The Strange Maid Read Online Free PDF Page B

name in ancient times, in the oldest songs.”
    “I’ve never heard it before!”
    Unferth only shrugs.
    For ten more minutes I glare at his profile. His nose is crooked and his lips thin, but I quite like his cheekbones and jaw. There’s a twist of shine on his neck that might be a scar. As his hair dries it brightens to a wispy pale blond. He’s got scars on his knuckles and fingers, too, from fighting.
    Unferth pulls off the highway into the parking lot of a Xia buffet. “You must be hungry,” he says.
    “Just tell me the answer,” I insist.
    He settles his hands and the keys in his lap and leans his shoulder into the door to face me.
    I try again. “How do I prove myself with a stone heart?”
    “Kill yourself a troll.”
    “What?” I’m trapped between laughing incredulously and kicking him across the gearshift.
    “A stone heart. If you kill a troll, it turns into stone, doesn’t it? Heart included.”
    Laughter dries on my tongue. I stare for a long moment. Unferth waits expressionlessly.
    “That’s so …” I pound a fist onto my thigh. “Ragging literal. Too literal. It can’t be. It has nothing to do with the … kind of Valkyrie I want to be. With the reasons I clashed with my sisters in the first place! The answer should be about being bold or not, about danger or power or safety! It should be more dramatic than this, at least.”
    Unferth’s eyebrows go up. “Trolls aren’t dramatic or dangerous enough for you?”
    I shrug a little helplessly. It’s a valid point. Killing a troll—a greater mountain troll, a monster—would be glorious and violent, a thing only the wild berserkers do these days, or Thor and his army.
    Valtheow the Dark faced trolls.
    Hope sputters to life. For the first time I wonder if Odin sent that riddle to prove to my sisters that I was right. Maybe I’m not supposed to learn something about myself or change, maybe they are. He wants the old ways back, and I’m his vessel for it.
    “Perhaps some food will fatten up your riddling muscles,” Unferth says, unlocking the doors. He tucks his sword under the dashboard and leaves me, running through the rain toward the buffet. I scramble down after him.
    Cozy red decor welcomes us, along with tinny harp music. The walls are covered with banner paintings of misty hills and old fishing boats, and gentle lamps hang low over the booths. It smells like fried vegetables and fish, and I barely pause at our table before heading for the buffet. Unferth orders a beer after asking the hostess which is her favorite import, and adds a second for me before following.
    I ignore that it’s been weeks since I ate food this rich and plentiful, and devour it messily. Unferth eats like it’s a science experiment. A bit of every offering fills up two plates and three small soup bowls, and he tastes it all, either discarding the whole after a single bite or devouring what he likes. I’ve finished long before him, feeling stuffed for the first time in ages. I continue to study him, as if his clothes or his habits will tell me how he guessed the answer to my riddle.
    Under his coat he’s got on jeans and biker boots, a plain T-shirt over a long-sleeved one. It’s definitely a scar around his neck, just exactly where a noose would pull, and three of his left fingers are encircled by rings. He’s exceedingly polite to the server who refreshes our waters and offers chopsticks, and his speech has a rhythm to it that’s not quite an accent but marks itself. I take a drink of the pale Xian beer and close my eyes. With a full stomach and warm all over, my body wants to sink deeper into the booth and relax, but my mind is sailing.
    Here is this Unferth with a supposed answer to the Alfather’s riddle—a miraculous, well-timed answer nobody has suggested before. If Odin didn’t send him, how did he find me, and why now?
    I set down my chopsticks. “How old are you?” I ask.
    “As old as the flower that blooms and dies every year.”
    I