Mardi shifted to me, but before we made eye contact, I shifted my gaze to Mum. Like I said, I had no need to see my twin gloat.
“Did you know before or after the attack?”
Mum took a long moment before speaking.
“I know you probably think I hate your father,” she said finally, “especially after what I told you about the coming war against the old gods. But I want you to know that what your father and I had was real. It was love. And when you love someone once, you never stop loving them.”
“With all due respect,” Mardi said, in a voice that wasn’t respectful at all, “that wasn’t an answer to my question.”
“Wasn’t it?” Mum said. “Thor wasn’t just the love of my life. The universe picked us out to be together. To conceive you. Don’t think my spells to give birth to his children would have worked if we hadn’t been destined to be together. If we hadn’t been chosen to bring something wonderful into being. Something that could raise Midgard from the weakest of the nine worlds to the equal of Asgard or Jotunheim or Ljosalfheim. When you share that kind of bond with someone, you could never wish them dead. Never.”
“And yet you said that it was our destiny to kill our own father, and Ingrid and Freya and all the old gods.”
“I said it was the new gods’ destiny,” Mum said. Her tone didn’t really change but you could hear the scolding in it, and Mardi’s eyes dropped to the floor of the cabin. “You two are the first. You will be the most powerful, and their queens, but that doesn’t mean that the sword or the wand that finally strikes down Thor in a decade or a century or a millennium will be held in one of your hands.”
Mum shrugged, as if to say these things weren’t worth worrying about, and who knew, maybe for a mortal a hundred or a thousand years was such an overwhelming amount of time that it was inconceivable for her.
“Prophecies are a slippery business,” she continued. “Much of their language is deeply symbolic, which means they’re open to interpretation, and even then they often get some details wrong. According to all the legends, you two were supposed to be male, yet here you are, as beautiful and feminine as any two goddesses who ever lived. And yet the Council itself decreed that you were the foretold deities of strength and rage, and even your father agreed that you were the new gods that had been prophesied.”
“Wait, Dad knows?” I turned to Mardi. “Did he say anything to you?”
“Nope,” Mardi said in a closed-off tone. I wasn’t sure if she was trying to suggest that Mum’s statement wasn’t to be trusted, or if she was trying to cover up the fact that she had had intimate conversations with Dad about our divine nature, which is something we’d never done on our own. I wanted to tell her it wasn’t her fault. I was the one who’d run away, after all, at exactly the moment when there were all kinds of things we needed to learn from Dad. I could hardly expect her to wait for me.
“No doubt he didn’t want to burden you, especially during the Reawakening.”
“So Dad knows that Mardi and I, or our descendants, are supposed to kill him?”
Mum laughed. “I doubt he finds it quite as dramatic as the two of you did. Your father once told me that if he had a dollar for every prophecy about his demise at the hands of his father, his brother, his children, or some other of his relatives, he’d be a rich man.”
“He already is a rich man,” I joked.
“That’s what I told him.” Mum laughed. “At any rate, if he really was worried about the two of you killing him, he wouldn’t have saved you this morning. Have you heard from him?”
“We can’t get through,” Mardi said. “We think someone—well, Ivan, I guess—cast some kind of spell that keeps us from communicating with other immortal beings, or at least the ones in the East End. Would a spell like that still work even with Ivan dead?”
“If he used an energy source like a lodestar or a moonstone to power it, it would. If he relied on his own energy, the spell should have died with him.” At the last words, Mum’s voice cracked. “I still can’t believe he would do such a thing to my daughters. He served my family for so long—ever since the Council liberated us from our vassalage. In many ways, I knew him better than my own parents. I never once questioned his loyalty. But I guess the hearts of immortal beings are different.” She looked up with a startled expression, as if just remembering that her daughters were also immortal. “Just promise me that when you come into your full powers, you won’t forget about your poor old mum.”
I felt a knot in my stomach. The lights flickered again, and I was sure it was me until I glanced over and saw Mardi’s white knuckles gripping the arm of her seat.
I took a moment to calm myself, then I said, “Will he come back? Like we do, if our Midgardian bodies are destroyed?”
“I don’t know,” Mum said, a strange mixture of loss and anger and fear in her voice. “I know it’s never happened before. But elves manifest differently. Their bodies are much more powerful, their magic more concentrated in them, and less dependent on material aids like wands and powders and all that. But to the best of my knowledge, he probably is really, truly gone . . .”
Her voice trailed off, and for a moment, she just sat there, her face sad at first, then angry again, and then she shook her head and smiled brightly.
“So you haven’t spoken to your father at all?” she asked, clearly changing the subject.
I shook my head. “I told you. We tried calling . . . but if Ivan was behind this, his hex still seems to be in effect, even though we’re not in the East End.”
“It’s probably because Troy’s there,” Mum said. “Hold on,” she added, and got up and walked to the small table at the far end of the cabin. There was a set of cabinets behind it, and she opened one and pulled out a phone.
“What’s Ingrid’s number?”
Mardi and I looked at each other, then laughed. We may be goddesses, but neither of us had memorized her number, and I had to pull it out of my phone.
Mum dialed and a moment later sang out, “Ingrid Beauchamp. It’s been years since I’ve heard your voice.”
She grimaced then and held the phone away from her ear.
“They’re fine,” she said loudly, obviously speaking over Ingrid. “They’re fine,” she repeated. “They’re sitting right here in front of me. I’m afraid they can’t come to the phone. Ivan seems to have cast some kind of spell interfering with their ability to use electronic devices—no doubt he was piggybacking on Joanna’s hexes around the East End.” She sighed. “Girls, yell something so Ingrid knows you’re all right.”
“Hi, Ingrid!” we both yelled at the same.
“We’re fine!” I added, grinning at the mental image of Ingrid’s disapproving-librarian frown.
“Satisfied?” Mum said. “Anyway, we were calling to say we’re on the way home, and to thank Troy for—what?” she interrupted herself, or, I guess, responded to an interruption from Ingrid. “Oh, my gods. Is he—”
I flashed an alarmed look at Mardi. Was Mum talking about Dad? Had something happened?
“I see,” Mum said. “I’ll tell the girls. We should be back in North Hampton in about three hours. I’ll send them straight over.”
She hung up the phone.
“What happened?” Mardi almost yelled.
“I want you to calm yourselves, girls. No need to bring the plane down.”
“What happened?” I said, doing my best to keep my emotions under control.
“It’s your dad,” Mum said. “I’m afraid the spell he cast against Ivan was too much for his body to handle in its weakened state. He’s fallen into a coma. Ingrid doesn’t know if he’s going to wake up.”
26
GOD OF THUNDER
Mardi-Overbrook-Journal.docx
Girls!” Ingrid yelled in a voice louder than I’d ever heard her use before. “Oh, thank gods, you’re home!”
“I knew something was terribly wrong,” she said when she finally let us go. “I just had this feeling. A pit in my stomach as though I’d swallowed poison. I called Freya and she felt it too, but when we tried to get ahold of you, all our calls went straight to voice mail. And then your dad—” She broke off. Her eyes dropped to the floor. “Your dad just screamed, ‘Not my daughters!’ The whole house shook. I mean shook.” She pointed, showing us dozens of cracks in the plaster, as well as a half dozen broken vases and pots that had sat on shelves and on top of credenzas and sideboards. “I ran upstairs and he was in some kind . . . some kind of trance. His lips were moving, but I only caught the occasional word. ‘Storm Caller’ and ‘Lightning Bearer,’ which are some of your father’s names in Old Norse. It sounded like he was summoning a storm, but the sky remained perfectly clear. It was where you were, wasn’t it? He called a storm to save you, from whatever was threatening you.”
“A killer whale,” I said.
“A killer elf,” Molly said at the same time.
“A shape-shifter!” Ingrid said. “One of the Fallen Elves!”
“The what now?” I said.
“Millennia ago, during the war between the Aesir and the Jotun, Odin called for allies among the nine worlds. The dwarfs took the side of the giants, but the elves took our side. All save a few, led by Johan, the king’s son, who had the power of shape-shifting.”
“Johan?” Molly said doubtfully. “Ivan maybe?”
Ingrid nodded her head. “After the Jotun and their allies were defeated, Johan was said to have taken refuge among the tribes of the east, which meant the Russians. Ivan is the Slavic word for Johan—John.”
“Well, John or Johan or Ivan or whatever you want to call him is pretty dead right now,” I said. “Dad’s lightning bolt ripped a hole in his chest the size of . . . well, does it matter how big it was? It was a hole.”
“Do you know if he’ll come back?” Molly asked. “Are the elves like us?”
“I’m afraid so,” Ingrid said. “Somewhere out there, he’s invaded some poor woman’s womb. He’ll colonize a newly fertilized embryo before it has time to form a soul, and the parents will end up raising a demon as their own child. There are ways to find it, though. We can kill him before he’s ever born. We’ll kill him over and over again if we have to!”
Ingrid’s eyes were so wide they were ringed by white. Her nostrils flared, and her lips were practically frothing. I’d never seen her like this. Who knew the goddess of the hearth had the heart of a warrior?
“Let’s worry about that later,” Molly said. “How’s Dad?”
And all at once, the bravado was gone. Ingrid’s whole body bowed as if someone had dropped a hay bale on her shoulders. I reached out to her, half afraid she was going to sink to the floor. But beneath my hand, Ingrid’s arm was as hard as steel.
“I don’t know,” she said in a muted voice. “After he cast his spell, he never came out of his trance. He seemed conscious at first, though delirious, but then his eyes closed. I’d say he’s in a coma, but that’s a human term. Dr. Mésomier says it’s more like a state of suspended animation. He’s breathing about once per minute, and his temperature’s barely seventy degrees.”
“Is there some kind of magic that can help him?” I asked.
Ingrid shook her head. “It’s not his body. His body’s fine. Weak, but uninjured. Still he expended so much of his magical essence on that spell that he’s . . . lost, is how Jean-Baptiste put it.”
“Lost?” Molly repeated in a terrified tone. “What does that mean?”
Ingrid shrugged helplessly. “Jean-Baptiste says that your father’s soul is wandering between planes right now. If everything works out, he’ll find his way back to his Midgardian body. But if he takes a wrong turn or gets confused, he could end up in Niflheim.”
“In Hel,” I said.
“Wait,” Molly interjected. “Do you mean forever? Do you mean Dad could . . . could actually die?”
Ingrid just stared at us miserably. “Oh, girls. I’m so sorry.”
Molly and I didn’t say anything, but I felt her fingers curl around mine and we took off for the stairs. Molly’s hatred of exercise is boundless, but she ran so fast, Usain Bolt would have been left in her dust. It was all I could do to keep up.
But as soon as we burst into Jo’s room, we came to a full stop as though we’d run into a wall. Dad’s body on the bed just looked so . . . so . . .
“Is he dead?” Molly asked in a horrified voice.
“No!” I said harshly. “We’d know. We’d feel it.”
Molly nodded, but she moved slowly as she approached the bed, as if she was afraid that I was wrong. Jo had a miniature peacock chair woven from white rattan with a tufted pink cushion on it, and Molly pulled this up to the bed and sat in it gingerly. Ingrid or someone had pulled the pink blanket up to Dad’s chest, and his arms lay atop it. Tentatively, Molly picked up one of his hands.
Of course I wanted to run to Dad too, but I held back to give Molly her moment. It was the first time she’d seen him in a full month. As much as I needed to feel my father’s hand in mine, she needed it more. Unlike me, Molly had gone off to live with Mum, but I’d stayed at Ingrid’s with Dad.
“It’s cold,” Molly said in a hushed voice. She looked up at me with a small, determined smile on her face. “But it still feels like Dad.”
I took that as my cue and grabbed a small silver gilded stool with yet another pink cushion and crossed to the other side of the bed. I sat down tentatively, not sure if the stool’s thin, curly metal legs would hold my weight. When it didn’t buckle beneath me, I relaxed into it and grabbed Dad’s other hand.
Molly was right. It was cold. Not frigid, but chilly, as if he’d been walking outside in the winter with no gloves. But it was supple, and even though it didn’t respond to my touch, you could still feel the strength in the muscles. This was the same hand that had once punched a hole through a brick wall and thrown a baseball a full mile. It was the hand that had held Thor’s hammer.
“It definitely feels like Dad,” I said.
For a long time, we sat there like that, Molly holding Dad’s right hand, me holding his left, inhaling and exhaling in unison, as though we could fill his lungs with our breath. Then I had to ruin it all by speaking.
“This is what a real parent does.”
Molly started at the sound of my voice, and I wondered if she’d dozed off.
“What are you talking about?”
“A real parent loves you so much he knows when you’re in danger. He risks his own life to save yours.”
Molly looked at me warily. “I don’t get it. Are you saying Mum wouldn’t do this for us?”
“Well, where was she when Ivan was trying to have us for dinner?”
“Have you for dinner, you mean? And you know where she was—she was giving an interview to ESPN Australia.”
“Listen to yourself. ‘Giving an interview to ESPN Australia.’ She said on the plane that she knew Ivan wanted me dead. She should have never left us alone with him.”
Molly looked shocked. “It’s not like she thought he would actually try anything. He’d served her family for generations. Hundreds of years. Why would she think he’d betray her now?”
“Why?” I repeated incredulously. “Why? Because he said he would, that’s why!”
“I can’t believe this! After everything that’s happened, you still think Mum was in on it. You think—you think your own mother wanted you dead.”
“That’s not all I think,” I shot back. “I think she wanted Dad dead too. I think she was trying to jump-start this whole god war thing, maybe get it out of the way in her lifetim
e.”
Molly’s knuckles went white around Dad’s, and I was surprised I didn’t hear bones crack.
“What are you even talking about?”
“Think about it,” I said. “Mum knew Dad was weak. She knew he would sense that we were in danger, and that it would take an extra-strength spell for him to summon a storm from a thousand miles away. So she conveniently makes herself scarce, gets Ivan to take his killer whale form and attack us, and waits for Dad to do himself in. It’s the perfect plan—no one can link it to her.”
“That’s because there’s no link!” Molly almost yelled. “You just made the whole thing up! Mum told us—she still loves Dad. Maybe not in an I-want-to-get-back-with-him kind of way, but certainly not in an I-want-to-kill-him way either.”
“My gods, Molly. It’s staring you in the face, and you refuse to see it. When are you going to stop taking her side, and remember who your real family is? She tried to kill me! She tried to kill Dad!”
Molly’s jaw dropped open. “How dare you suggest that I don’t love Dad as much as you do! That I don’t love you!”
“Well, if you do, you’ve sure got a funny way of showing it!”
“Oh, my gods! You’re jealous! That’s what it is. For once in my life, I have something that you don’t have, and you can’t stand it! You get the Ferrari, you get the rad tattoos, you get Freya, you get Tyr. You always get everything! Well, guess what? Mum likes me better than you, and you know why? Because I’m not a selfish brat like you!”
“Selfish!” I screamed, jumping up so fast that the stool rolled away across the room. “Selfish!” I screamed again. “All my life I’ve carried you, and you call me selfish! Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!”
“Really!” Molly said contemptuously, standing up so that she was on my level. She leaned over Dad’s prostrate body and shoved her face in mine. “Were you carrying me when you tried to steal Rocky?”
“Ha!” I screamed back, leaning toward her so that our noses were practically touching and I could feel her hot breath on my face. “You can’t steal the willing!”
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