Valhalla

by Jennifer Willis

  * * *

  Managarm closed his tired eyes and leaned back into the wooden chair at the small table shoved up against the coffee shop window. His head pounded, and his feet felt like lead. He cursed himself for having been witless enough to attempt a Runic Calling on his own. He had no experience with any kind of magick. How was he supposed to know the spell would come back and kick him in the butt ten hours later?

  He rubbed his temples and tried to shut out the loud conversations and laughter around him. He felt like he’d been hit by one of Thor’s thunderbolts—something he’d experienced before, after making a foolishly flip comment about the other god’s new tunic at a celebratory feast.

  But this time Thor was nowhere in sight. Managarm had been standing in line at Trader Joe’s to buy a burlap sack of basmati rice and a half-dozen cans of franks-n-beans when it hit him. One minute he was counting out currency for the cashier, and the next he felt like his scalp was on fire, his head ready to crack open. Then his field of vision exploded into a million shards of blinding light. He’d barely gotten himself out of the store and into the coffee shop next-door without colliding with a mailbox and several trash cans.

  After a few minutes of trying to catch his breath, everything blinked back into focus. The heavy weight on his chest eased, but the temple-splitting headache continued. Managarm rested his head against the cool glass of the window and quietly cursed a blue streak—pretty much all of it against Odin.

  Managarm’s best guess was that his spell had boomeranged back with a vengeance. All that magickal energy had to go somewhere. He’d sent it out to do a job, and when it failed, it simply returned to its point of origin, and had practically knocked out of him what little divine life he had left.

  Which meant that the spell hadn’t worked, and now Managarm was nearly comatose.

  How was he supposed to bring down the Lodge of Odin now? His muscles felt like molten lead, and every time he opened his eyes, new shards of pain ricocheted into his brain. The Black Moon would come and go during this astronomical convergence, and he’d have to wait another 1200 years for his next chance at Ragnarok.

  Managarm pinched the bridge of his nose and grimaced. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  “Here’s your sandwich!” The annoyingly perky waitress slid a plate onto the table. “And I got you a refill on your coffee.”

  Managarm blinked open his eyes and stared up at the young woman. Her clothing was a hazy festival of fire-colored polka-dots that kept swimming in and out of focus. He growled.

  There was a time when the bared teeth of the Moon Dog sent mortals screaming into the night, fearing for their lives. But the blond, ponytailed teenager with a three-armed purple knot tattooed on her wrist just giggled and smoothed her apron.

  “I’m Dotty. You just come back to the counter or flag me down if you need anything else, okay?” Dotty turned away and squeezed through a trio of plump, gender-ambiguous individuals in tie-dyed muumuus who were huddled around the fireplace. Managarm sneered at the NeoPagan scrum—nearly 30 strong—that laughed too loudly and took up two-thirds of the shop, including all the comfortable seats. If not for them, he would have stretched out on the sofa by the crackling fire and eaten his roast beef sandwich in peace.

  “Stupid Meetup group,” Managarm grumbled and rubbed his eyes. Not ten minutes earlier, a half-dozen of these people—from teenager to senior citizen—staged a witch-cackling contest. For a startled moment, Managarm had thought Hel, Queen of the Underworld herself, had come to claim him for the dark realm of Niflheim.

  Another chorus of laughter erupted. Managarm sighed in disgust. If he could muster a full-throated howl, he’d have the run of the place in seconds flat. Instead, a gang of long-haired children with names like Gryffin and Raintree ran laps around the haphazard circle of chairs, shrieking at the top of their lungs.

  Managarm wondered how many of these Pagans actually practiced what they preached, and how many were just looking to fit in somewhere. Or maybe it was just Portland, where weirdness was a badge of honor. Glancing around at the “Ankh If You Love Isis” t-shits and oversized pentacle jewelry, Managarm doubted any of these people had enough real power to so much as spark a match, much less blow out a campsite, even by accident.

  He took a bite of his sandwich, and groaned at the effort to chew. But he did manage to stick out his foot just in time to trip a skinny, sigil-wearing six-year-old as he ran past. The kid pitched head-first into the back of a rotund, seventy-something man orating to an enraptured threesome about quantum physics and modern wizardry.

  Managarm hunched over his sandwich and chuckled. He eavesdropped for entertainment, trying to filter through the cacophony of so many simultaneous conversations.

  “And so I said to Ba’al, you get down from there! And he just looked at me like I’d lost my mind,” a senior lady with too much make-up laughed. “Named for a Canaanite bad-ass, you’d think that cat’d be less skittish, but he’s a trickster. Think I should change his name to Pan or Iktomi?”

  “The smudging workshop is this Saturday.” At the next table, a middle-aged man with a scraggly beard flipped through his pocket calendar and stole a potato chip from the orator’s plate. “Text me how many sage sticks you want, and I’ll make sure to bring them with me.”

  “Just before I got started, I had that dream again,” Managarm heard an older woman’s voice behind him. “I know you don’t know a huge amount about Norse religion, but I’ve dreamed about the World Tree for years. Like it’s calling me.”

  Managarm looked around for the source of the comment.

  “The dreams were kind of hazy at first,” the woman’s voice continued. “Only every other month or so. But I kept seeing this magnificent Tree, full of power and wisdom, springing up out of the ground. I just knew it was the Yggdrasil.”

  At the sound of the ancient Tree’s name, Managarm locked his gaze on a woman with graying red-gold hair sitting at the table behind him. Her back was to Managarm as she spoke to a dark-haired girl in glasses and an older, balding fellow wearing a quartz crystal around his neck.

  “I thought it was a blessing.” Her shoulders drooped, and Managarm could tell she was crying. “Thought I was supposed to do this work. I spent so much time learning magick, making my own runes, planning out this whole series of rituals. Sneaking around so no one would find out . . .” Her voice cracked. “And then this happens . . .”

  “But only this morning.” The dark-haired girl adjusted her glasses and turned to the man sitting beside her. “Maybe everything goes back to normal with the New Moon? And maybe her spell did still work?”

  The older man’s chair creaked as he leaned back and thought. “It’s possible. You could have invested too much of your own life energy, and that’s why you’ve aged prematurely.” He fingered the crystal on his chest. “We’ve got the coven gathering at my house this weekend. On Sunday, just after the New Moon, to work with the waxing energy. We could work a healing ritual for you that would be very effective.”

  The younger woman rested a hand on her friend’s shoulder. “Sally, you’ve been working so hard. We should try this ritual with Ansur. If that doesn’t work, maybe he knows something else we can try.”

  Managarm saw Sally nod her head and shrug. “There’s something else.”

  Managarm leaned closer.

  “I swear those runes were glowing, right there in front of me.” Sally glanced at the surrounding tables to make sure no one was listening. She didn’t see Managarm rise half-way out of his chair behind her.

  “I followed my plan to the letter, for my spell calling for people to treat the Earth better, to bring balance to the world, and to return to the Old Ways.” Sally lowered her voice to a whisper. “But I never read anything anywhere about glowing runes!”

  Both women looked at Ansur. He nodded thoughtfully. “There might be something bigger at work here, something especially potent.”

  Managarm pushed his chair out behind him and smiled at h
is luck. A Norse witch, in a coffee shop in Portland. If she had studied Old Magick, if she had gotten her rune stones to glow  . . .

  Managarm reached for Sally’s shoulder. Startled, she turned and looked up at him.

  “I think you have something I need,” Managarm began, but he was cut off by the shop’s glass door exploding inward. Several adults sitting nearby shrieked in surprise, and a few plates and mugs clattered to the floor.

  All eyes were on the shattered door. A scrawny teenager with acne, unruly hair and an unsettlingly wild look in his eyes strode in from the street. His t-shirt was torn, and his blue jeans were streaked with mud.

  “Oh, my gosh!” The suddenly not-so-bubbly Dotty ran out from behind the cash register toward the front entrance. “What happened? Are you okay?”

  She headed straight toward the boy, arms outstretched and ready to render assistance. But as soon as she was within reach, the youth swung his arm in a wide arc and struck Dotty hard across the face, knocking her clear across the foyer’s 1970s linoleum and into the wall. She slid awkwardly to the floor, holding her face in her hands.

  “Are you tripping?” Dotty stared wide-eyed up at her attacker as blood trickled from her mouth and nose. “What’s wrong with you?”

  The boy grinned at her, exposing his canine teeth. He leaned down and growled, then laughed wildly as she shrank away from him. He turned his head sharply, scanning the interior of the coffee lodge. The boisterous Pagans had fallen silent and huddled by the hearth, shielding the children. The only person on his feet beside the intruder was Managarm.

  The wild-eyed boy caught the old god’s gaze. Managarm shivered.

  Berserker.

  The boy marched straight toward him. Managarm stiffened, balling his hands into fists at his sides. Judging from the ferocity of the Berserker’s eyes, the warrior was not approaching to pledge his fealty. Had Odin and Thor gotten wind of his plans, and sent this warrior to dispatch him?

  The crazed boy closed on Managarm slowly, like a predator stalking wounded prey. His headache still pounding, Managarm hunched forward and pushed his shoulders back, preparing for a fight he was fairly certain he couldn’t win.

  The Berserker stopped just short of Managarm and flashed a wicked grin. Managarm saw recognition in the boy’s crazed eyes, and smiled. It was about time he was acknowledged as the ancient deity he was. Trying to dignify his stance, Managarm straightened his spine and lifted his chin, prepared to welcome his first servant.

  But nothing happened.

  Managarm stared at the pimple-faced warrior, impatient for the Berserker to fall on his face and worship him.

  But the boy sneered at him instead, and stepped past Managarm to face Sally, who stared wide-eyed up at him. Dark hair hanging down into his eyes, the Berserker’s mad grin melted into an expression of reverent awe as he stood before her.

  “I have come.” His voice was surprisingly soft.

  Sally shook her head, mouth agape. “I, who are you? What do you want?”

  He cleared his throat and knelt on the coffee-stained carpet, his head bowed. “Your call has awakened me.” The boy lifted his head and dared to look directly into Sally’s eyes. “I was David, but now I am your warrior. Command me.”

  Sally gasped. She looked to Opal and Ansur, who sat like mystified statues watching the boy’s every move. Sally turned back to face David. He appeared to be about her age, when she was looking more like herself. “I, I don’t understand,” she stammered. “I don’t know you. I don’t think I called anyone . . . ?”

  Managarm glowered at the boy kneeling before this undeserving human witch. A Berserker in service to a mortal? Impossible! Sacrilege! He smelled the uncertainty and insecurity pouring off this woman who dared to command divine warriors. And Managarm smiled.

  The witch didn’t know her own power.

  Managarm stepped up beside Sally’s chair and rested a hand on her shoulder. She jumped at his touch and looked up in confusion.

  The innocence and inexperience of a frightened child hid behind her wrinkled face. Managarm had to swallow the wide smile that threatened to break on his face. This was going to be too easy.

  Managarm patted Sally’s shoulder in reassurance. “I think you and I should have a talk.”

  ~ eight ~