The Apple Throne (3 page)

“And another,” he murmurs.

I jerk away, gasping, and nearly fall, catching my hands in the tangle of apples. The tree with those wizened yellow fruits supports me, pokes my face, wakes me from his seductive magic.

One apple, Freya said, for every god in every year. It is all they need, and eating more will not make the magic last longer. The tree only grows so many, they are a finite commodity, and gods should not be allowed to hoard them. The few extra I may give out as I see fit—if a god has a great need, if they ask well or prove some man or woman in their favor has earned a respite from death. It is my prerogative to choose who receives this extra bounty.

The magic only requires that the apples must be freely given, and Loki has not asked well or kindly.

“No,” I say as hard as possible.

When I turn, he is gone.

Twenty-seven nights
.

Nearly a month of dreamlessness.

I have set a pie to baking in my new iron oven, guessing at how high to hold the flames. My first two pies burned at the edges.

The cottage door slams back; a blaze of orange sunset spills in. Loki streaks inside with it, fury in his eyes. He silently, coldly holds out his hand. I stare at him, at the melting skin on his face as he shifts shape from skinny young man to wrinkled old creature, back to a tall, shining god with red hair and eyes glittering in the way of glaciers. He says, “Give me another apple, Idun.”

There is a need, a fury, in those cold eyes that freezes my tongue. I work my throat, swallow, and glare back. I must establish a firm rule between us. “No.”

He looms taller, features darkening and pointed and monstrous. “Give me another apple in return for what I have lost because of you, because of Baldur and the Bearstar.”

“We have all lost,” I whisper. I fold my hands together against shaking and ignore the sticky dough and flour. He will not scare me into submission.

“Some more than others.”

“Vider,” I say. She was the fourteen-year-old Lokiskin orphan who fell in with us and helped us deliver Baldur here to the orchard. Who for her reward forsook Loki’s patronage and asked the Alfather to be made the first woman berserker in two generations.

Loki’s face crumples, not from magic, but grief. He twists it the way a little boy does, screwing his mouth and nose, rubbing his red-rimmed eyes. His tall frame shrinks, too, until he’s a young boy with a shock of red hair. Freckles blossom on his forearms and cheeks. He stares at me a moment, then stomps to my cupboards and flings things about until he finds the bottle of mead Freyr the Satisfied left. He pops the cork with his fingers and gulps down a third of the alcohol as I watch, the hot oven behind me warming my back.

“This is useless!” he cries and flings the bottle against the stone hearth. It breaks, and the mead catches the tongues of my fire in a brief flash.

Loki Changer explodes into a bird and flies out my window.

I carefully pick up the shattered glass on the hearth. My fingers still shake, but I will them to stop. He is not angry at me, not truly. But all the stories of Loki’s mischief and revenge pummel each other in my head. I must grow used to him, to saying no. He will not hurt me, I remind myself, only trick me or tease me to get what he wants.

And just as I decide it, he returns, laughing as I crouch with a handful of glass. “Here, cousin,” he coos, brandishing a bottle of pink sparkling wine. “From other cousins of ours and better.”

I get to my feet, and as I go to him, his features shift prettier, his hips round out, he flutters his eyelashes and rolls back his shoulders to show me the breasts grown under the collar of his shirt. Her shirt. She bumps the base of the wine against my shoulder, and I take it, lift it, and drink.

The bubbles pop and tease, brighter than anything I’ve tasted. It’s not honey or grapes, but something lighter, something lacking any tart, sugar quality. As if this wine was pressed from orchids or lilies or sunset clouds.

“Elfish wine,” Loki murmurs, her voice near my ear. She sips from the bottle, too, and slides her arm around my waist, dragging me to the bed. “To the things we have lost!” she crows, tossing back more liquor before thrusting it at me.

I drink, and she drinks, and my apple pie burns a third time.

Twenty-eight nights
.

Even drunk, even sleeping in the arms of a god, his red hair twisting across my face, his angry tears smearing between our cheeks, I still do not dream.

Thirty-three nights
.

Tonight, an arc of shining women appear in the sunset shadows of my orchard. Like ghosts, they are gray and misty, wearing gowns from ancient times or hats feathered and ruffed from the last century, in boots or high heels or jeans, hair braided or bobbed short, smiling, holding their hands out to me. One steps forward, long braids beaded to her knees and wearing a medieval mantle. She says, “It is disir night, Idun the Young, and you are one of us now.”

I do not know what to reply.

The disir are our deceased mothers and grandmothers, the female spirits of a hundred generations—goddesses, elf-queens and troll-mothers, priestesses of every sort, and even the giantess ghosts. Tonight, I see no bulbous, toothy trolls or massive, glorious giants, no ethereal and pristine elves here: only women. Maybe my grandmothers, maybe only nearby spirit cousins, or even past Iduns and their kin. My mother herself is not here.

The medieval disir woman flicks her fingers. “Come with us, Idun. Tonight, you may leave, you may go where you wish and return before dawn, your apples no worse for wear. It is the only night we are free of our bindings!”

I take her insubstantial hand, and a soft wind seems to blow through my body, though no physical stuff moves my hair or skirt. It is so like the seething magic—that ghost of flight, of spinning power—I close my eyes happily.

They surround me, petting my hair, plucking at my sweater and dress. They kiss my cheeks, my wrists. They coo and whisper their names.

“Where would you go?” one asks.

“Soren, I want to see him,” I say without thinking. I’m not allowed to
have
him, but see him perhaps?

“Where would this Soren be?” another asks.

I look into her gray-brown eyes, through which I see apple-leaves shivering in the night wind. “With Baldur the Beautiful,” I guess.

“Come, come!” they cry. They grasp at me, dragging me along and up into a whirlwind. The sky batters us; I cannot breathe for the thin air! My lungs pinch. I fear they forget I am alive still, not built for the paths of spirits! But my terror lifts away in a gust of warm, sticky wind and the sound of music.

I stand alone in a great garden crawling with elephant ear plants and bobbing birds of paradise, steamy hibiscus and spreading magnolias. A white mansion glows nearby with elf-lights and lamps, while some brusque, sharp string band sends peels of dancing music out over the garden. I breathe deep of the thick air, the rich smells of tropical flowers. To be outside the orchard for the first time in more than a month! I’ve never spent so long in only one place before. I hope this will always be a night of freedom, that I did no wrong in Freya’s eyes by going with the disir.

I hear a small grunt of frustration, and something shiny arcs across the path to land in the bushes. Glancing over, I see a girl seated stiffly on a stone bench. She wears a blood-red gown and her pale hair is braided intricately like a Valkyrie. Her fingers are covered in rings, but she tugs at them angrily as tears streak blotchy tracks down her painted face.

“Hello,” I say.

The girl glares up at me, dark mascara bleeding wide around her starkly pale green eyes. Something in her anger draws me nearer. When I was a prophet guided by dreams, I often found myself in the right place at the right time to help a lost soul. Hope kindles in me. Perhaps some tiny strand of fate has brought me here for her.

“You seem upset,” I say, attempting not to sound eager.

“I was here to catch my breath
privately
.”

I smile. “I see.”

The girl studies me through narrowed eyes. I tilt my head so the little lights shine onto my face. Whatever she searches for, she seems to find it and says, “I apologize, lady.”

I shrug away her apology. “Did someone hurt you?” I ask.

She smiles a dark smile. “Maybe. Yes? I’m not sure.”

“Can I help?”

The girl asks, “Do you know anything about dreams?”

It startles a laugh out of me, and I sit beside her on the cold stone. “I venture to say I know quite a bit about them.”

“How do I tell if my dreams are true ones?”

I touch my neck, where my mother’s black plastic pearls hang. My dreams were
always
true. I say, “I think…you just know. You can feel the difference, or you see evidence of it when you wake.”

The Valkyrie girl glowers. “Why would I have true dreams at all? I’m not seethkona. I don’t pray to the goddess of dreams.”

That she is so dismissive of this thing I want more than anything grates at my heart. I force myself to say, “Because you’re walking along a strong strand of fate, or because she wants you to.”

“Do you know Freya well?”

I nod, thinking of the goddess’s hand on my elbow. “As well as any.”

“Do you trust her?” The girl clearly does not and wants me to agree.

How like Soren she is in her suspicion. But despite everything, Freya has never made me think she does not want what is best. Carefully, I say, “I trust that Freya acts for the good of the world.”

“For the good of the world,” the girl repeats bitterly and balls her hand into a tight fist. “Does your goddess use women and men to change the course of the world’s fate?”

“Of course! There is no other way to do it than to use us. She gives us prophecy or dreams for a guide, but we are the actors. The gods may not so directly interfere.” I touch the back of her hand. “What does she want from you?”

“To kill a troll, I think.”

“There are worse things she could ask than that.”

We sit quietly, hands together, listening to the vibrant music from the mansion. I’d like to walk in—even if my sundress is hardly fit for a grand occasion—and find Soren, for surely he is here if the disir brought me to the place Baldur is. Oh, I miss him. The melody in my heart longs for his harmony.

I try to think instead what this girl needs. She’s confused by her dreams and by something Freya wants of her. Freya wanted me to be Idun, and I did as she wished, but it wasn’t just because she asked it. I did it for the world, too.

Squeezing her hand, I say, “In the end, it doesn’t matter what Freya wants. Sometimes you must stop thinking about the gods and think about yourself and the people you love. What do
you
want the world to be like? What can you do to make it that way? You don’t need to know what Freya has done or wants done. You don’t need to know what Loki or the Alfather or Tyr the Just wants. What is in
your
heart? Let that be your guide, and it will bring you to those moments when you can change fate or the entire world.” I’m quite breathless when I add, “We make our own world.”

The Valkyrie girl’s thin brows come together with determination. She nods, hard, and stands up. “Thank you for your counsel, lady. Do you have a name? So I may thank you properly at a shrine?”

My triumph fades in a rush. “I had one once,” I say. “But no one remembers it.”

“Tell me and I’ll remember,” she insists.

Sadly, I shake my head.

Her lips purse, and she’s already distracted, thinking of her own life, her own destiny. She steps away from me, and I’m forgotten like that.

I have to go, to find the disir and return to my orchard and my destiny without Soren. He and Baldur are in that ball, but I am not part of that life.

Eighty-two nights
.

Nearly three long months without a dream, but I am determined their loss be my only regret.

When I’m alone, I climb the apple trees. I swing into them and hang upside down until the blood rushes into my face. I break fingernails against their bark and get my hair tangled in their leaves. The trees are all heavy with fruit. It’s so hot my hair hangs in limp, frizzy curls.

When I’m alone, I read novels and newspapers or watch old movies or television. I enjoy marathons of old crime shows and the bizarre
Star Trek
, fantasy stories and historicals rich in detail.

When I’m alone, I paint my fingernails and learn new techniques for shading my eyes with makeup the goddesses of beauty send. I teach myself to braid my hair into a nine-strand rope. I read magazines and cut out the most vibrant colors. I avoid my old favorites though—
Disir Life
and
Teen Seer
—because they’re so full of dreams and prophecy.

When I’m alone, I never unroll my seething kit. I cannot dream, Freya said, because I was torn out of fate. I do not want to know what it feels like to try seething only to fail.

Some days I take off my slippers and put on my fight pants and sports bra and run around the entire orchard. It’s exhilarating to see everything that’s mine, the colors and pounding energy that grabs at my skin. I’ve nearly managed a pull-up, but don’t use the wooden sword or practice holmgang techniques anymore; they remind me too viscerally of Soren.

I tell stories to the apples of immortality: my favorite comedies and sweeping tragic tales of the Icelanders or Volsungs. I tell the tree about the creation of the world; of the women who built our great families; of the founding of the United States, the Covenant and the New World Tree; stories of the Thrall’s War; the final native tribes and their lost gods; Sleipnir’s birth and the famous loves between gods and mortals.

The tree does not applaud, but I imagine the caress of its leaves against my cheek to be like a kiss.

I sleep.

I wake up.

There’s nothing in between.

Occasionally, I lie down in a patch of sun between bending apple branches and nap away an afternoon. There’s only darkness behind my eyelids, the emptiness of a life outside fate. Even when I pluck a ripe red apple and eat the sweet or sharp or sour fruit that should feed my imagination, I do not dream.