Valknut: The Binding Read Online Free PDF Page A

as though sleeping on feather
beds rather than cardboard on a hard floor. Time to learn from the
masters, she figured.
    The boxcar had grown dark. Too dark. She
tried to remember where she had seen a piece of cardboard big
enough to sleep on, but instead her imagination supplied an image
of a spider-like serial killer lurking in a corner, ready to pounce
and wind her up in a mile of silk.
    “Cowering at shadows,” she muttered. “I’m
sure Junkyard would be impressed,”
    Wincing in pain from banged up legs and a
wrenched shoulder, she crawled deeper inside, feeling ahead until
her hand brushed cardboard. Hopefully it wasn’t covered with
grease. Or worse. She lay down and tried to convince herself that
she was comfortable, that a million eyes weren’t watching her from
the shadows. She couldn’t imagine actually sleeping. The noise, the
rough track, the strong scent of manure on the breeze, not to
mention Jungle Jim’s story, would keep her awake.
    In the dark, the cardboard felt like a tiny
raft on a sea of metal. The train hit a bumpy stretch and she
clutched the cardboard’s edges, irrationally fearful of being
thrown off. Dust floated thickly around her and she sneezed.
Something skittered over the floorboards nearby. Was it an animal?
A rat? Or shifting debris? She wanted to move the cardboard closer
to Junkyard and Jungle Jim, but a strange lethargy overcame her.
The wheels settled into a rhythmic clickity-clack. The cardboard
drifted farther into the metal sea, taking her with it, until the
smells and noises faded away and she was asleep.
    The dream came, and it was like no other she
had ever had.
     
    ***
     
    She was floating.
    She no longer felt the train and its infernal
vibrations. Her bones rested easy in her skin. She heard the train,
with its banging and clanging and eternal clickity-clack,
but—there! Now that, too, faded away.
    Something rough curled around her neck,
loosely, like the touch of her night-tangled hair. She opened her
eyes.
    She was floating.
    Her hair drifted about her head as if alive.
The rough thing about her neck was a rope. Its lazy, snaking length
tethered her to a thick branch above her head.
    She was floating, but she did not float
free.
    The branches of a great ash tree stretched
all around. She looked for their twig-fingered ends but couldn’t
find them. The limbs reached for the horizon, curling over it as
though cradling the world in a leafy bower. Deer and goats leaped
among the branches, nipping young leaves and tender sprigs. Wasps
hummed all around, taking their fill of dripping sap. An eagle
cried far above, its perch lost in the tree’s distant crown.
    She floated among them, but apart. She was
not of this world.
    Whirling wings and black feathers exploded
through the branches. Two ravens danced and tangled in the air
before her. One landed on her right shoulder. It cocked its head as
though listening to her thoughts. The other settled on her left
shoulder. It turned its eye on her and she could feel it leafing
through her memory.
    A squirrel raced its tail up the tree trunk
as if running from the devil. He scrambled to a nearby branch and
smoothed his red fur, attempting to regain some dignity. Then he
hopped closer, nosing his face into hers. One eye shone vivid blue.
The other was nothing but a puckered hole. The hair rose on
Lennie’s arms.
    The ravens croaked and launched from her
shoulders, their claws drawing bright dots of blood. They fluttered
to the branch, flanking the squirrel like bodyguards.
    The squirrel plucked a twig and used its
splintered end to trace a symbol on Lennie’s left hand.
    “With this Valknut, I bind you to me in
service against the Wolf,” it said in a deep voice. “You be not
king nor warrior chief, yet I claim you. In this battle, you shall
prevail or perish.”
    She thought it was a silly statement coming
from a squirrel, but before she could say so, its one eye began to
glow. The twig writhed in its paw, lengthening,