I hear it then: No, no, stop. A muffled cry, the slap of painful connection.
Behind that, I hear choking. I smell bile and the tang of thin blood, of potato spirits and harsh chemical burning. Overdose, alcohol poisoning, roofies and rape.
Must they ruin everything?
Yes, yes, because that is the world! What is that poem…Death is the mother of beauty.
I fall still, a quiet, motionless point amid this writhing, spinning, dancing, flashing snake of humans. The green and purple lights burst and fade, in and out, and my world narrows, muffled and throbbing.
What if the way is to just do it?
What if instead of watching this world fall, I make it fall? I live in fear of the beginning of the end. I have this cursed collar keeping me small, because the gods fear it, too. They fear the prophecies of the Volva; they fear their final deaths. It is this fear that holds us stagnant, that keeps us from changing. We cannot change as women and men do, because we are afraid to die.
Maybe the only way to throw off that fear is to stop trying.
Slowly, I push the lovers away, forcing back their mouths and hands. I stand up from the dropping sofa and push through the crowd. My ears ring with dull, low tones. My skin vibrates.
Up and out of the basement rave I go.
• • •
If I swallow the sun, if I eat Baldur, it will set off the end of the world. Odin Alfather will face me, and I will eat him, too. I will finally crush his bones, tear him apart for hurting me and hating me. The prophecy says that when I turn from his broken corpse, gorged on his flesh and the flesh of the sun, another son of Odin, named Vidar, will grasp my jaws and, in a fit of berserker frenzy, rend me in two. Thor Thunderer will kill my sister, the World Snake, but die of the wounds she lays upon him. Freyr the Satisfied will be slain by his own lost sword.
Many of the gods are destined to die. The seas will rise. Mountains will crumble. The great horn will blow.
And it begins when the wolf swallows the sun.
• • •
Where I left my shoes on Venice Beach there is a party now, too. A nighttime, starlit bonfire party, with guitars and bottles of mead, bathing suits and swimming beneath the moon.
I smell him, Baldur the Beautiful, as easily as I did at dawn. Old Spice and apples.
Pressing through the laughing, mildly drunken crowd, I focus on him, on the glint of his hair in the firelight. I only need to stand before him, taste him. Ask him why I should keep hold of my gnawing hunger.
My toes sink in the cool sand. The wind is warm and salty, refreshing. Smoke and ancient ocean depths in the air, coiled through seaweed and sweet leaf and beer foam. Bad breath and bodily fluids. Scraggly grass and bougainvillea. Barbeque. My stomach growls. I growl, too.
“Glory.”
A young man steps in my path, pushing through the crowd to do so. The fire is behind him, making him a dark silhouette, but it’s one I know well: offensively wide shoulders, the curve of muscles down his bare arms and up his neck, square head, shaved black hair; lit from behind, it looks like a narrow halo.
Soren Bearstar, Baldur’s berserker friend.
I smile slow and wide and lean in to drag my fingers against his hard chest. He is hot and smells like a fever, as always. “Soren,” I say.
He curls strong hands around my wrists to stop the progress of my touch. “I don’t like the look in your eyes.”
I lick my lip and drag my teeth against it, too. Under my palms, his heart beats hard and ever so much faster.
“You’re covered with glitter,” he says, his frown shifting the shadows on his face.
“Want some?” I purr, stepping nearer. He steps back, and we begin an inexorable march toward the surf.
I slide my entire body against his, because I can; he is strong, but I am a monster. “Let me have you instead,” I whisper.
Soren – young, solid, beautifully innocent Soren – gasps when I scratch his jaw, when I lick at his rough chin. “Instead—of—what?” he says.
Laughing, I throw my arms around his neck and arch my back. I laugh with my head fallen, hair tumbling curls and glitter away; I use my easy strength to pull up against him, wrapping my legs around his waist.
He stands with his arms out, like a scarecrow. I can see the whites of his eyes all around the dark brown iris, under soft black lashes. He is such a rich, delicious specimen. Burning and slick from the fever in his heart. Some berserkers spurn him for being born to a dark mother, born with her Savaiian features and coloring, but they are fools. Nothing is lessened by his smooth, wide nose or full bow lips, his upturned eyes or heavy brow. But men will see what they hate before anything else, especially men belonging to the Alfather.
Overhead, the stars glimmer—what we can see of them through the haze of Los Angeles light pollution. I tighten my thighs, and Soren glares at me. I grip the back of his head, nails sharp on his scalp and neck. My teeth feel longer; I ache against him, starving, empty, and I remember I saved him once, in a faraway Cheyenne kingstate forest. He was seventeen and alone, burnt out from his very first frenzy, the first time his berserking fever exploded inside him and he lost himself, he lost everything. He was so afraid of the consequences of his frenzy, and terrified for Baldur, that the god of light would get himself killed before he’d eaten that year’s apple of immortality.
But mostly, he was afraid of himself.
I fed him and told him a story.
I made him feel better, insisting he could control himself if he wanted to, because I do.
Did.
These oily, shining scars on my wrists and around my throat are the remnants of chains the gods of Asgard put on me to keep me from growing as large as the world, so large that the sun would be only a snack, a morsel, a quick snap of teeth and gone.
I’m not afraid of myself. I’m only tired. I’m tired of being hungry, of holding it in. I’m tired of watching women and men do evil, of not interfering, of seeing the same cycles over and over again. Like pushing Soren out of their berserker club for not being a pale Asgardian! It is the same! I’m tired of hope, of the hopeful; I’m tired of it being a chore to see the good, to find miracles. It’s all there if you look, but looking takes so much effort. Other gods, other godlings, can retire for years, can withdraw and live apart, can travel or sleep or do anything they wish. But I cannot rid myself of this cursed hunger.
“Glory, are you crying?” Soren’s voice is hushed with wonder.
I am.
My arms curl around his hot neck, and he brings his own around my back, hugging me.
Just a hug.
Kind and firm, he relaxes under me, even though my legs still wrap his waist, even though I’m pressed against him as hard as I can be.
With a little sigh, he even touches his jaw to my hair and rubs tentatively, encouragingly.
Tears fall from my eyes, smearing glitter and liner, I’m sure, staining his skin like sparkling blood. I hold on. I let myself cry, and Soren Bearstar, the gentle ragger, walks graceful and strong into the ocean with me. He crouches smoothly, and the cold water rushes around his knees, then his thighs, and splashes the bare small of my back. I gasp and shudder. He kneels with me, and I keep holding on, keep crying, gut-wrenching sobs as loud as my hunger.
He pets the hair wrapping around my back and shoulders, holding me like a babe as the salty foam crusts my shorts, soaks his T-shirt, washes cold between our chests. He asks no questions, offers no answers or stories or senseless spoken compassion.
The ocean slicks and sucks at us, giving and taking, giving and taking.
Finally, Soren leans away, shoulders hunched, to make eye contact while I remain on his lap. Moonlight and citylight and firelight toy with one another in his eyes. His lashes flutter, his brow falls low with concern. But still, he says nothing, only waits.
I swallow and sniff. Here, all I smell is the wild ocean, the salt and rotting wet fishtails, seaweed and musty gull feathers and Soren—as good at blocking my
nose as poisonous pink bubblegum or burned, sour coffee.
“I’m so hungry,” I whisper.
A smile curls the corner of his very full mouth. Before I can speak, he lifts us, smooth and sure, out of the water, dripping, splashing, and carries me to the barbeque pit, where I am overwhelmed by fire, smoke, pig fat, spices, and meat. He clears everyone out and passes a hand through the air like a game-show host. “All for you now,” he says.
And I eat, bones and everything.
• • •
This is how they say it happened:
Because of Loki’s crimes against Odin, I was taken from him when I was born and brought to Asgard. There, I was raised among the gods. But I grew and grew in size and wolfish beauty, gifts from my monster father. I gained cunning and some little magic, too: gifts from Loki, who bore me as a mother bears a daughter, for months inside her womb. I ate and ate and ate, until the gods recalled the prophecy that I would be strong enough one day to swallow the sun and begin the end of the world. So they decided to chain me down.
With a ribbon woven from six impossible things, they caught me, and the only god brave enough to tie off the knot was Tyr. He tightened it around my neck, and I snapped my jaws over his wrist. I was a wild beast, not to be trusted for all the long, terrible weave of Fate.
• • •
This is the truer story I told Soren Bearstar years ago:
It was my mother, Loki, the boy-god everyone loved and hated in equal measure, who carried me over the Rainbow Bridge to Asgard, who put me in the gods’ bower, for he loved me and wished me with him. They raised me on the mountain with kindness, though most feared the sharp fangs pushing out where my baby teeth had been. Only Tyr the Just brought me meat instead of fruit, and when I was my wolf-self, starving and running wild, only he brought me flowers instead of whips. He sang songs to help me learn control, taught me the language of peace and fairness.
It was my own fault they remembered the prophecy that I would swallow the sun. I ate a feast’s worth of sacrificial horses and pigs. I’d done it because they were meant for Freyr; he kicked me as often as his brother the Alfather did, but Freyr called me Loki’s Bitch instead of my name. I’d eaten his feast for revenge, but all I accomplished was to remind the gods of my never-ending hunger.
They dragged to the Shining Hall, where Odin and his brothers sat waiting. The gods of Asgard encircled me, made me gag on the sour and sweet and bitter smell of their apple-blood.
We shall subdue her, Odin said.
With the sound of a cat’s food, said Freyr.
The beard of a woman, added his twin sister, Freya.
The roots of a mountain, Thor said.
With a bear’s cowardice, said my mother’s god-wife, Sigyn.
With a fish’s breath, whispered Heimdall.
And the spit of a bird to bind it all, Odin himself finished. These impossible things shall keep the impossible at bay.
“Wait.” Tyr spoke. He stood before me, sword at his hip, fur mantle making him even larger, his stance balanced and sturdy. He is one of the eldest gods, and if he has not the sharp wit of Odin, the loudness of Thor, or the lushness of Freyr, it is not because he isn’t wise or strong or beautiful. “This wolf-girl is one of us,” he said. “A child of Asgard. Shall we treat her so poorly and judge her on actions she has not yet taken? Where is the justice in such a thing?”
I held my head high, hunger gnawing inside me, for bones to crunch or for one of his smiles. I growled.
Show us, brother, Odin said. Prove that she can control herself. That she can resist the sun-size need.
No, no, I thought, knowing I could not. But Tyr walked to me calmly and I backed away, body ripping and cracking between wolf and girl and wolf and girl, for he was not safe from me. He was not safe! He smelled like apples but also of need and kindness, warm fur and flowers and sweet honey sweat, dust and iron and leather. I was so hungry, I became the wolf completely, bones breaking, teeth reshaped. My tongue could not form the language he’d taught me.
Tyr’s face was calm. He did not tremble as he put out his hand, though I did, back bowed. “She will not attack,” he called to them. “My word shall bind her.” And then, only to me, his voice tender and trusting, “My flesh shall bind her.”
I opened my mouth to howl, and he slipped his fingers past my fangs, sliding them graciously along my tongue. I held my jaw open, shaking in my bones, and his apple smell coated my mouth, sank down my throat and into my gullet, into my hunger itself. It was all I knew, all I needed in the nine worlds, in the universe of stars.
I bit down.
The gods cried out in fury and horror as I drank Tyr’s blood and crunched the delicate bones of his hand. He stumbled back, lips white, bleeding wrist spilling apple-sweet blood onto the floor of Odin’s Shining Hall.
I swallowed his hand.
Relief and something I had never known—satisfaction—made me lie down, spreading my wolf-self out, licking lazily at the bloody droplets that stained the space between my mouth and his body.
It was easy then for them to hold me down, to wrap the impossible ribbons around my neck and paws.
When I am a wolf, the ribbons glint silver and white, braided and spun: a collar and shackles. When I am a girl, they fade into scars that glimmer in the same way: a necklace and bracelets of injury. The scars are easy to hide with jewels and scarves and bangles, though usually I don’t bother.
Some days, when the sun is high and I am starving, when chasing men who remind me of Baldur is not enough, I find Tyr, in Miami or Chicagland or Reno or Bostown. I find him and I kiss him.
I told Soren Bearstar that those kisses are all that keeps the sun in the sky.
• • •
I wake up on the sand, covered with a beach towel painted with a vibrant Disney Viker in golds and greens and purples. Soren is there, and before I leave, he catches my hand and says, “If you need a place, a safe place, to rest or hold onto yourself, you should go to the orchard.”
It’s a kind thought, a generous one, for I know he would rather not share Idun the Young with anyone, god or girl or man. I smile, not my usual wicked, tempting, flirting grin but one I hope shows him I actually care, I appreciate his thought and friendship. I have not had many friends in my long life, because the gods fear me and I avoid human connections. But Soren seems neither, exactly, bridging the gap as he bridged the chasm between Baldur’s light and berserking fever.
“I think I’ll go to Tyr,” I say quietly, failing to layer my tone with innuendo.
Soren nods as if it’s as much as he expected.
• • •
Tyr the Just lives in Miami.
Maybe because it’s tropical and colorful and he was born in a land of ice and weak sunlight. Though he travels every Tyrsday and often returns to his ancient home in Scandia, he can usually be found reading by his pool or tending his garden of eye-peeling rainbow flowers.
His house is a five-bedroom piece of modern art: glass walls and broad balconies, white stucco cubes stacked on cubes, with expansive grounds that include palm trees and fuchsia-flowering vines, rolling lawn and a patio with an aquamarine pool, all sloping toward his private dock and sleek, long-nosed yacht.
It’s late in the morning when I arrive, barefoot still, in my stained jean shorts and drooping green halter. My hair is crunchy and smells like dancing and sand and salt. Barbeque sauce under my fingernails. I leave sticky prints on his gate keypad, one of six who know the code, and the elegant white gate swings silently open, welcoming me into Tyr’s clean paradise. I walk quietly up the path, a mosaic of glass and mother-of-pearl. The wind smells like ocean, sunscreen, and the perfume of flowers, an undertone of oil and trimmed grass. Simple, inoffensive.
By the time I reach the wide front door, he’s pulling it open for me.
Built like a fortress wall, Tyr is all squares and rectangles, brick and mortar. Sea- and sun-scoured skin, like the salt-crusted shores of Old Asgard, blue eyes the color of tea
rs and topaz, hair like beards of wheat, sometimes shorn to his skull, sometimes hanging in waves to his shoulders. His expression always rests in a gentle frown; when he chooses to smile, you’ll see only the slightest uptick in the corners, a shine in his eyes, and long crow’s feet above his cheeks. He leaves his jaw rough, neither bearded nor shaven, as if one or the other would promote bias among his followers.
And where he once had a right hand of skin and delicious bones, he now has a hand of silver and gold, elf-made, elegant and immobile and wedded to his flesh halfway up his forearm.
This morning, he’s got on slouching pajama pants and a thin royal blue robe hanging off his shoulders, untied, displaying a thick line of chest, well-muscled and brushed with soft golden hair. Two mugs of steaming chicory coffee in his flesh hand. Silently, he offers me one; I gratefully accept and step into the cool entryway, pink tiles cold on my bare feet. The wide-open space and floor-to-ceiling windows create the feel of a peaceful, sunlit cavern.
Tyr turns and heads through the dining room into his kitchen, which is all islands and warm wood and mosaic countertops. His blue robe flutters at his knees. He’s barefoot, too.
I follow, breathing in the chocolaty-mud smell of the chicory. It blends with the atmosphere of his home, destroying my ability to smell other people or recent meals. Tyr keeps it clean, doing all his own housework. He pauses and glances over his shoulder. “Drink that quickly and go shower. I’ll make food and more coffee.”
His voice is rich and tired-sounding. I wonder if he’s had company, or been traveling. It’s a wondrous treat not to know, thanks to the chicory smell in my nose. I don’t talk, only down the hot drink, letting it scald a little, plant a burn in my always-starving stomach. I set the mug on a counter a little too hard, though nothing chips, and obey him.
One of the five bedrooms here is mine and mine alone: up on the second floor, with a low king bed, a balcony overlooking the bay and downtown Miami in the distance. It’s sparsely furnished in soothing creams and mint and sea-foam greens, with hardwood floors—because carpets and rugs hold scents—and hypoallergenic sheets and pillows. A bureau of day clothes and a closet of fancier clothes as well as shoes. A small bathroom in porcelain and silver and dark blue tiles. I drop my clothes on the floor and take the hottest shower I can, tasting the salt left in the brackish water Laflorida kingstate treats for human use.
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