The Apple Throne (2 page)

My throat was hollow with expectation and a thrill. I remembered my lifelong desire to serve and this was making myself like a fruit for the gods: they could not live without me.

Freya said, “You can do this, Idun. You were chosen because you can.” It was a soothing voice, as cool as a lullaby. She took my face in her hands and kissed my lips and my cheeks and my eyelids. A benediction from my goddess, a promise, a prophecy.

And then she stood, leaving me on the floor of my cottage.

I am the center of Asgard’s life.

I am the knot.

The apple tree is my charge, to love and care for so it will thrive. Without me, the gods would not rise from death and our world would shatter.

It settled like a mantle over my shoulders.

Surrounded now by apple trees, by an orchard that is my new home, I breathe deeply. I long to tell Soren what I feel, what I know. He would understand the heaviness, the weight of this promise. But the price of his remembering me is that we only are allowed one day together four times a year. I must wait almost three months before he is with me again.

I should be dreaming of
him
, at least.

The thought is a sudden and bitter thing, and I do not want it affecting the tree or the apples. So I stand. I should have asked her before she left, asked Freya if she knew why I had not been dreaming. But it has only been three nights, and I am not sure I wish to know her answer.

Quietly, while spring birds chirp in the orchard and clouds billow overhead, I wander my garden, plucking vines and flowers, leaves and twigs. As I go, I braid them into a crown of apple blossoms: beauty and responsibility like I have never known. Better than dreams, better than my future that might have been.

Kneeling beside the apple tree of immortality again, I set the crown on my head and weave my hair into it until no one could read where my dark hair ends and the crown begins.

Seven nights
.

The cottage is small and warm and filled with relics of Iduns before me. Their magazines and DVDs, their art and books and dried-out markers. Over the hearth hangs an oil painting of the orchard, thick with layers of green, signed
Idun,
and not more than a hundred years old. There is a bird mask mounted on one wall, and a child’s wooden sword rests in the corner. I wonder how it happened those girls arrived here with such things. I have my seething kit, my old boots, and a black necklace of plastic pearls my mother gave me. When I go, perhaps the next Idun will like the look of them at her throat.

Under the bed is a long box of paper, and upon every page is written a single name.
Marly
and
Bridget
and
Edie
and
Anna
.
Serena, Signe, Hedvig, Christina, Louise, Perdita, Diane, Torgunn, Yrsa,
and on and on until they are too faded, too old to read. I sit on the wooden floor, surrounded by the names of my predecessors, empty of everything but wonder. I search the small secretary desk for pen and paper, then carefully write
Astrid.
Maybe for the last time.

I tuck it into the box and slide it back beneath the bed.

I am part of something amazing.

My heart tears suddenly, and I drag the box open again, pulling out all the papers, hunting for one name through all the rest. I read them out loud, I whisper them, I line them up in alphabetical order, but as the sun sets, I must acknowledge:
Jenna
is nowhere to be found. My mother, who was Idun just before me, did not put her name down. Five years ago, she borrowed this destiny from me, bargained more time for me to live my life, so she did not consider herself part of our line. Her name did not vanish from the memory of the world. It does not belong in this forgotten box.

Did my mother ever lose her dreams? I wish I could ask her.

Once, I raised Soren’s dead father from the grave to ask him a question. I slide my gaze to the leather roll of my seething kit where it leans beside the bed. I’ve not touched it since arriving, and I am afraid to now. Seething and dreams are woven together, born of the same cold universe of stars in the heart of every prophet. I haven’t dreamed in seven nights, and if I open my kit now, throw runes, taste the bitter corrberries, but am unable to reach into the future, I will know certainly and irrevocably that my dreams are gone. My power is gone.

I can’t. I can’t. Not yet.

For the first time since Soren left me, since my mother died, I curl over my knees and cry.

Eleven nights
.

When I forget for a while that I’ve had no dreams in eleven nights, I find it more than peaceful here. The loveliness of the orchard is energizing. The air itself draws me out, and I run through the trees, swing up into their branches, laugh at the antics of squirrels and the small gray cat that has appeared. I do not get tired easily, no matter how far I run, and my endurance for weapons practice is three times what it was. I raid the closet of my predecessors, take up that child’s sword, and perform the seven-point dances of offense and defense to keep myself in shape. I decide to see if I can train myself to do a pull-up on the low branch of the red apple tree nearest my cottage.

I read the magazines and books left behind. I learn the paths through the orchard. I make a list of what I need:

Thick kneesocks

Exercise bra

Hand weights

An oven? Possibly? To make my own bread?

Music, but the old sort from Appalachia or Scandan.

Paper

Soren

Freya told me I might ask for anything, though she left me only a basket of food and simple clothes. A disir will come gather my laundry once a week and bring clean things from Bright Home. There are movies to watch in the player, though I don’t get cable TV here or the interweave. It’s all right. I don’t think I want to know about the world outside.

I stuff my seething kit between the wall and my bed, aching to unroll it and throw runes, to dive into dreams and look at my future, at Soren’s future, at my Uncle Richard who was my only family left in the world and won’t remember he ever had a niece.

But I’m not ready.

Fifteen nights
.

I do not regret my sacrifice.

It’s hard, but sacrifice is
meant
to be so.

I’m used to being surrounded by people—friends who want my advice and prophecies, strangers offering sympathy for my mother’s loss. I’m used to having a place, a future full of crowds calling my name. I’m used to being able to help others, find answers, and know which questions to ask. I’ve found missing children with my seething, and warned towns of natural disaster. I’ve fought holmgangs over my honor and the honor of my friends. I’ve made fun of movies in a crowded living room. I’ve danced around a bonfire with Lokiskin and played the drums for the greatest seething circles in the last generation. I’ve been interviewed by newspapers and
Teen Seer
magazine. I’ve cooked at my uncle’s shoulder for a dinner party of famous Asgardians and their marriageable sons. I have raised the dead! I’ve complained terribly over the shallow nature of people’s desire to see the future. I’ve ranted hard that nobody serves the gods for the sake of serving anymore. We all want the next big thing, the immediate payoff, the instant gratification.

Except for me. I claimed I only wanted to love the gods, to be loved in turn, to follow my destiny into their service. But how well and deeply could I have meant it, to chafe so raw when I suddenly got what I wished for? So what if nobody remembers my name? What is fame in the face of such a glorious chance to serve my gods?

I was a child. A hypocrite.

I will not be. I will accept this destiny. And more than that, I will embrace Idun. Idun is a gift to me and the world, a way I can make it a better place by tending the gods’ immortality. We need them, and they need me. Simple.

But it is so, so hard to let go.

Freya tells me most girls who become Idun are called around the time of their first period, when they transition from childhood into maidenhood. My mother may have done me a disservice, the goddess says, by giving me these years I’ve had to make friends and become used to people, to fall in love and learn ambition.

“Why did you allow it then?” I ask her, walking through the apple trees at her side.

Her long white dress brushes the wild grass at our feet, and she shrugs the way a willow moves in a breeze. “I loved your mother, I told you that, and she asked it of me. I granted her wish for you, though it has led to this.”

I stand so near her that Freya’s thick moonlight hair flicks against my shoulder as she shakes her head softly. I say, “You looked ahead, to see the ripples of those choices.”

“Of course. I saw Baldur and Soren Bearstar. I saw you arrive here. I saw much of what happens now, outside these mountain walls. The world changes. I will be ready.”

Though summer is pressing, the breeze remains cool, the leaves as bright as neon. Freya the Witch is a cold sliver of moonlight against sunlit nature, not quite alien from it, but apart.

“What is he doing?” I whisper. Soren, my berserker, who hated the wild frenzy inside his heart, who walked away from this orchard to serve Baldur the Beautiful.

She casts me a disappointed look, lips pursed in a bow. “You should not allow thoughts of him to distract you from your peace and work here.”

“I don’t dream of him like I used to,” I confess.

“Of course not, Idun,” she says, chiding me for some slight I don’t recognize.

A chill dances up my arms. “You knew I would not dream?”

“A girl with no connection to the fate of the Middle World cannot dream of it.” She hesitates, and I pull ahead of her, walking on before she can say something irrevocable, before she can tell me I will never seeth again.

“I thought you understood, Idun,” she calls quietly after me.

I touch the black pearls at my throat and say, “Did my mother lose her dreams?”

“Jenna was never torn out of fate as you were, as all true Iduns are.”

My knees feel loose, my tongue thick. “I’ll never seeth again, either,” I say dully.

The goddess does not answer. She tucks my hand through her elbow. I lean my temple against her shoulder, dizzy and unsure. Freya walks with me for hours through the orchard, until I can walk on my own again.

Twenty-one nights
.

Something has changed: imperceptible to me, but the gods know. They arrive one at a time, assuming I’ve settled, that Idun is here and waiting to serve.

They come with gifts—to welcome me or only out of obligation, I don’t know. The Alfather brings clocks and pocket watches all set to the same time. I hang them from the rafters over my head. Heimdalr comes with his golden smile to bring me movies and recorded TV shows. Freyr the Satisfied, Freya’s brother, arrives in old-fashioned velvet and silk. He pets my cheek and gives me flowers, honey mead, and a silver ring, as if I am an elf to be pacified with offerings. Frigg the Cloud-Spinner brings dresses and sweaters perfectly suited to what she calls
my gentle style
.

The first time Thor Thunderer comes, he brings a slab of bacon, a pretty silver ring, and a handgun. Thor, who wears his mail shirt every day, who speaks and walks like the past eight hundred years have never happened, gives me a
gun
in return for immortality. He says,
I’ll teach you to shoot it.
My surprise clearly shows, and the god of thunder, of loyalty and strength, puts it into my hand, shows me how to stand, where the safety is, and how to aim. It is heavy for its small size, and the grip is rough against my palm.

What do I do with it
? I ask.

Defend yourself. You are small, and this powerful.

I shoot at the ground and wince before I pull the trigger. The kick bends my elbows, the fire rings in my ears.

The god North gives me a kiss that leaves me with an ache of longing for something I cannot name. His wife Skathi gives me a coat made of white bearskin, furred inside.
For the winter,
she says.

Tyr the Just stands with his golden prosthetic hand half-hidden under a plain, black denim jacket. He asks me for the story of my life
before
. Surprised and sad, I tell him about Astrid Glyn, teen prophet, apprentice, dreamer, girl in love, and he nods thoughtfully. He places his heavy gold hand on my shoulder.

“There is a balance to every burden,” he says.

When he asks me for a second apple that he’ll deliver personally to the Fenris Wolf, I don’t hesitate. She isn’t allowed into the orchard herself because of her voracious hunger.

Gods I’ve hardly heard of come: Mim the Head, who I thought was a story, and Fanderel of the Lake, who is a guardian of fish; Grith, who I believed had died forever a thousand years ago; Beyla, a goddess of fertility but really manure, and her husband who we thought was invented by comic mummers in the tenth century.

Lofn, a goddess who serves at Frigg’s right hand and is the lady of prerogatives and unrequited love, shows up leaning on my doorframe in jeans and a pink corduroy jacket. She says, “You’re the first girl not to fall for Baldur in a giant’s age. That must be quite the story.”

Ran, the goddess of drowning, comes at sunset, her tarnished hair knotted like a fisherman’s net, and stares at me as if she sees my sun-bleached bones. She gives me a ring, too, with a small pink pearl.

They all know that I am new, that I am Idun, and that I am a human girl. They treat me with respect; they call me cousin, though I am not. Like a poor relation, I live in their circle but everyone knows where I belong.

Loki arrives with a cocky smile and asks, “How goes the deception, pretty young thing?” He looks my age, handsome, but his teeth are sharp as a cat’s. I say, “I lie about nothing,” and he transforms slowly, unsettlingly, taller and brighter until he shines like a silver moon, a note of beauty that hurts me like a perfect sunset. I touch my middle fingers to my heart reverently.

Loki whispers, “I’ll take that apple now,” and his breath is sweet wind and flowers against my lips. Trembling, I offer it, and he puts it carefully to his mouth, sucking it in, chewing with eyes fixed to mine. His teeth move in rhythm with my heartbeat, and he blinks in time, too, as if all of his being shifts and starts along with mine.