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they made a bridge leading away from the Middle World and into Old Asgard, where the gods feast and fight and laugh. I saw the tent revivals my mother loved and the White Hall in Philly when the president’s personal seethkona invoked Freya’s blessing upon my family nine months and a day after Mom disappeared. I saw the people’s tears and I saw endless streams of mourners on every TV in the States. But I didn’t see my mother.”
    We sit in silence while the sky changes from indigo to pink and then to gruesome orange in the east.
    “Maybe,” I say, “you should look on a different night, when there is not so much of Baldur in the air, and the expectations of the world.”
    “This was her favorite holiday, though. Because of the hope, she said. She never worked on it, though she should have, and never tried to do anything but be my mom. Not a seer or prophetess or holy woman. We would curl up in her bed with atiny TV stacked between us on books, eating bacon and roasted apples.”
    It’s the most normal thing she’s ever told me. I say, “My father liked the Hallowblot, for the humor of it. He used to take me to sacrifice mice to the goblins and trolls, and said, ‘This mouse lives only for a single moment: his death. Just like us, my bear-son.’ ”
    “Bear-son. I like it. I was Mom’s little cat.”
    It wasn’t clever of either of our parents. Cats are Freya’s favored beast, and all berserkers are known as bears. Instead it was a promise to both of us, a naming of our fates.
    “Astrid—” I begin, intending to ask her if she ever thinks of not becoming a seethkona like her mother.
    She lifts her head suddenly. “Do you hear that?”
    Before she finishes, I do: a wail crawling up toward the clouds.
    It comes from the academy, where all the lights continue to blaze even as the sky turns blue. The wail is joined by another voice, then another, in a keening that raises the hairs on my neck.
    “They’re all crying,” Astrid whispers.
    The windows and doors of the dorms and class buildings leak with pain. I stand and Astrid does, too. But neither of us moves. The wailing is such a contrast to the bright morning, to the rippling clouds blowing from the south. The Missoura River is a blue ribbon sliding through the prairie, dragging streaks of sunlight toward us.
    I run, and under my feet the frosted yellow grass crunches.Astrid is behind me, so I pause and hold out my hand for her to take. We fly together away from the barrow.
    As we careen into the courtyard, even the spill of water from the fountain statue of Sigurd Dragonslayer is overwhelmed by the keening. It’s all around us, as though the air itself screams. I remember what it was like to be surrounded by mournful wails and the smell of blood, in that candy-colored shopping mall, and I suddenly can’t move.
    “The dorm.” Astrid jerks my hand, breaking me from my memory. We run across the courtyard and up the three sandstone steps to burst through the front door of the girls’ dormitory. The crying splits my head. In the dark wooden common room, two dozen girls clutch pillows and blankets, lips parted to wail through their teeth. The cries layer over and over and I cannot stand it. I back away.
    Astrid falls to her knees, pointing at the projection screen.
    The New World Tree is there, towering seven stories high and shading the entire park. Valkyrie in their corselets and feather cloaks push back a mob of men and women. The angry crowd raises fists and yells, but I cannot hear anything over the awful noise that presses into my eyeballs. A reporter stands in front of the camera, microphone shaking. Her words are drowned out, but a message scrolls across the bottom of the screen in bright yellow letters: THE SUN IS RISEN BUT BALDUR THE BEAUTIFUL REMAINS IN ASHES .

THREE
    WITHIN AN HOUR, the whole school’s been assembled in the Great Hall. It’s the largest building on campus, and the only place we all fit at once. Pillars hold up the high