The Apple Throne Read Online Free

my waist, dragging me to the bed. “To the things we have lost!” she crows, tossing back more liquor before thrusting it at me.
    I drink, and she drinks, and my apple pie burns a third time.

Twenty-eight nights
.
    Even drunk, even sleeping in the arms of a god, his red hair twisting across my face, his angry tears smearing between our cheeks, I still do not dream.

Thirty-three nights
.
    Tonight, an arc of shining women appear in the sunset shadows of my orchard. Like ghosts, they are gray and misty, wearing gowns from ancient times or hats feathered and ruffed from the last century, in boots or high heels or jeans, hair braided or bobbed short, smiling, holding their hands out to me. One steps forward, long braids beaded to her knees and wearing a medieval mantle. She says, “It is disir night, Idun the Young, and you are one of us now.”
    I do not know what to reply.
    The disir are our deceased mothers and grandmothers, the female spirits of a hundred generations—goddesses, elf-queens and troll-mothers, priestesses of every sort, and even the giantess ghosts. Tonight, I see no bulbous, toothy trolls or massive, glorious giants, no ethereal and pristine elves here: only women. Maybe my grandmothers, maybe only nearby spirit cousins, or even past Iduns and their kin. My mother herself is not here.
    The medieval disir woman flicks her fingers. “Come with us, Idun. Tonight, you may leave, you may go where you wish and return before dawn, your apples no worse for wear. It is the only night we are free of our bindings!”
    I take her insubstantial hand, and a soft wind seems to blow through my body, though no physical stuff moves my hair or skirt. It is so like the seething magic—that ghost of flight, of spinning power—I close my eyes happily.
    They surround me, petting my hair, plucking at my sweater and dress. They kiss my cheeks, my wrists. They coo and whisper their names.
    “Where would you go?” one asks.
    “Soren, I want to see him,” I say without thinking. I’m not allowed to
have
him, but see him perhaps?
    “Where would this Soren be?” another asks.
    I look into her gray-brown eyes, through which I see apple-leaves shivering in the night wind. “With Baldur the Beautiful,” I guess.
    “Come, come!” they cry. They grasp at me, dragging me along and up into a whirlwind. The sky batters us; I cannot breathe for the thin air! My lungs pinch. I fear they forget I am alive still, not built for the paths of spirits! But my terror lifts away in a gust of warm, sticky wind and the sound of music.
    I stand alone in a great garden crawling with elephant ear plants and bobbing birds of paradise, steamy hibiscus and spreading magnolias. A white mansion glows nearby with elf-lights and lamps, while some brusque, sharp string band sends peels of dancing music out over the garden. I breathe deep of the thick air, the rich smells of tropical flowers. To be outside the orchard for the first time in more than a month! I’ve never spent so long in only one place before. I hope this will always be a night of freedom, that I did no wrong in Freya’s eyes by going with the disir.
    I hear a small grunt of frustration, and something shiny arcs across the path to land in the bushes. Glancing over, I see a girl seated stiffly on a stone bench. She wears a blood-red gown and her pale hair is braided intricately like a Valkyrie. Her fingers are covered in rings, but she tugs at them angrily as tears streak blotchy tracks down her painted face.
    “Hello,” I say.
    The girl glares up at me, dark mascara bleeding wide around her starkly pale green eyes. Something in her anger draws me nearer. When I was a prophet guided by dreams, I often found myself in the right place at the right time to help a lost soul. Hope kindles in me. Perhaps some tiny strand of fate has brought me here for her.
    “You seem upset,” I say, attempting not to sound eager.
    “I was here to catch my breath
privately
.”
    I smile. “I