“I’m surprised they let you in.”
“Well,letis a strong word.”
“You broke into Valhalla?”
“I didn’t break into anything. I snuck in like a gentleman. But that’s a different story. In what I thought was a random stroke of luck, I found the Feather on a battlefield. I had arrived at the end of the fight, Valkyries shattering the sky into fragments of gold, striding across the land, gathering the brave.
“One of the Valkyries spread her wings and blocked out the stars, her wings were so wide and bright. She was daylight in the darkness. Just…”
He shook his head. I had rarely heard the honest tone of wonder in his voice.
“And the Feather fell. Not light, not floating. It was liquid, pouring downward, as if the air were thicker around it. As if the Feather cut through reality sharpened by different laws, something beyond…beyond.” He angled his hand downward, and the movement echoed something unearthly.
He seemed to notice what he was doing and cleared his throat, self-conscious.
“Tell me the rest. The Feather fell—or didn’t fall? It cut reality. Then what?”
“You won’t believe me.”
“I might believe you.”
“You didn’t believe me about the penguins.”
“That’s because you are lying about the penguins.”
He waggled his eyebrows.
“I’d like to know. About the Feather. Please?”
“You think it will help you solve the robbery?”
“No. Just…you make it sound like a wonder.”
He nodded. “It was. I had to have it. I waited for the Valkyrie to rise into the sky, two warriors in her arms. Then I waited longer.
“When I thought it was safe, I stepped out of hiding. The Feather, glittering with jewels I had never seen, stirred on that war-filled wind.” He glanced off in the distance, and I could almost hear the battle horns of his memory, could almost taste the heated air, the churned earth.
“I knelt. The Feather seemed so soft, so pliant. So easy for the taking. I wrapped my fingers around it and tugged.”
“It was heavy?”
“It was…gravity, stone, an anchor in the universe.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“I kid you not. It was connected to that battleground, immovable. Holding that place, bookmarking that point in time. It was a claim. And it was staying there until the Valkyrie came back for it.”
“You couldn’t move it?”
He put his hands on his hips and tipped his eyes to the horizon again, thinking. “She left it there to claim that space, that battlefield as her own. No one could move it.”
“So it stayed there? You left?”
“I hid. I wanted to see what would happen when she came back. It was the first Feather I’d ever found. I wanted a clue so I could steal another in the future.”
I raised my eyebrows, and he chuckled. “Your face. I didn’t steal Bertie’s Feather, because I can’t.”
“But why?”
