The Strange Maid Read Online Free PDF Page A

said bitterly.
    I fled for the garden of the New World Tree, shoving through the death priest pruning the winter yew bushes. I flung myself at the base, scraped my hands against the trunk, and pressed my forehead into the rough bark until it hurt.
    I thought Myra understood me better than the rest, she and Precia the Valkyrie of the South. Myra sparred as skillfully and strong as the ancient Valkyrie Hervor and Skuld, and I remembered how Precia’s cheeks would go pink with elation when we reenacted the Flight of Brynhild. We three would be the passionate, raging ones, I thought, spirit-sisters to tilt balance against the First Valkyrie and her conservative confederates, the Valkyrie of the Ice and the East.
    But even they didn’t understand.
    Alfather, help me! Give me a sign!
    There was no answer but the whisper of wind through the rattle-dry leaves of the Tree. I curled between two massive roots, hair tangled in my face, hands cold and tucked to my breast, until I fell asleep.
    In my dream I led Malchai to the hanging ground, and the city cheered for me as the noose slung around my neck. I was the one dragged into the sky, to dangle and dance and choke for the Alfather.
    Dawn woke me, frost in my hair and my face numb. My throat ached for all the crying I’d done and was bruised from dreaming. I stumbled to my feet. Three of the Valkyrie stood in the garden with me: Myra Quick, Precia of the South, and Elisa of the Prairie. Tears tracked down Precia’s bright cheeks, and Myra’s lips were pale. Elisa closed her eyes and pointed to the trunk of the Tree.
    I looked.
    Burned into the dark, ropy bark was a riddle.
    The Valkyrie of the Tree will prove herself with a stone heart.
    It was the only answer I got from my god.
    Thinking he agreed with them, that I’d gone too far, too fast, I took what I could carry and walked out of the Philadelphia Death Hall.
    For a nearly two years I’ve wandered, sleeping where I can, earning money how I can. Poetry on a street corner or, early on, officiating small funerals before the country realized I’d run away—before one of my death priests or wolf-guards leaked the riddle to the newspapers. I’ve crashed in half-decrepit buildings, brewing street-shine and selling it for coins. Trusting people with runes in their eyes like joy and strength and courage. At first I tried to be cool like Precia or Siri, tried to harden my heart into stone. Not to grow wild with anger or grief or passion.
    Impossible, when I can’t stop this itch to leap into action, to do something no matter what the consequences. How can I walk past another girl being roughed up? How can I not deface those infuriating anti-berserker subway posters? How can I do less than Valtheow, who made herself a mask of mud and blood to face down her enemies?
    I don’t understand why Odin would want me to have a heart of stone, if that’s what the riddle means, when I know he was drawn to my wildness.
    If this were an ancient poem, if I read the line in a song, I would think stone heart was a kenning for death, or maybe for a Freyan, someone who worships Freyr the Satisfied, the god of earth and fertility, like my parents. They love the earth and poetically speaking could be said to love stone, to have hearts for stone. But it’s so twisted up in language! Could a stone heart mean justice? Balance like what Tyr the Just brings to the world in the shape of laws and integrity, because a stone heart would not vary? Or maybe a stone heart is a heart of fire, because flint is a stone and it sparks fire from steel.
    The people I’ve asked did not know, either. I managed an audience with several lawspeakers, and a Freyan priest in his temple, I got onto the stage at a public reading at the Mishigam Poet’s College and recited them the riddle as if I’d created it. None of them had a better answer. How should the Valkyrie prove herself with a stone heart?
    I demanded again and again. A young seethkona across the border in