All the Windwracked Stars (The Edda of Burdens) by Elizabeth Bear Page B

last.”
    Gentle wasn’t the right word. Not really. But the man’s fingers had cradled Cahey’s skull in a tender curve, a touch that was as affectionate as it was uncomfortable. And so very wrong, for a business transaction.
    Astrid poked him soundly in the chest. “Ow!”
    “Answer the question.”
    He winced, but admitted: “I didn’t hear it.”
    “I was asking what he wanted. But . . . Cahey. You don’t seem okay.”
    She knew. She didn’t know what was wrong, and that was fine. He didn’t know what was bothering him either. But he loved her for looking for it, like a thorn to be plucked from his paw.
    He kissed her. He’d cleaned his teeth. And Astrid had her own ways of paying the bills; she wasn’t squeamish. Whoring was better than working the meat tanks, like his mother had done. “I . . .” He shrugged. She nestled closer, breasts molding to his chest, hair a snake down his shoulder. Honesty compelled him to add, “He paid too much.”
    “Too much?”
How much?
    He didn’t answer.
A lot.
    “So . . . what?”
    Cahey pressed his face into her neck, where her skin smelled of soap and the flat metal of stored water, and breathed it in as if it could scour him. He couldn’t very well say, his scent. Which was part of it. Not dirty, which Cahey was used to, living in the shadow of the Well where there was neither running water nor rain to fill water towers. But rank, animal, raunchy. Wild.
    Her hand cupped his groin. “You’re hard.”
    “That’s not for him.” It never was. Paid sex rolled off his back like so much greasy rain. If they wanted something he had to get it up for, he thought about Astrid, or Hrothgar, or Aislinn, and shut his eyes. “Are you too tired?”
    “Never,” she said. She shifted, pulled her arm out from under his shoulders, pushed him onto his back. “Are you?”
    His hands slid up her thighs from the knees as she settled over him. “Love, all I want is to make love to somebody who knows my name.”
    She leaned forward, squinted at him through the darkness, lips almost brushing his nose. “Sure thing,” she said. “Now, which one were you again?”
     
    C urled in snow, among the roots of a tree so large whole worlds fruit on its branches, the wolf dreams of clean rain and wakes weeping.
    These are not his dreams. He does not dream.
    He does not sleep.
    Once he dreamed waking; once he moved through theworld as a dream. A wolf-dream, a sword-dream. No longer: there are no wolves nor einherjar to need his dreaming now.
    When he rubs his palms across his eyes, all he feels is dust.
    It’s soft.
    He reaches out a gloved hand and strokes the root he shelters behind. Something is carved there: a rune, a summoning. The most secret spell of all. One a god gave his life and sight for. The wolf hooks his fingertips into the gap. These are Muire’s dreams he is dreaming; this is Muire’s sleep he is sleeping. She is frail, worn, ancient. Almost mortal now. She eats, she bleeds, she sleeps, she pisses. Like any animal.
    She dreams.
    And having devoured her, the Grey Wolf dreams, as well. He dreams of rain but wakes to fire. He is burning, burning still, burning behind his heart, burning along his bones. His bed of snow cannot cool him.
    It’s the price you pay forever, when you swallow down the sun.

5
Wunjo (comfort)

    I n the morning, Muire came home. She took a rickshaw from the clinic on Brightside, dozing in the seat, her animal body desperate for the sleep she begrudged it. Rubber and aluminum wheels rattled over broken stones, the driver jogging through dawn-empty streets, bearing her past the gibbet at Hangman. She cradled her arm, which was immobilized in an inflatable cast, and tried not to blink too much because the insides of her eyelids felt scratchy.
    She’d slept in the clinic, pain-hazed, half-conscious. It would have to be enough, for a little. She had the driver drop her off downtown, nearly on her doorstep, and paid him for the return trip