فصل 12

At Least I’m Not on Goat-Chasing Duty

IN THE HALLWAY, my neighbors were starting to emerge. Thomas Jefferson, Jr. looked about my age. He had short curly hair, a lanky frame, and a rifle slung over one shoulder. His blue woolen coat had brass buttons and chevrons on the sleeve—a U.S. Army Civil War uniform, I guessed. He nodded and smiled. “How you doing?”

“Um, dead, apparently,” I said.

He laughed. “Yeah. You’ll get used to it. Call me T.J.”

“Magnus,” I said.

“Come on.” Sam pulled me along.

We passed a girl who must’ve been Mallory Keen. She had frizzy red hair, green eyes, and a serrated knife, which she was shaking in the face of a six-foot-seven guy outside the door marked x.

“Again with the pig’s head?” Mallory Keen spoke in a faint Irish brogue. “X, do you think I want to see a severed pig’s head every time I step out my front door?”

“I could not eat anymore,” X rumbled. “The pig head does not fit in my refrigerator.”

Personally, I would not have antagonized the guy. He was built like a bomb containment chamber. If you happened to have a live grenade, I was pretty sure you could safely dispose of it simply by asking X to swallow it. His skin was the color of a shark’s belly, rippling with muscles and stippled with warts. There were so many welts on his face it was hard to tell which one was his nose.

We walked past, X and Mallory too busy arguing to pay us any attention.

When we were out of earshot, I asked Sam, “What’s the deal with the big gray dude?”

Sam put her finger to her lips. “X is a half-troll. He’s a little sensitive about that.”

“A half-troll. That’s an actual thing?”

“Of course,” she said. “And he deserves to be here as much as you.”

“Hey, no doubt. Just asking.”

The defensiveness in her voice made me wonder what the story was.

As we passed the door for HALFBORN GUNDERSON, an ax blade split the wood from the inside. Muffled laughter came from the room.

Sam ushered me onto the elevator. She pushed away several other einherjar who were trying to get on. “Next car, guys.”

The spear-cage door slid shut. Sam inserted one of her keys into an override slot on the panel. She pressed a red rune and the elevator descended. “I’ll take you into the dining hall before the main doors open. That way you can get the lay of the land.”

“Uh…sure. Thanks.”

Nordic easy listening music started playing from the ceiling.

Congratulations, Magnus! I thought. Welcome to warrior paradise, where you can listen to Frank Sinatra in Norwegian FOREVER!

I tried to think of something to say, preferably something that would not make Sam crush my windpipe.

“So…everybody on floor nineteen looks about my age,” I noted. “Or—our age. Does Valhalla only take teenagers?”

Samirah shook her head. “The einherjar are grouped by the age they were when they died. You’re in the youngest tier, which goes up to about age nineteen. Most of the time, you won’t even see the other two tiers—adults and seniors. It’s better that way. The adults…well, they don’t take teens seriously, even if the teens have been here hundreds of years longer.”

“Typical,” I said.

“As for the senior warriors, they don’t always mix well. Imagine a really violent retirement home.”

“Sounds like some shelters I’ve been in.”

“Shelters?”

“Forget it. So you’re a Valkyrie. You chose all the people in the hotel?”

“Yes,” she said. “I personally chose everyone in this hotel.”

“Ha, ha. You know what I meant. Your…sisterhood or whatever.”

“That’s right. Valkyries are responsible for choosing the einherjar. Each warrior here died a valiant death. Each had a belief in honor, or some connection to the Norse gods that made him or her eligible for Valhalla.”

I thought about what Uncle Randolph had told me, how the sword had been a birthright from my father. “A connection…like being the child of a god?”

I was afraid Sam might laugh at me, but she nodded gravely. “Many einherjar are demigods. Many are regular mortals. You’re chosen for Valhalla because of your courage and honor, not your heritage. At least, that’s how it’s supposed to be….”

I couldn’t decide if her tone was wistful or resentful.

“And you?” I asked. “How did you become a Valkyrie? Did you die a noble death?”

She laughed. “Not yet. I’m still among the living.”

“How does that work exactly?”

“Well, I live a double life. Tonight, I’ll escort you to dinner. Then I have to rush home and finish my calculus homework.”

“You’re not joking, are you?”

“I never joke about calculus homework.”

The elevator doors opened. We stepped into a room the size of a concert arena.

My mouth dropped. “Holy—”

“Welcome,” Samirah said, “to the Feast Hall of the Slain.”

Tiers of long tables like stadium seating curved downward from the nosebleed section. In the center of the room, instead of a basketball court, a tree rose taller than the Statue of Liberty. Its lowest branches were maybe a hundred feet up. Its canopy spread over the entire hall, scraping against the domed ceiling and sprouting through a massive opening at the top. Above, stars glittered in the night sky.

My first question probably wasn’t the most important. “Why is there a goat in the tree?”

In fact, a lot of animals skittered among the branches. I couldn’t tell what most of them were, but wobbling along the lowest branch was a very fat shaggy goat. Its swollen udders rained milk like leaky showerheads. Below, on the dining-hall floor, a team of four stocky warriors carried a big golden bucket on poles set across their shoulders. They shuffled back and forth, trying to stay under the goat so they could catch the streams of milk. Judging by how soaked the warriors were, they missed a lot.

“The goat is Heidrun,” Sam told me. “Her milk is brewed to make the mead of Valhalla. It’s good stuff. You’ll see.”

“And the guys chasing her around?”

“Yeah, that’s a thankless job. Behave yourself, or you might get assigned to vat duty.”

“Uh…couldn’t they just, I don’t know, bring the goat down here?”

“She’s a free-range goat. Her mead tastes better that way.”

“Of course it does,” I said. “And…all the other animals? I see squirrels and possums and—”

“Sugar gliders and sloths,” Sam offered. “Those are cute.”

“Okay. But you guys eat dinner here? That can’t be hygienic with all the animal droppings.”

“The animals in the Tree of Laeradr are well-behaved.”

“The Tree of…Lay-rah-dur. You named your tree.”

“Most important things have names.” She frowned at me. “Who are you again?”

“Very funny.”

“Some of the animals are immortal and have particular jobs. I can’t spot him right now, but somewhere up there is a stag named Eikthrymir. We call him Ike for short. You see that waterfall?”

It was hard to miss. From somewhere high in the tree, water ran down grooves in the bark and formed one powerful torrent that cascaded off a branch in a roaring white curtain. It crashed into a pond the size of an Olympic pool between two of the tree’s roots.

“The stag’s horns spray water nonstop,” Sam said. “It flows down the branches into that lake. From there, it goes underground and feeds every river in every world.”

“So…all water is stag-horn runoff? I’m pretty sure that’s not what they taught me in earth science.”

“It’s not all from Ike’s horns. There’s also snowmelt, rainwater, pollutants, and trace amounts of fluoride and jotun spit.”

“Jotun?”

“You know, giants.”

She didn’t appear to be kidding, though it was hard to be sure. Her face was full of tense humor—her eyes darting and alert, her lips pressed together like she was either suppressing a laugh or expecting an attack. I could imagine her doing stand-up comedy, though maybe not with the ax at her side. Her features also seemed strangely familiar—the line of her nose, the curve of her jaw, the subtle streaks of red and copper in her dark hair.

“Have we met before?” I asked. “I mean…before you chose my soul for Valhalla?”

“I doubt it,” she said.

“But you’re mortal? You live in Boston?”

“Dorchester. I’m a sophomore at King Academy. I live with my grandparents and spend most of my time finding excuses to cover for my Valkyrie activities. Tonight, Jid and Bibi think I’m tutoring a group of elementary students in math. Any other questions?”

Her eyes sent the opposite message: Enough with the personal stuff.

I wondered why she lived with her grandparents. Then I remembered what she’d said earlier, about understanding what it was like to grieve for a mother.

“No more questions,” I decided. “My head would explode.”

“That would be messy,” Sam said. “Let’s get your seat before—”

Around the perimeter of the room, a hundred doors burst open. The armies of Valhalla swarmed in.

“Dinner is served,” Sam said.