Valkyrie of Desire

4. Verdant Rules

Life finds a way

To survive is holy

All babies born

Suckle my teats freely

—Agastache Beebuzz

In the dark before dawn, Hildr slaps her cheeks and hikes on. Trees grow sparse as the terrain turns rocky. Orange flags hang from pikes, marking where the cobbled path steepens and widens. Thorny brush cut low and dirt raked aside, the dusty trail becomes a wagon-wide swath of flat stone, straight as an arrow.

Booted foot in front of booted foot, shoulders sore and stomach cramping, she trudges onward with a laborer's mindless resolve. There is no carriage, litter or rickshaw to ease the final yules to Lotus Hollow. She is no better than the stumbling zombies that first paved this path an age ago.

As the rising sun disperses the morning mist, Hildr yawns and rubs her eyes. "Scout about, Meepsin."

"Yes, yes. East, West." Her brownie friend hops off her shoulder and sprints between broken pillars of gray granite speckled with blue.

Hildr switches sides with her robe-on-a-stick and rubs relieved neck muscles, brushing her fingers against the gold chain she took from the sick mother on the road. The heavy cloth, even cursed, is hundreds of times more valuable than the necklace. Hildr clutches the stick with the hunger of a nesting dragon. She must find somewhere safe and pack it with treasure. The fire in her belly demands it.

Face flushed, she follows Meepsin to oversized ruins made of more blue-speckled granite, standard scale and color for the homes of titans.

"Graveyard of the last age," she says under her breath.

On both sides of the cobbled path, the remains of the titanic homes stand like abandoned forts. The gray bricks are cemented together with a matching speckled paste. Cracks are rare. Most of the buildings still have a sculpted quality, as if they were chipped out of a mountainside whole.

Meepsin slows. "Shivering but not cold. Curious but not bold."

"A lingering ambition haunts this place." She shudders. "A promise from the giants of Blue, they will return from the sea to rule."

Hildr walks past rounded doorways large enough for mounted men and curved walls tall enough to defend against a siege. Clumps of waist-high grass, stumps of trees, and piles of dirt fill in the rest of the bleak landscape.

Her boot crunches gravel, and she winces. No chirping insects or calling birds, only a slight wind whistling. Anyone, or thing, nearby must hear her every step, her every breath.

She growls and shakes her head. "Fear no ghosts under the sun's flame."

Holes dug and scaffolding leaning, excavation work has been abandoned half done. Meepsin tumbles around a broken rake, and Hildr kicks a rusty shovel. With the titans centuries gone, their stones make good bones for the homes of the small.

The path splits ahead where a sagging, circus-sized tent flutters in the breeze. Dap flies into a staked-open entry and caws.

Clicking woody arms like a pair of drumsticks, Meepsin caws back to the crow, and Hildr shushes him.

"Dap says empty." He wiggles needle-thin fingers in front of his lemony eyes. "No people see."

"Good." Hildr squats down to face the brownie. "Lute was funding the development for this haunted half of town, and with the purge of our demigods, I'd be surprised if my band kept up payments."