

I slow the car and stop in the middle of the road.

“What’s wrong?” Astrid asks.

“I haven’t been inside a caravan like this in a long time.” I stare down at the flapping green circle, pushing back memories of my mom, of long nights surrounded by firelight, drums, laughter, the sweet smell of leaf sticking to my clothes.

“You lived with a caravan?” Her voice is dry with shock.

“For a few months after my father died.” I glance at Baldur, the only person in the country who doesn’t know anything about Styrr Bearskin. He’s watching me with those sky-mirror eyes. I wonder what will happen to them when it rains.

He puts a hand on my shoulder. “I’ll wait in the car with you.”

“No.” I grip the steering wheel and touch the gas. Astrid needs me to catch her when she dances. “I’ll be fine. They’re just memories.”

It’s only ten in the morning, but already the bazaar is
running at full strength. I pull the Spark into a crooked line of parked cars and Astrid says, “I’ll need to find the matria and make sure we can set down.”

“Don’t promise her more than ten percent,” I say, handing her the key before climbing out.

I strap my father’s sword across my back and untie my spear from the roof. Though they’re incongruent with my jeans and T-shirt, I’m not willing to leave anything valuable in the car. Besides, there are likely to be plenty of armed Lokiskin, and I have a god to protect.

Astrid hands Baldur a pair of gray-tinted sunglasses she bought with our gas, and tells him to keep them on. “It’s your eyes that really give you away,” she says softly, her fingers brushing the back of his hand.

“We’ll scout a decent spot.” I take Baldur’s elbow and steer him off.

“I need at least three circle meters,” she calls after.

Together Baldur and I explore the bazaar. The Half-Serpent Trading Company sells everything from clothing to woven baskets, dipped cinnamon fruit, and used auto parts. Women, and men dressed as women, call out to us, offering deals for steel-polishing cloth for my sword and a new sweatshirt for Baldur. After we have money, we might need to take the girl up on that last offer. Mountain air is cold in spring, and Baldur, without immortality, is as subject to the cold as the rest of us. They all want us to buy food, and my stomach is in perfect agreement. Baldur leans over a table of carved idols, caressing the soapstone ravens and pigs and cats, and the woman selling
them flirts with him until he laughs. It’s such a bright sound, and the sun flashes suddenly from behind the clouds. Her eyes widen and she hushes. I guide him away before her suspicions take root.

The noise of tin whistles and twanging six-string banjos, smells of sandalwood and sharp cheese, all the colors and yelling and good-natured bargaining are both familiar and overwhelming to me, reminding me of times I’ve left long behind. It clutters my head, and the press of people makes my fingers twitch to close around the handle of my sword or grip my spear defensively instead of holding it loose as a walking staff. My shoulders tighten, and I can’t settle my eyes from the hectic way they dart everywhere. I focus on my breath, on finding a location for Astrid to seeth. Baldur appears content to walk at my side, drinking it all in without touching.

The only thing I’m grateful for is that the Lokiskin seem to be less paranoid and desperate than the rest of the world. Maybe they assume, despite his alibi, that Loki stole Baldur, and so they have little to worry about. It wouldn’t surprise me.