The Lost Sun (29 page)

It isn’t a time to be informal. His voice and my name hum along my spine, setting the frenzy to spin. “My lord Baldur.”

His gaze does not falter. “What is the boon you would ask of my father?”

“That he strip the berserking power out of my chest,” I say quietly.

Baldur nods, and the heat of his gaze cools. “Thank you for telling me.”

He already guessed. He guessed because he’s known men for hundreds of years, and the knowledge of our motivations resides in his heart, if not in his memory.

My god of light continues: “When you’re no longer one of Odin’s crazy warriors, Soren, will you serve me instead?”

A rock drops into my stomach. “As a priest? One of your sun priests?”

Baldur laughs. “The sunburst tattoo wouldn’t work with your spear.”

I rub the tattoo with my thumb. Even if Odin can still remove the frenzy, I’ll always have this. “What would you have of me, then—how would I serve?”

“As my friend.”

Picturing Baldur as I’m used to seeing him—as a god with sparkling women and dashing men at his side, surfing in Baja California or dining at fancy clubs in Chicagland, always with a happy grin, often with sword in hand and occasionally covered in goblin gore—I find it impossible to think he wants for friends. But instead of wondering aloud or disagreeing, I calmly say, “Friends don’t serve. They just are.”

His smile turns sly. “You serve Astrid.”

I open my mouth to deny it, but can’t. Even now, with my father’s prophecy hanging between us, I won’t leave her side. When I lower my head in surrender, Baldur laughs again. “So, Bearskin, son of Styrr, that is what I want from you.”

“You won’t have to ask,” I promise, setting my loose fist against his knee. Baldur spreads his hand over my fist, but not before I see something uncertain, something slick and worried, pass through his storming eyes. “Baldur? What is it? What is it you’re afraid of? That we won’t get you to the orchard? That we’ll fail?”

“No,” he says firmly, gripping my hand. “I never doubt that.” Baldur leans forward and I see a curl of lightning in his left eye. “Nothing could stop you, Soren.”

I place my remaining hand over his, so that our hands are stacked in a solid pile, and try to ignore fear that thickens in my blood at his certainty.
The commit will break. She is not long for this world
. He doesn’t know what our success may cost us.

“Soren, I’m afraid of …” He’s whispering, and I hear the rush of a semitrailer barreling past, and then, beyond it, a far rumble of thunder. I wait, proud of him that he does not shut his eyes, that he holds close and confesses. “I am afraid that I will eat this apple and everything will change.”

“It won’t matter.” I tighten my fingers so they don’t shake while I reassure a god with what may very well be a lie. “I’ll still be your friend, and so will Astrid and Vider.”

I see the girls, as though summoned, exit through the glass doors carrying greasy bags and a twelve-pack of honey soda. Baldur sees them as well, and pushes up to his feet. He casts one look over his shoulder at me. “It’s possible, when my immortality and memories return me to my better self, that you won’t want to.”

I take over driving, because I’m in the mood to maneuver through a storm.

My instinct is to tell Astrid what Baldur said. To share the burden of it with her. He and Vider are playing a license plate game in the backseat, though Vider is winning by several letters because Baldur obviously doesn’t enjoy looking outside. His eyes are pale gray. The underside of the cloud sheet rolls in
bulbous waves, and the wind picks up from the northeast, batting at the side of the Spark.

As I drive under the grave clouds, I can’t shake Baldur’s fear. Yet the more I think on it, the more certain I am that we know his essential self. All that’s been torn away are the extraneous things. When the layers of Baldur the Beautiful are returned, we’ll still recognize him as ours.

Astrid turns on the radio, and Ardo Vassing is speaking, filling the space with his deep, scratchy voice. She says, “I met him once,” and twists the volume louder. He’s got an accent from the Gulf, thick and soothing. He leads a meditation before his wife starts a choir singing.

Exactly then the rain begins, splashing against the windshield all at once, blinding me. Astrid reaches across to turn on the spindly old wipers.

For half an hour, I drive through the spill. Then with a hard crack the world is lit with eerie light. Thunder and lightning so close together they must be on top of us.

“This is horrible,” mutters Baldur. I glance in the rearview, and he’s paler than usual. His eyes are heavy and black.

I have to watch the road, especially as the wind strengthens again and the car in front of me turns on its flashers. We’re crawling, but steady. Rain blurs everything and the wipers can’t keep up. More thunder, and lightning nearly blinds me.

Vider says, “Maybe we should pull over.”

“On the shoulder, we’d be a hazard to everybody. Better to keep in the slow line,” I answer.

Between cracks of thunder, the rain on the metal roof is
loud. Astrid flips off the radio, which I didn’t even notice was still on, and then she reaches across the gears to grip my knee. My whole body shivers, and I squeeze the wheel.

I won’t lose her. I can’t. Fate has always been a thing for me to fight. This tattoo on my cheek is a mark of possibility, and everything I’ve done has been to keep it from coming true. How can I fight any less hard for Astrid’s life?

The storm can rage around us, but I refuse to stop driving.

As the first break in the clouds beckons ahead and the rain fades to gentle but constant, Astrid tells us the story of how Thor Thunderer lost his hammer and Loki Serpent-Mother helped him get it back. Though we’ve all known the story since we were babies, as it’s a very popular one with kindergarten teachers and picture book writers, to Baldur it’s new again. By the time she comes to the part where Loki convinces Thor to dress up like the goddess Freya and go pretend to marry the giant Thrym, the last of the storm has vanished from Baldur’s eyes. Astrid’s impression of the stalwart god simpering for Thrym and attempting to behave as a lovesick wife has Vider in stitches, and even I find a smile when Astrid puts on a crackling voice for Loki to tease his thundering friend.

This is worth sacrifice, too, I realize. Not only Astrid and Baldur, but Vider as well and the easy laughter among the four of us.

I want to point it out to Baldur, that this is who he is, no
matter how memories may add layers and history onto him. This, right here, laughing with three friends, this is the meaning of the god of light.

Through the last drops of rain, I drive into the Washington kingstate.

Astrid takes over the wheel once we’re through Lilac, the last big city before the Cascades. We have about three hours to go, and the land around us shows no sign of mountains. It’s so flat and cut-down for farming that the sky overwhelms the horizon, stretching high overhead and all around. There’s more sky than land, and I have a disorienting sensation that the car is upside-down and any moment real gravity will kick back in and we’ll fall up off the road and into the deep sky.

Baldur says, only half joking, that he’d like to spend the remainder of the drive strapped to the roof where he can properly soak up the sun.

As we approach the mountains, whatever brief release of tension the end of the storm gave us begins to recede. We sit in silence but for the roar of wind from the open windows. Baldur has his arm dangling out into the sun, but his fingers are still.

Evergreen trees sprout up here and there, only to vanish again, giving us back to the vast, flat spread of grassland. There are only three colors: black highway, golden land, and blue sky.

We cut south and my ears begin to pop. It’s just after noon, and when we fill up the gas tank at the start of the foothills,
the attendant confirms we’re less than an hour out from Leavenworth.

Less than an hour away from the end.

At first the mountains just seem like piles of dirt, so worn with erosion, and so lacking in trees. There’s nothing but rock and round, tangled bushes. The highway follows a river for a while, and Baldur trades seats with Vider so he’s on that side, where he can watch the sun reflect against the water.

Slowly the mountains grow, and we see signs for Leavenworth. As we pass through a town so small it has no fast food, Astrid sucks in a sudden, hissing breath. She points ahead to a bright red sign:
APPLES AND CIDER, BY THE BUCKET OR JUG
.

It’s only the first.

Between us and Leavenworth are three dozen orchards. Apparently, apples are one of Washington’s most prized resources.

The frenzy churns in my chest like an ulcer.

Astrid’s knuckles are white on the wheel.

There are apples and orchards everywhere, and we have no idea how to find the one we’re looking for in all the hundreds of valleys and gorges the foothills create.

After a few moments of anxious conversation, we decide to drive to the middle of Leavenworth, find a quiet place, and Astrid will cast her bones.

When we do pull into town, I’m momentarily distracted from the ache of worry. It seems Leavenworth has fashioned
itself into a Bavarian village, complete with gingerbread trim on all the downtown buildings, cobblestones, dark wood balconies against whitewashed storefronts, and a handful of hotels and restaurants with names like Baron Haus and Die Ritterhof Motor Inn. Despite the cold mountain air and the fact that most of the trees haven’t even begun to show signs of budding, tourists are plentiful. We drive past a pub with a large hammer of Thor hanging over the door, and in a small manicured park there’s a gazebo sheltering a statue of his wife, Sif Longhair. It doesn’t surprise me that the Giant-Killer is so popular here. Mount Rainier, only two hundred kilometers southwest, has long been a trouble spot because of the goblins who enjoy the heat from the volcanoes and use the natural gases and steam to power their forges. My father used to tell me that it’s well known among berserk bands that the worst place to do battle is a volcano. Luta Bearsdottir, the only lady berserker of our century, died at the foot of Sanctus Elens, years before I was born. That was in the last elf uprising, when the volcano burst with the anger and power of battle, and they say Luta was skewered on a giant’s spear when heat and sulfur leached away her ability to frenzy.

“There’s a nice spot,” Vider says in a tight voice, drawing my attention back to the town. We’re passing another park, this one well covered with trees and perched on a rise that drops away toward a river.

I say to Astrid, “Why don’t you pull into that lot up there, and we’ll walk back around to the park.”

She doesn’t respond. I assume she’s only concentrating
on the traffic, on the pedestrians who seem more than willing to step into the street without the aid of crosswalks. But instead of signaling to turn into the lot I indicated, Astrid lets the Spark shoot past, heading out of the city and straight into the mountains.

“Astrid.”

Baldur leans up, too. “Astrid.”

Nothing. She stares ahead and her expression is relaxed. Her hands are now loose on the wheel.

I touch her arm and she blinks, but nothing else changes. “Astrid,” I say more sharply.

She frowns. “I know where to go.”

“How?” Vider whispers. Her head is just by mine, because she’s slid up to the edge of the back bench to grip my seat.

“I’ve seen this place, almost.”

“Almost?” I ask.

Astrid looks at me. Her sepia eyes are full of dreams. “Last night.”

I wait. We all wait as she steers us around a curve. “Every time I shut my eyes since the barn, I see them. Apples. And it isn’t like before, when I would dream of the orchard and thousands of apples stretching out. Of the Rainbow Bridge made of apple blossoms.” Astrid shakes her head. “This—this is closer.”

I don’t want to hear how this ends. I don’t want her to know where we are, to be called by this orchard. Even if it’s the only way to find it, it’s also evidence that her fate—all our fates—will end there.

“They’re surrounding me,” she says, barely audible over the engine. “I’m in the center of a wilderness of apple trees. Not well tended and manicured, but ancient trees with twisting branches and heavy old apples. The entire ground is littered with them.” Her hands twist around the steering wheel, creaking against the leather. “I can’t get out. I don’t know where you are, any of you, but you’re far away from me. I’m trapped and surrounded by them.”

Fear is a chip of ice cutting at my throat.

“Dreams,” Baldur says, “are sometimes all we have.”

We’re silent and still as Astrid drives us between two mountains.

There’s a solid rock wall to the right of the Spark, and silver-capped rapids just off the left shoulder. I can’t be sure, but it seems too rocky and cold here for apples to be plentiful. Then again, these are apples originally from Old Asgard, a world of harsher climes. Astrid hasn’t said anything for fifteen minutes as she weaves the car along the highway. I think of what she described, of a choking apple orchard and piles of dead fruit. I want to reach my foot over and hit the brake. Stop all of this from happening, as dread forms a thick shell around me.

“There will be a turnoff soon,” she says quietly.

We curve long, and I hear the rush of the rapids, and Astrid says, “There.”

She points ahead, to the right, but all I see is the steep slope
of the mountain. The trees are not thick enough to be hiding a road.

“There’s nothing there,” Vider says.

But despite our being alone on the highway, Astrid flips on the turn signal. The heavy clicking fills the car.

“There’s nothing there!” Vider says again, digging her fingers into Astrid’s shoulder.

“Yes,” she says. “There is.”

My entire body clenches and I feel the burn of frenzy under my heart. Baldur takes Vider’s hand.

The Spark slows. I do not close my eyes. Astrid turns the steering wheel and the bright orange nose of our car is three feet from the side of the mountain when the mountain vanishes.