Never (27 page)

Wendy felt her stomach sink as the large center room of Piotr's home coalesced into being around them—his sisters were all there, some spinning and weaving together a safe distance from the fire, the elder girls rubbing salt into flats of fresh-caught fish as Þrima and Róta, sitting together on the hearth, taught the tiny, red-haired toddler how to sort hewn wooden blocks into a basket. Eir alone was missing from the scene though Wendy could hear light, pleasant humming from a back room.

“They're all here,” Wendy whispered as Piotr's deaf sister passed through her on her way toward the back of the hearth room. Wendy closed her eyes, expecting that the touch of the girl would burn the same way the touch of the living did, but there was nothing, not even the faintest pressure.

“Save for my father, my uncle, and my cousin Yuri, yes, my entire family was in this house,” Piotr said. “They were taken by surprise.”

The drama had built so that Wendy expected Sanngriðr to fling open the door to the cottage. The polite knock and sudden silence that followed were startling. Wendy jumped in surprise.

In the stillness Róta rose and, carrying her toddler on her hip, opened the door.

Sanngriðr attacked.

Only Piotr's arm wrapped around Wendy's waist kept Wendy from trying to uselessly thrust herself between Róta and Sanngriðr.

Róta did her best to dodge the spear of Light that flicked forward and stabbed her through the gut—she was still holding her daughter, after all—but Sanngriðr had the element of surprise and, unlike Róta, Sanngriðr had no one to protect.

The sound came rushing back and with it the sharp, sudden scream as Róta hit the ground.

As one the sisters leapt up, some going for Sanngriðr and others fleeing toward the room in the back where the humming originated, shouting, “Momma! Momma!”

Sanngriðr's Light caught the runners first—a series of stabs and they lay twitching on the ground, blocking the doorway. Summoned by the noise, Eir came running from the back room but by time she reached the hearth room all her daughters were dying, bleeding sluggishly across the previously clean floors.

“Sanngriðr!” Eir spit, dropping to her knees beside her closest daughter and glaring at the Reaper. “What have you done?!”

Sanngriðr raised one eyebrow. “I should think it would be obvious, Eir. You were given three chances to bring your husband to Freyja's door. Instead you spread your legs and bore him children. Thankfully none were boys or you'd be in a true mess.”

“Freyja sent you? Freyja wanted you to do this?”

Sighing, Sanngriðr rolled her eyes. “No, sister. This was my doing alone. Now will you come? Your children are dead, and the wind whispers to me that your beloved farmer is dying in the woods. All that you love is on Death's door. Come with me now and guide them into the Light.”

Tears sliding down her cheeks, Eir licked her lips. “Borys is…no. NO! He's fine. He is far away from here. You're lying!”

“I don't need to,” Sanngriðr said simply, examining a spot of blood on her hand and wiping it off with a thumb. Frowning, she checked the hem of her cloak, relaxing visibly when it proved fresh and clean of blood. “One of his companions comes here now, running at top speed to fetch you.”

“No,” Róta said, pulling herself to a standing position using the doorway. “You will not—”

“You are wasting your last minutes alive rebuking me,” Sanngriðr said, “when you could be using them to try and soothe your dying daughter.”

Immediately Róta paled and dropped to her knees, crawling quickly toward the red-haired child, leaving a long, dripping trail on the floor behind her. Wendy ached for her—it was obvious that her little girl was probably not going to make it.

“I will destroy you,” Eir said, rising to her feet, the hem of her skirt dripping the blood of her daughters.

“Hardly,” Sanngriðr sighed. “Now that the distractions have been taken care of, come with me.”

The room blinked—went dark for a brief instant and then flashed back—as past-Piotr barreled through the door and slid on the pools of blood, going to a knee beside Róta's head. Piotr cracked his temple on the edge of the table falling down; a long, jagged gash welled open and began to drip down his face.

Eir and Sanngriðr were gone.

“What happened?” Piotr demanded, shaking Róta's shoulder. “Where's Momma? Róta? Róta?!”

“One of the Riders,” Wendy heard and she turned. There, in the far corner, Þrima sat, covered in blood from head to toe, her hand pressed against the gaping wound in her side. She was exhausted, pale and worn, blood dripping from the corner of her mouth but Þrima was somehow, miraculously, still alive. “The ladies whore like Momma.”

“The Reapers,” past-Piotr and Piotr both said simultaneously.
Piotr's face was wet with tears, his flesh was curdled-milk pale; the scar on his face stood out in stark, twisted relief. Wendy hugged him and he held her close, burying his face in her hair. She felt the drip of his tears as, beside them, his past self hugged Þrima and demanded details.

“I'm tired, Piotr,” Þrima whispered at last when she'd described the day. “I'm so tired.”

“I'll get help,” past-Piotr promised. “Just…just don't…”

Þrima took his hand in hers and edged over, resting her head in his lap, her fingers loosely grasping his clean left knee, leaving a small bloodied handprint clearly against the leather. “I wish Róta were here,” she said, eyes fluttering closed. “My head feels so heavy…I wish she could brush my hair. Róta is the only one who can always get the tangles…”

Þrima stilled, her breathing hitching once, twice…and no more.

Piotr yanked Wendy so close she could hardly draw breath. He shook in her embrace—heavy trembling that nearly knocked Wendy to her knees. She braced herself and held Piotr, saying nothing, only rubbing his back and letting him weep into her hair until the ends of her front curls hung lank and damp from the tears.

At long last, the shaking slowed. Piotr pulled from her arms, wiping the wetness away with a forearm. “My sisters were dead,” he said as his past self very carefully, very slowly, eased his littlest sister's head off his lap, resting her red curls in the clear spot on the floor where he'd sat.

“You took the cloak,” Wendy said. She could sense where the rest of this story was going.

“I fetched the cloak,” he agreed. “And the necklace. I put the cloak on—I was wet and cold and struck numb from the horrible moment—but I did not put on the necklace. I could not find Yuri. My mother was gone and when I asked for help in the village it was as if they couldn't see me. At the time I was too stupid from what I'd just witnessed to realize that the cloak was hiding me from them. All I knew was that it was time to return to my father and my uncle in the woods.”

Wendy swallowed thickly. “What happened next?”

Piotr smiled bitterly. “Watch.”

The walk from the homestead into the forest took longer than Wendy had imagined it might. Piotr's past-self trudged through thigh-high snow in places, the cloak the only thing keeping him warm, the blood dripping from the gash in his forehead down his face, staining the cloak even further. Birds silently lined the canopy
of trees above him; the air was filled with feathers and snow as he forced himself to keep going, to keep shoving on, until he could reach his father.

When Piotr reached the clearing where Kirill and Borys rested, Wendy wanted to rush forward and stop him. Kirill was clearly on edge, his hand trembling on his bow, an arrow already notched and ready to fly. Beside him Borys was white and feverish, pouring sweat and moaning. His leg was a ruin; she could spot the obliterated bone poking through his skin in several places.

The boar's powerful jaws had snapped his leg like kindling. Kirill had somehow managed to mostly dress the pigs by himself—they both hung by their heels from the trees he and Piotr had been resting in—but the blood beneath the bodies had long since stopped steaming and now puddled in a congealed mess.

“Kirill knew the blood-scent would attract predators, like wolves or bears, but meat was too precious to waste, especially in the dead of winter,” Piotr said beside her.

“He looks nervy,” Wendy said.

“I was a fool to approach him so close to the camp. The smart thing to do would have been to make noise long before I drew close, but I was so wrapped up in…everything, really…that I didn't see how crazed Kirill was.”

“You took off the cloak,” Wendy said as, before them, past-Piotr did just that. He'd hardly loosened the clasp at the throat, becoming only faintly visible, when Kirill screamed and let the arrow fly.

Past-Piotr jerked back as the scream ripped from his uncle's throat. The arrow, had it flown true, would have embedded itself in his face. Instead it furrowed a large gash across his cheekbone.

Kirill, still screaming, notched another arrow and let fly, then another, then another. Piotr, hunched over, took the second arrow from temple to jaw, the third in his right shoulder, driving him to the ground, and the fourth, due to his fall, missed him completely. It would have nailed directly into his heart.

“Oh Piotr,” Wendy whispered.

Piotr shook his head. “It gets worse.”

His body lay twitching on the ground, mostly covered by the cloak. The arrow in his shoulder had been shoved all the way through due to his fall and the arrowhead gleamed wetly, dripping on the back of the cloak; Kirill, scowling, set aside his quiver.

“You,” he whispered, glancing briefly over his shoulder at Borys, sleeping uneasily and breathing harshly beside him. “Always you, like your sisters in your feathered finery! Did they convince you to come home this time, to do your job right as you were supposed to in the woods that day? Borys is old now, yeah? Are his words no longer pretty enough to save him? Is it finally his time?”

Kirill spat on the ground. “I'm sorry, Eir. I can't let you take him.
This
time I will save him, the way he saved me. If I have to kill you myself, I will.”

Kirill drew the knife strapped to his leg and, moving slowly, approached Piotr's bloody body. The cloak twitched as Piotr struggled to rise to his hands and knees, the hood of the cloak hiding his face, blood dripping freely onto the snow beneath him.

“You don't have to watch this if you don't wish,” Piotr told Wendy. “It is not pretty.”

“I've hung on this long,” Wendy whispered through numb lips. Her heart was pounding in her chest, her gut twisting in horror and anticipation. Piotr pulled her closer; Wendy realized that he was prepared to grab her again.

Kirill kicked the body on the ground and stabbed down. Piotr, wounded, bleeding freely, pushed up, exposing his face in the last moment, startling Kirill into faltering. The knife slid down Piotr's cheek, flaying the side of his face from temple to jaw.

Piotr, expression twisting into a furious snarl, still had enough strength to grab his uncle's wrists and yank hard, jerking the knife and Kirill's wrists downward. Kirill's knife turned in his grip; Piotr surged forward and
shoved
.

The sound of the knife punching into his heart was first a sharp crack as Piotr broke Kirill's ribs, followed by a wet squish as the knife slid in.

Wendy closed her eyes but quickly forced herself to open them again. Piotr was asking her to act as witness; she didn't dare hide behind squeamishness now. “You killed him.”

“I killed him,” Piotr said as his past-self yanked the knife free and threw it to the snow. Kirill, hand pressed against his chest, shook his head. “My uncle would have killed my mother in an instant—had
planned
on killing her, in fact. I killed him first.”

“Piotr?” Kirill asked, wheezing. “You…you were not supposed to be…where…where is Eir? That cloak…the other bird-women wore…where is your mother, Piotr?”

“Dead, for all I know,” Piotr said, grabbing his uncle by the front of his leather vest. “But you would have killed her, Uncle. You would have hurt her, my mother, your married-sister, instead of me. Why, Uncle? Why?”

“Her death-sister, the one who rode the steed across the sky,” whispered Kirill, blood flecking his lips now. He hugged Piotr close and the blood poured from his chest, pulsing all over Piotr with every heartbeat until the entire cloak of feathers was sodden with blood.

“While I waited…for you, she came to me. She…she said that Eir would…come to take Borys, and that she would allow him to die because this was their way. She said that…he was…her responsibility. If Eir didn't…take him, he wouldn't…die only…suffer. She said Eir would…would wear her cloak of fine feathers…to get here faster…”

Piotr turned his face away and took the knife in his hand. “But I came instead.” He dropped Kirill and his uncle collapsed to the ground.

Wendy's stomach lurched. She turned her face away and realized that Piotr—her Piotr—was supporting her the same way he'd once supported his uncle, before allowing Kirill's dead weight to crumble to the snow.

“Do you love me so much now, knowing this?” Piotr asked quietly. He wouldn't look at her—he could not tear his gaze from his past-self who leaned down and cleaned his uncle's knife on the clean shoulder of Kirill's tunic. It was a colder gesture than Wendy would have expected out of him. “You think so highly of me but this is who I am. I am a blood-killer, Wendy. I am a murderer.”

Then, startling her, past-Piotr strode to a nearby tree, took a deep breath, and flung himself backward at the trunk. The arrow head caught; the shaft of the arrow shoved back through his body, punching a second hole in his shoulder. Piotr twisted, snapping off the arrowhead and then reached up.

“What are you doi—OH MY GOD,” Wendy cried, covering her eyes. She'd seen so much at this point—had hardly blinked as some of the foulest and most disgusting things had pawed all over her, had touched her with their rotten tongues and fingers and breathed their death-stench in her face—and yet it was the sight of Piotr, screaming as he yanked the arrow fletching first through the second hole that made her sick.

Wendy turned her face away and fought with her gorge.

“Wendy?” Piotr's arm curled around her shoulder. “Are you…how do you feel?”

She shook her head. Slowly her stomach settled. When she straightened, the world was white around them once more; Piotr's father and the woods were gone.

“Did he die?” Wendy asked.

“Yes,” Piotr said. “When I left that Kirill in that clearing, I never saw either of them again. I thought I would be right back but I was wrong.”

Wendy wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “What happened?” She then paused, examining past-Piotr closely. “That knife…” she dug in her pocket and came up with the dull blade that Lily had been wielding against Jane. “This knife…they're the same thing. This is the knife that killed your uncle.” She felt sick again.

“
Da
. It is. Drenched in the blood of a would-be kin-killer and wielded by a killer of kin. I put that knife away, just as you had, and I put my hand in my pocket,” Piotr said. “And there was the necklace. I remembered…I remembered promising Mother that I'd keep both the cloak and the necklace safe. But the cloak was in ruin, you see, so I was at a loss. I knew there was no way I could clean it properly so it would fly.”

“Did you put on the necklace?” Wendy asked. She put the knife away once more, hoping that she'd never have to look at it again. The thing creeped her out now.

Expression grim, Piotr nodded. “I was dying, though I didn't know it. I just thought I was uncomfortable—Kirill's arrow had damaged a few important nerves.” He touched the twisting scar on his cheek. “Mostly I was annoyed by my head wound. It bled a great deal.”

“I always wondered where you got that,” Wendy whispered. “Why didn't the other wounds leave a mark in the Never?”

Laughing, Piotr looked over her shoulder. Wendy turned as a large, bright field bloomed into being around them. The sun was bright, the air warm, and nameless, impossibly beautiful flowers bloomed underfoot. Just behind her a simple sling-backed chair sat in a clearing. All around were men and women—attractive, healthy, strong-armed, and stern-faced—went about their daily business. They were all armed.

Wendy blinked in surprise. “Wait…is this…is this  Valhalla?”

“Fólkvangr,” Piotr said as past-Piotr appeared a few feet away from them, stepping from nothing the way Eir had on the day she'd met Borys. “These are the host-fields, the waiting fields where Freyja's Valkyrie bring half the honorable dead and all the women who die a noble death.”

“All the women come here, huh?” Wendy raised an eyebrow. “Is it sexist that only half the warriors hang out amid the flowers, but all the ladies do?”

“Nobly-dead ladies,” Piotr corrected. “And I didn't create the worlds, Wendy, I only know of their existence.”

“So this is the Heaven I've been sending people to?” Wendy asked. “I guess this isn't so bad.”

“Heaven?
Net
, Wendy, you misunderstand me. Fólkvangr is not where the Light leads. No one knows that, not even Freyja. This is but one possible afterlife. Mother once told me that there were more paths from the Light than stars in the sky.”

“But isn't Freyja a god? Goddess? Whatever?”

“Even gods can die, Wendy,” Piotr murmured as a woman, slim and lovely and familiar, sprinted across the field and caught past-Piotr as he dropped to his knees amid the fragrant flowers. “Even goddesses can pass into the Light.”

“Momma,” he whispered as Eir caught him. “Momma, I found you…”

“Hush, Piotr,” Eir demanded, laying him on the ground in front of her. Hurrying, Eir yanked a long hair from her own head and a blade of grass from the earth. In her hand the grass became a needle, the hair a thread.

Eir set to work on Piotr's face, stitching up the gushing gash in seconds as two more women approached at a more leisurely pace. As they drew nearer, Wendy heard Piotr grumble beside her. The taller of the women was Sanngriðr.

The smaller woman, red-haired and lovely, clad in a plain white tunic and a simple silver hairband, settled herself in the sling-back chair a few feet away and politely waited for Eir to finish stitching Piotr's face.

“I see that you have brought Brísingamen back to me,” the woman said. Her voice was quiet and stern. “Though the cloak I made for you is worse for wear, Eir.”

Eir flinched. “I am sorry, my lady.”

“It stinks of living blood, Eir,” Sanngriðr sneered. “It is rife with it.”

“Sanngriðr is not wrong,” the smaller woman said and Wendy realized that this lady, barely more than a girl, must be Freyja. “Though she is crude and cruel.” Her voice lilted strangely and Wendy shivered. Freyja's voice was so familiar…

“My apologies, my lady,” Eir said.

“You should be sorry,” Sanngriðr snapped. “You've caused us nothing but trouble, Eir! And for what? The affection of some human male? I hope spreading your legs was worth it, because—”

Freyja slashed the air with one hand, cutting the fierce woman off. “Sanngriðr, enough!”

Eir smoothed hanks of Piotr's bloody hair off his temple and cheeks, her face hidden behind her long hair. Wendy saw three drops patter down on Piotr's cheeks—she looked up at the sky and noted that it was clear before Wendy realized that Eir was silently crying over her wounded son.

“Eir,” Freyja said, “we have not finished our conversation. You have not explained your actions.”

“There is nothing to explain, Lady,” snarled Sanngriðr. “Eir is a traitor! She allowed herself to become flesh…she not only gave birth to a
male
, but Eir did not bash his brains out when he slithered from her! Look at her cloak. Look at your precious golden Brísingamen! You granted her use of it so she could travel instantly to Miðgarðr and do your bidding quickly, and yet there it is, upon
the neck of her filthy son! He used it—
HE
used it—a living man…he came here, with his beating heart, flying on Reaper wings!”

“I know why I gave Eir my Brísingamen, Sanngriðr,” Freyja said and her tone was sharp and strange. “Stop speaking. Your voice is drilling in my temples.”

“My Lady—”

“Sanngriðr…
stop speaking
!”

Scowling, Sanngriðr fell silent, but her expression was as eloquent as her words wanted to be.

“Eir,” Freyja said, flicking a warning glance in Sanngriðr's direction, “insistent though she might be, Sanngriðr has a point. You have disobeyed me. Several times. And I would have to be blind to not see the resemblance between you and the boy lying there, to smell the scent of Reaper in his very blood mingled with the human stench—yet, again, Sanngriðr is not incorrect. He is alive. Dying, true, but his heart still beats.”

Freyja waited, but Eir did not defend herself. “Have you nothing to say for yourself, for him?”

“His name is Piotr,” Eir said, stroking his face. “He is my son—the only one, though I bore eight other children from the seed of the farmer you desired—and Piotr is the only of my nine babes still drawing breath. What else is there to say? I am a mother and I was meat and now I mourn, for Sanngriðr has killed every member of my family. Do with me what you will, Freyja, for I am already dead inside.”

“Sanngriðr, is this the truth?” Freyja straightened on her sling-back chair, her heels bracketing the legs of the makeshift throne, and plucked the silver band from her head. Freyja's long red hair tumbled over her shoulder, pooling in her lap; her fingers played with the ends.

“Of course it is,” Sanngriðr said, waving a hand dismissively at Eir and Piotr. “Eir said that she would not leave her family, Lady, so I made sure she would heed your call. I slaughtered them before their hearthfire to show Eir what it means to be a Reaper, what it means to disobey the word of the great Lady and our Reaper vows.”

“Oh Sanngriðr,” Eir sighed, shaking her head. “You utter fool.”

“Silence, human-whore!” Sanngriðr snarled, pulling back a leg to kick Eir. Sanngriðr had hardly begun to swing when Freyja, standing so fast Wendy couldn't follow the movement, strode forward and yanked Sanngriðr backwards, flinging her to the flowers beneath their feet.

“Sanngriðr,” Freyja said softly, dangerously, “
you
are the one who has forsaken your vows. Or have you forgotten them already?”

“What? I have done nothing of the sort!” Sanngriðr declared, rolling to her feet and wiping away the dirt smudging her tunic. “I have been true to you!”

“Reapers do not take life unbidden, Sanngriðr,” Eir said, still caressing Piotr's face, still crying quiet tears between her words. “A life that ends before its time is energy, Light, wasted. Only when the soul is at the end of its days, only when the book of its days is about to close, may we step forward and collect it. Only then, if their flesh is stubborn, may we help cut them from the coil, slicing away the caul of their flesh. Only then.”

“I didn't collect their souls, stupid Eir,” Sanngriðr sneered. “I left their spirits in their flesh to rot.”

Eir jerked, rocking back on her heels and letting out a great, long moan, nearly a howl of pain. She flung herself forward over Piotr's body, sobbing uncontrollably.

Freyja frowned. “Sanngriðr. Stand before me.”

Sanngriðr strode past Eir, rolling her eyes at the woman's agony, and stood before Freyja, head held back, chest outthrust.

“Sanngriðr,” Freyja said, “I tire of this matter and I tire of you. So I have decided it—I am done. I am done with you, Sanngriðr. I am done with Eir, and I am done with Miðgarðr. The host-fields are filled with an uncountable number of warriors. Valhalla is, as well. We have no need of Miðgarðr's feeble offerings—greater warriors are to be found elsewhere, in other realms, in other, stronger worlds.”

Sanngriðr scowled. “I do not understand, Lady. What—”

“Henceforth, Eir, for your crime of dallying with a living human—for not only bearing him children, but for bearing him a boy and allowing your blood to be diluted in a male form—for this crime Miðgarðr is cut off from the Rainbow Bridge. No Reaper shall be allowed entrance or exit, unless they travel with my blessing, with my necklace. So cut off, Miðgarðr shall hang in the space without, at the mercy of the deep creatures, the dark ones, the Jötnar and Dvergar and Álfar. And worse. But, to prove I am not completely heartless, I will not leave the souls born to Miðgarðr bereft.”

Eir lifted her face, tracked dirty with tears and blood, to Freyja. “My Lady?”

“I leave the handling of the spirits of Miðgarðr in your family's capable hands, Eir,” Freyja said quietly, kneeling down and brushing a lock of hair off Eir's face.

“It is both my blessing and your curse: every year, for every drop of blood that has soiled your cloak, a hundred spirits must suffer in the not-realm born of your folly. Your children and your children's children and their spawn ever after must henceforth guide and guard these damned souls, ferrying them to the Light and the afterlife that even one such as I cannot reach.”

“But my Lady…my children are…”

“What mother, who bled to bring her babies into the world, would not bleed to bring them to life once more?” Freyja asked in a whisper. “Will you give up your flesh—your human life—for your children, knowing that you are condemning them and their children and all generations hence, to an existence of being the only Light in a great and vast plain of darkness? They will suffer for your transgressions, just as you suffered to bring them into the world.”

“How?” Eir demanded, wiping her face, expression cautious but growing lighter with hope. “How would they suffer? What is this curse?”

“They will live a short, painful life, Eir, burning up from the inside if they do not guide souls into the Light. Or they will live a longer life
spent in the good work of guiding souls…but one that could cut off with no warning, their books closing early, for without the Rainbow Bridge to follow, it shall require a bit of their life force to send a spirit across the vast nothingness and into the Light. If they do neither, if they turn their face from their duty, if they allow too many spirits to gather, then the spirit realm will overrun the living world. Miðgarðr will be laid open for the Dark Ones to plunder and feast.”