The Apple Throne (6 page)

My anger is draining away, leaving only sick dread in its place.

It was this necklace that set me off the last time he was here, when his stories put that ache in my heart, that longing for the life he leads. I stood up from the chair where he held me in his lap. I poured water to hide my sadness, and Soren used the opportunity to go for his small backpack, which had been slumped on the floor at the foot of the bed. He dug through it and pulled out an elegant red box, tied with a bow.

“Here,” he said, offering it casually.

We never gave each other gifts; it seemed too prone to heartache.

Inside the box was a necklace of black horn beads carved into apples and pomegranates and rosebuds. I nearly dropped it from panic and sharp love. It was perfect. Beautiful. It would be as familiar as my mother’s black pearls, tucked away in the Idun history box, but new and from
him
. A constant, always reminder of what I didn’t have.

Soren lifted it out and fumbled a little with the clasp. I turned away, shaking my head.

“Astrid?” he called softly.

Staring out the window at the apple trees, I said, “Maybe you should stop coming here.”

There was only silence behind me, but the temperature of the room rose one-two-three degrees. The clocks and pocket watches hanging from the rafters ticked out their disordered, off-key conversation. Finally, I looked back.

Soren hadn’t moved. One end of the necklace fell so it dripped like black tears from his hand. He stared at me. His chin angled down, but otherwise, my Soren was a statue. I stared, wanting to suck in every detail of him, from the perfect tilt of his eyes, to the shallow valley where his neck and shoulders met. The spear tattoo he’d spent so much time hating, the colorful apple tree tattooed in my honor on his right forearm.

“Why would you say that?” he asked, sounding lost.

I thought what a beast I was for hurting him and hesitated. “I…want you to be happy, and you have so many friends, so many adventures, but you drop it all every three months to come here.”

“I chose this as much as you did, and I want to be here, as much as I can be.”

“As much as you
can be
,” I cried. “I resent the time you’re gone, Soren! It ruins the peace of this place. This balance I achieve alone with the orchard and the gods. You show up here and it’s wonderful, but then you’re gone again, and it taints everything for days! I don’t remember how to be Idun when I miss you so much, but there is no Astrid anymore. I don’t know who I am.”

He put one hand—the hand with the necklace—flat to his chest where the frenzy lives, pressing as if he could hold it back. “Do you still love me?” he murmured.

I reeled away.

He waited with lowered brows and that martyred,
I can take it,
look in his hard brown eyes. “If you don’t want me, Astrid, I won’t come.”

I thought,
And what would I do if he stopped coming?
Would I fade into Idun, the faceless lady of youth, the always-dying shell of a goddess? Could I live in contentment as a friend to the gods? Would it be worth it? Worth losing him and the way I feel with him? I couldn’t imagine it.

He started to turn away, and I flung myself at him. “I love you more than anything,” I said.

“And I love you,” he said, voice wavering, “because I know
that’s
not true. I figured it out forever ago: you love the world and the gods, and all you’ve ever wanted was to serve them, serve the world. You’re doing that here. It’s just…different than we expected.”

I kissed him because he was half-wrong. I love
everything
about him, even his slow-moving uncertainty, for when he does decide on a course, nothing can drive him off it. When he chooses, he chooses completely. I’ve never had that. He finds one right path and never falters. I’ve always been plagued by multiple roads, by either-ors and possibilities. It’s the core of my trouble now: confusion and this mess of a situation, letting myself be pulled and pushed, forgetting who I’m supposed to be depending on who’s beside me. It isn’t Soren’s fault I’m torn in so many directions.

He picked me up and carried me back to the chair, sitting with me cradled in his lap. “I’m sorry,” I said against his face. “I don’t want you to leave and never come back.”

“I know.”

“It’s only so hard.”

“I know. Or rather, I don’t know. I don’t know how you manage it, Astrid.”

“You help me. You’re my mountain, Soren, my anchor, even if I no longer fly into the sky with my dreams.”

“You’re in
my
dreams sometimes,” he said tentatively. I smiled, and then I laughed. I molded myself against him, laughter against his collar and chest.

“I’m glad to hear it,” I said. He kissed my hair as I ran my fingers down his arm to the necklace still in his hand. “This is beautiful.”

“It made me think of your old life, and this new one, too. A necklace for who you are now.”

I lifted the mass of my dark curls and let him hook it around my throat. Freya told me I had to be Idun, that the girl I’d been was lost. But Soren believes my past is part of my present. That I can be many things. I want it to be true.

I put the necklace on again now and walk outside to wait as the horn beads warm to my flesh.

Purple evening darkens the cords of the wizened old apple tree.

Something is infinitely, impossibly wrong.

It’s the night after the Yule sacrifice, three months and one day since I’ve seen Soren Bearstar, the Sun’s Berserk.

And he is not here.

I
’m leaving the orchard.

The knowledge hits swift and cold, like the hand of fate knocking on my skull.

All other options are too full of uncertainty. Freya won’t help; she barely tolerates my association with Soren as it is. If I ask her to tell me where Soren is, she’ll likely say I must stop picking at the wound. And once I’ve asked, I’ll never be able to leave on my own because she’ll expect it. The same goes for any other of the gods. They won’t let me leave the orchard because it’s my spark, my presence that completes the spell, keeps the apples thriving. Even Lofn, sympathetic to the unique plight of my love life, wouldn’t go against Freya.

It’s possible I could get a hold of one of Soren’s mortal friends with the phone in the Bears’ office. But I cannot shake this cold feeling something terrible is wrong, and what if they know nothing? Would I just return here to wait? I’ll reach out to them, but
after
I leave this orchard.

I could call Loki on the cell phone he gave me because he
owes
me for that last nasty trick of his, but his favor can’t be wasted. I might need him more after I find out what’s happened to Soren.

Anything could have happened.

Trolls. Holmgang. A car accident. Sweet swans, any of the adventures he’s gotten up to in the past two years might’ve killed him. Soren will always throw himself into danger for others.

He’s out there, outside the orchard. Injured, hurting, dead.

You might die, and I wouldn’t know for weeks until you didn’t arrive on our day.

I have to find him.

Always before, I’ve left the orchard with a god or the disir, flying on the rainbow winds. But for my own way now, I’ll have to leave as I arrived almost two years ago. Through the iron gate, through the valley and Bears.

I rush inside for my coat. It’s the white bearskin coat Skathi the goddess of winter gave me, with a flared hem and large pockets. I find my tall boots, the ones that are soft and fitted up my leg that I can walk a thousand miles in. I put on the rings various gods have given me and two silver and gold arm cuffs in case I need to trade, as I have no money.

Neither do I have ID, and into the pockets of my coat go that cell phone Loki Changer gave me, which only calls his number; thick gloves; two of the valley-finding charms; and the large iron key to the orchard gates.

For a moment, I long for my destroyed seething kit, to strap it across my back like a sword.

I return outside to the apple tree. In the darkness, these apples of immortality are deflated marbles. I kneel, touching bare hands against the sandpapery trunk. I truly have no idea how long it can last without me. A few days or a week, I expect, before the magic begins to fade. It lasted years with only my mother, a shadow of an Idun, only half-here. Surely this tree can manage without me for a little while. Freya will find me before it withers too far, of that I am certain. No matter what she chooses once she realizes I’ve abandoned my charge, she won’t risk the tree itself.

After the third time Loki tried to deceive me into giving him an extra apple, I angrily asked why he didn’t just walk up and snatch one himself. I could hardly stop him, powerless as I am.

He smiled a flirting smile and said I was hardly powerless, being so lovely and sharp. I did not smile. The god of orphans let his face melt into an ageless shape, line-free and bland as an ancient and worn marble statue. He said,
I am old, Idun of Youth. I am old and what makes life worth living are the rules and breaking them. It is a game, all of this. The only rule is: an apple freely given by a girl who will die.

They are my best—my only—currency.

“I will return, apple tree,” I murmur. “Don’t be lonely or afraid. I’m coming back to you when I finish this. Be strong for me.”

With that, I pluck three apples and drop them into my pocket.

The moon is bare sliver, a platter for the stars. It hangs over the western mountains, and I follow it, my boots crunching through the frosty grass. The nearer I come to the gate, the colder it is. My curls rustle like dry apple leaves.

There’s a space of three meters between the last line of trees and the iron fence. I cross it with my head high, my stride smooth. The Bears mustn’t know I’m desperate, mustn’t perceive danger, or they will lock down the valley looking for the cause. Slipping out then would be nearly impossible. I wish I could simply commandeer one of their trucks or make them drive me. They are Idun’s Bears, after all, and sworn to protect me and this valley. But I don’t know where exactly they draw the line between loyalty to me and loyalty to Odin Alfather, the god of the berserkers. It is possible by swearing to protect me, they’ve sworn to keep me here against my will, and I would not know until I ordered otherwise.

The iron bars burn my fingers with the cold, and I look out at the dark valley.

The feast hall of Idun’s Bears is alight, but the gym, hanger, and barn all rest shadowed for the night. I hear a low bass tempo and wonder if they’re still celebrating Yule twenty-four hours later. It would be like berserkers to go all out for the Alfather’s holiday.

“My lady?”

A figure emerges from my right, black uniform like gathered shadows. It’s Justice, one of the youngest new Bears. Most of the previous company were reassigned on my request after I burned my seething kit. Not because they remembered my mother, Idun before me; the magic is too strong for that. It’s because I must trust my Bears, or grow to trust them, and I’d watched too many of the former band stand by as their warleader threw a spear into Baldur the Beautiful’s chest, thinking he was Idun’s enemy.

“Justice,” I say.

He pushes dark hair behind his ear as he ducks his head. “Can I get the captain for you?”

“No.” I draw my key from my pocket, and Justice helps me pull the heavy gate open, avoiding my eyes deferentially. He’s taller than me by a full head, which is not unusual. As the gate swings silently closed, I touch his elbow and he freezes. He treats me like a god because he has no reason to believe I’m not.

But then again, what makes a god? Agelessness and immortality and power? Or only belief?

Justice has not moved a muscle. Belief is enough to make me Idun for him. I gently ask, “Are your brothers still carousing, Justice?”

In the moment he hesitates, I lean slightly into the warmth of his comforting frenzy. He says, “We’ve a visit from Amon Thorson, lady, who brings, ah, difficult to obtain items.”

I know the name—a bastard godling would be able to find the valley, even if he’s due no apple. “And you’ve watch tonight, so are missing out on his
items
.”

“I volunteered,” he says quickly.

“You disapprove?”

Justice’s nod is as quick as his answer.

“This Amon brings illegal things here? Not…not
women
.”

The berserker nearly leaps away from me. “No! Mostly he peddles holy items and takes requests for exotic food and drink. But he also carries, ah, bearbane.”

“
Bearbane!
” It’s an illegal drug that can instigate or drown the berserkers’ frenzy, depending on when and how they take it. “Surely
my
Bears are not partaking of such a thing!”

Justice sucks in a fast breath; obviously, they are. My heart rages suddenly, and I turn to march into the feasting hall and fire each and every one of them. But I stop. This I can deal with when I return. Soren is my priority now. And I can use Amon Thorson for a ride out of the valley.

I spin back. “Justice, I must go on an errand of great importance, and it is best if no one suspects my absence from the orchard. Can you do this?” I ready myself to run or steal his sword if he tries to call the alarm. He won’t let himself hurt me, and that will be my advantage.

The berserker opens his mouth, discomfort tightening his face. I interrupt, “I don’t expect you to lie. If asked, say what you’ve seen. I only wish that you leave it alone unless asked.”

He almost smiles. “Yes, lady. That will be easier.”

“If I haven’t returned…” I hesitate. Nine days is how long it took Soren and I to find and return Baldur to his home. “…in nine days, tell Captain Bersi to call the Alfather.”

“Do you—do you need me?” his voice heated.

How much simpler it would be to take him up on the offer. I reach up and touch his face, spreading my hand over the dark slash of tattoo. He flinches but holds firm. The pit of my stomach feels hollow. Justice is afraid of me, of Idun. He would obey me only until he decided his duty to me meant protecting me from myself.