The Lost Sun (24 page)

“So they say,” whispers Baldur.

“Do you remember the way?” I lean eagerly toward him.
This would be so much easier if he suddenly knew how to find Idun.

His eyes close tightly and he shakes his head. “No. No, as I think on it, I see flashes of a face, of a woman with dark hair and dark eyes offering me a small golden apple in her palms. But the leaves obscure the sky and sun, so I can’t tell where on earth she is.”

Releasing a handful of grass, Astrid says, “They also say Idun has her own war band.”

“Berserkers,” Baldur adds excitedly. “I remember that! Idun’s Bears, they’re called.”

“Great.” I try not to glower.

She touches my knee again. And I remember something.

I’m sitting with my mother in the middle of a room covered in Legos. We’ve spent the entire morning building a Rainbow Bridge, and I’m excited because the Well of Mimir came with a special roundish Lego that attaches to the bottom of the well to look like Odin’s Eye. The bridge spans two feet of dingy white carpet, an old grape juice stain acting as the clouds beneath it. Mom laughs as I reach my whole hand into the delicate well to push the eye into place. My hand is nearly too large, but I carefully withdraw it, then clap happily. She grabs me and drags me onto her lap and puts her chin on top of my head. One arm wraps tightly around me and the other reaches out for a ziplock bag filled with green and blue Legos. “This one is a serpent,” she says. I touch her wrist, where the gray-and-green tattoo of the World Snake twists, nearly invisible against her dark skin. “Like this?” I ask. Her nod is soft against my hair. I say I want
to wait for Dad. Mom kisses my temple with a smack. “I am always waiting for your daddy!”

Something about her tone makes me uncomfortable, and I squirm until she lets me go. I stand, which makes me taller than her because she’s still seated, smiling up at me. In her nose and eyebrows are gold hoops that she told me she had to take out when I was a baby because I always wanted to tug. I still want to touch them, but don’t. Mom holds out her hands, palms up. She wants me to put my palms against hers so we know we aren’t mad at each other. She says, “I don’t mind waiting, little bear. Your daddy gave up everything to follow me. He gave up an oath to a lady far greater than me, and a promise to his brothers. For me and for you, Soren.” She wiggles her fingers playfully. I put my hands against hers, and she says, “We’ll wait as long as we have to.”

I stare down now at Astrid’s fingers on my knee. “My father,” I whisper, just as Astrid says, “Always the bear.”

His last words to me, when he gave me the sword.

“Huh?” says Vider.

“I think …” I meet Astrid’s wide eyes. If I hadn’t told her that story this morning, I never would have let myself remember. “What if my father was one of Idun’s Bears? That’s why I’m supposed to know where the orchard is.”

Vider asks where he is, and when I say he’s dead, she flushes but offers condolences. I cannot remember the last time anyone told me they were sorry he passed into Hel.

“What about your mother?” Baldur says. “Can you call her?” The sun turns his eyes to gold.

I look down into my lap. “I haven’t seen her in five years.”

Astrid takes my hand. But I don’t deserve her sympathy. I give her a sideways glance. “I never looked for her, Astrid. I never tried. I didn’t care to, and I still don’t.”

“Why?” In Astrid’s voice are all the years she’s spent hunting for her mother.

“She doesn’t want me. I remind her of him.”

“She said that to you?” Baldur is aghast, and perhaps if I were still twelve and wanting her love, it would be endearing.

“No. But I know. She was arrested after I was tattooed, and charged with criminal negligence for not getting me training, for putting the public at risk. She was guilty, but she requested a holmgang trial, saying if she was good enough to win, she could have been teaching me herself. She did win, so the charges were dropped. I saw her for the last time at the trial. And after, she never came to collect me. I went into state protection, ended up at Sanctus Sigurd’s with Master Pirro.”

Baldur frowns at me. “It is too long to go without speaking. We owe our parents honor, at least.”

I want to argue that he has left his mother, Tova, rotting in Hel since Loki tricked her into drinking poison. But right now I care more about what Astrid thinks of me. Her hand remains on my knee, gripping tightly. I hesitantly look at her face. I expect disappointment, expect her eyes to be filled with recrimination because all she wants in this world is to find her mother.

Instead she’s staring beyond me. Twisting, I see what she’s
looking at. Father’s sword. The sheath is a long black bone half-hidden in the grass beside the creek.

Father
.

The thought latches onto my heart and suddenly I’m terrified, but Astrid digs her fingers into my knee and I snap my eyes to hers. They’re wide, the color matching the late-winter grasslands.

“What?” Vider asks.

My eyes are only for Astrid, because I suspect what she’s thinking: on Baldur’s Night, when she danced and I anchored her in this world, she said if her mother was truly dead, she’d be easy to find.
I could summon her spirit then, as I could summon your father
.

I shudder at the very idea.

Baldur says, “Soren?” But I’m stuck thinking of Styrr. Of my father.

I see him with blood splattered across his face, kneeling before me and offering his sword. He touches my face with fire-hot hands, then gets to his feet and faces the line of police.

My father. Swinging me onto his shoulders, where I sit clinging to his hair as he charges across a stoneball court. I laugh as his jarring gait bounces me hard against him.

My father. Screaming the Berserker’s Prayer, running under garish mall lights and the Hallowblot streamers.

My father. His lips against Mom’s hair.

My father.

How can I face him again, even in death? How can I agree
to have him dragged to the Middle World, where he’ll be forced to remember? Where I’ll be forced to remember?

Astrid’s eyes are huge. Her lips part; she’s panting shallow, fearful breaths.

I whisper, “Astrid.”

“We can ask him,” she says.

Vider’s mouth falls open. My own dismay is reflected in the surprise coating her face. But Baldur waits beside her, golden in the sunlight. Calm, strong, and so vulnerable. For him, I cannot balk at difficult choices. Bad enough I’ve felt the frenzy and lost so much of my control. I will not fail him because of fear. I will not fail Astrid.

I clutch at both her hands. “Yes,” I say. “We can.”

FOURTEEN

IT ISN’T A ritual to perform in the daylight.

We have several hours to wait, and Astrid must use them to prepare her body and mind through meditation. I try to attend her, but she shoos me off and says I should rest. It will be the two of us alone, and she’ll need all my strength to anchor her.

“What kind of anchoring?” I ask. “Will it just be to catch you, like before? Do I need to prepare, too?”

She taps a finger against her lips, then her hand flutters away. “All sorts of things can go wrong with a resurrection ritual. I could summon the wrong spirit. Whatever spirit I summon could possess me, or decide to tear us apart if I’m not careful. Your father might come, but be caught up too much in his final memories, in which case …” Astrid shrugs.

“In which case he’d be in the middle of a full killing frenzy,” I say, stepping forward to loom over her. “Astrid.”

“Or …” She puts her hand on my chest to back me away. “
Or
I could manage to produce nothing at all. Or simply lose myself in the darkness beyond the stars.”

“I don’t like this at all.”

“It’s what we have.”

“I should try calling my mom on the phone instead.”

“You said you don’t even know where to begin with that. It could take days to reach her.”

“But it’s better than risking so much. This is insane!” I fling out my hands.

Astrid catches them and pulls them together. “I can do this, Soren. I only need to prepare, and I need you to help me. We can do this together.”

I hunt for the truth in her eyes.

“I promise,” she says, placing her fingers very gently over my tattoo.

What would it take for me to say no to her?

“I’m strong, Soren, and you know it. Especially with you at my side. My mother did this three times, and always with success.”

My sigh is consent enough, and Astrid takes her seething kit south along the creek. I stare after her, nerves pulling me tight, until she is only a tiny figure against the grass.

Baldur comes up behind me. “I want to get closer to the sky.” He’s feeling alert, but his blood is running slowly, he says, and perhaps the sun will lend him vitality. He eyes the partially collapsed roof of the barn.

I frown, following his gaze. There’s a patch of roof that appears solid from here, but I don’t trust it. Before I can say so, Vider dashes inside. We follow to find her scaling the inner wall up to the hayloft. She discards Astrid’s cardigan,
and it falls softly all the way to the floor. “Vider, be careful,” I call up.

“Don’t distract me!” Her fingers grip a dark board and she lifts herself easily as a spider. She isn’t even watching her feet, and her toes seem to stick to the wood. By the time she reaches the jagged hole in the roof, I’m half-convinced I could do it.

With perfect balance, Vider crawls to the edge. She crouches on hands and feet, then slowly rises. Her arms splay out and the wind catches the loose tendrils of her hair. She is all silver and green in the sunlight, skinny and graceful as an egret. In a few quick steps, she’s around the gaping hole and standing directly over us, where a heavy crossbeam holds up the rest of the roof.

Bending over to wave down at us, she says, “I think this is sturdy.” To prove her point, she jumps up and lands hard on the flat of her feet. The crossbeam doesn’t even shake.

“Excellent!” Baldur removes his sandals and T-shirt.

I touch his arm. “This isn’t a good idea.”

“I want to be close to the sun. And”—he dips his head to seem more earnest—“I’ll be careful. No tripping and ruining the mission, I promise.” His eyes shine and I know I’d have to pin him to the ground for the rest of the day to convince him not to climb up there with Vider.

With a sigh, I release him. Briefly I consider climbing up, too, but I weigh more than both, and what would I do on the roof?

Instead I go outside again, where the grassland meets the creek, and do what I do best. Especially in a stressful situation.

I let myself fall into the empty place where I’m not thinking or feeling, only moving with the beat of my heart. My hands are shovels, scooping energy from the world, moving it up through my torso, over my head, around and around in a calm sphere. I dance my slow dance, allowing the chip of chaos to churn and crunch in my chest. I move where the energy wills, where my body naturally shifts from step to step.

It’s easier, for some reason, than it has been before, to move the hot frenzy.

I’ve lost all thought of time, my senses are open and my body’s energies aligned, when Vider comes hesitantly toward me.

She knows not to leap into my path or startle me, and keeps back a few meters. I’m glad she’s here; I want to talk to her about why she’s afraid of Fenris. Most Lokiskin don’t know the gods any more personally than I know Odin.

Letting out a long breath, I settle into a solid stance and look at her.

All her pale hair falls around her shoulders and she watches me with hunger sparking her green eyes. There is a new, long pink scratch down her left forearm, and dust marring her cheeks. She says, “Soren, there’s something I think you should see.”

My eyes dart toward the roof, and she hurries to assure me. “Baldur’s fine. Basking.”

And I see the glint of gold where he lies splayed against the dingy white roof. “What’s wrong, then?” I ask Vider.

“This way.” She flicks her hand at me to follow, and leads me around toward the north face of the barn. Here in the lee,
the paint is less bleached, less worn away. I can see the red it used to be.

The day is warming nicely, so that in the moments between one breeze and the next I feel the presence of spring. Vider crouches against the barn, where scraggly bushes clump together. She points at the dusty ground. I bend down with her and see that there are paw prints clustered. Small, and without claw marks. “Barn cats?” I say, glancing at Vider.

She’s got her elbows resting on her knees in a very childlike pose, and frowns down at the prints. “That’s what I thought at first. But look.”

We walk ten feet north, through grass that scratches at my jeans. The paw prints fade, but the last two are definitely aimed in this direction. Vider pauses beside two stones, one knee height and the other just shorter, both of them huddled together as though seeking comfort. They’re taller than they are wide, and oblong.

I turn a full circle, scanning the ground. No other rocks like these near. It isn’t rocky ground at all, but rolling grassland. When my eyes hit again on the huddled stones, my stomach sinks.