“It’s still a bit of a walk,” Magni said. “A day might be tough.”
“These cars make travel much more convenient. Do you think it could drive on the Rainbow Bridge?” Modi asked. “You could carry it there, brother.”
“Or perhaps Father…Hannah could. She’s stronger than I am.” Hannah eyed the car. “I managed to lift it once, but I don’t know if I could really carry it very far. I don’t want to risk part of it coming off.” She still wasn’t sure nothing had broken the last time, especially with how the car had bounced. She’d been trying to keep an eye on it when she drove, but it was so old it was tough to tell.
“You better have enough gold to buy me a new car,” Emily said. “Maybe a Jaguar.”
Shrugging, Hannah bent and gripped the car where she’d grabbed it before. She lifted it up over her head again, bracing herself to carry it, and the metal only yielded slightly under her hands. Those dents were totally already there.
Magni applauded. “Yes, Father. I knew you could do it.”
“I already had,” Hannah said, trying not to sound too cocky, but that was hard to do when she felt like Superman.
“Do you need help carrying it?”
Hannah tilted her head from side to side. It had weight. It wasn’t like holding up a balloon, but she still wouldn’t call this heavy. “Not exactly.”
“Okay,” Emily said, finally sounding fazed. “Well, that’s incredibly hot, but how about we leave this world before people ask a bunch of questions?” Emily grabbed Hannah’s bicep before darting out from under the car and turning to their kids. “Where’s this bridge?”
A glint in his eye, Modi pointed at a fence between the branches of a couple trees just off the sidewalk. There was a house past the fence. It didn’t seem like there could be a whole world there, but now that Hannah was staring, there seemed to be a shimmer, almost like light reflecting off oil. “After you,” she said.
“Of course.” Modi and Magni led the way, with Hannah following and Emily a few feet behind. Hannah wondered if Emily was checking out her ass as she had to support this thing.
Even carrying a car, it was difficult to believe this was real. She was Thor, her kids were other gods, and her girlfriend was another. It was like a dream or maybe a nightmare. She was walking right at a fence holding a car. She almost hoped she was being tricked. At least then, she wouldn’t have to wonder about what it meant.
But it worked.
“Holy shit.” Hannah stared at a mighty tree that looked to dwarf any skyscraper she’d ever seen. She hadn’t even realized she’d stepped over; she’d been so focused on the car and her thoughts. It hadn’t felt like anything had happened. She couldn’t even see where the tree ended from her spot on the bridge crossing two of its branches. Emily bumped into her, and she had to scramble to not drop the car.
“Hey…Oh.” Emily seemed just as transfixed by the sight. “Where are we?”
“This is Yggdrasil, the world tree,” Magni said. “Her branches support the nine realms.”
“Holy fuck.”
A whole new reality unfolded before them, and lifting a metric ton of metal and having random, fully grown children no longer seemed like the strangest things. Hannah’s normal life was so far behind her. She would say worlds away, but that was too literal. It sent a chill up her spine. “It’s beautiful.”
“If you set the car down, we’ll head up this road, and then there’s a well-worn path that should guide us to our home once we’re in Idavollr.”
Unable to find the words or a reason to argue, Hannah set the vehicle on the solid ray of colored light, and they all piled in again. They were driving on a rainbow. Hannah could hardly believe that the car wasn’t passing through it.
She was worried the car seemed to be riding lower than it had been but hoped that was her imagination. “Buckle up,” she muttered as Emily started to drive. It seemed worth saying. Though if they went over the edge, she doubted seat belts would save them. The bridge was tragically not OSHA compliant.
It only took an hour of cautious driving, as the path past the bridge could only be called a road when speaking very generously, before they found the edge of a strange city. There were stone houses with thatched roofs and a castle in the distance, but describing it as medieval seemed woefully inaccurate. Hannah was far from an expert on architecture, but she didn’t think they could or would have built houses so large and winding. Even the smallest hovel here would be an estate compared to present-day houses on Earth. Or would that be Midgard? The material seemed shinier and, if she had to guess, sturdier than any masonry possible in medieval times. Yet she saw people in scratchy-looking clothing tilling fields and looking the very picture of medieval peasants, save for the handful wearing glasses. It didn’t seem anachronistic, since it didn’t look like bits of her present—aside from the car—were impeding on the village. It seemed like a place that could never have existed. The handful of giants meandering around did little to diminish this appearance.
Everyone seemed to be taking a particular interest in them, but no one moved toward them. Hannah wasn’t sure if that was a good sign or a bad one.
“Wow,” Emily said, gazing out the windshield with a look of complete bewilderment mixed with fascination. “Where do I go from here?”
Modi pointed straight ahead. Emily had to avoid a few fields of crops, as ruining them would cause a poor impression, but she managed about as straight a heading as could be expected of a lesbian. Soon, Hannah realized they were driving to the imposing castle that seemed to tower over the countryside. It looked almost Victorian, not in the steampunk sense of top hats and gears, but in that it seemed to rely less on the medieval technology of the outskirts. There was no steam coming from it, so if they had engines, they weren’t steam powered, but the gate lowered itself, and there didn’t seem to be a crank on the inside.
A few minutes later, they parked in the middle of a courtyard and emerged to find a handful of archers training arrows on them. Of course they wouldn’t welcome them with open arms. Nothing about being a god had been great so far, why did Hannah expect it to be now? With a twinge of fear, she wondered if she was arrow-proof. She stepped in front of Emily on the off chance that she happened to be more durable. She wouldn’t let anything happen to Emily if she could avoid it.
Modi and Magni managed to clamber out of the car, struggling as their armor caught on everything, but they held their hands up. “Wait,” Modi called. “It’s us. And we’ve brought back Father and Mother, just as promised.”
“Where’s his beard, then?” one of the archers asked.
Was that really all that separated her from Thor? Hannah had always assumed that she had to look more feminine than an old Norse god. The way people always looked at her and how dresses hugged her figure would certainly suggest that. Maybe Thor was just a lot more feminine than she’d been led to believe.
“He seems to have lost it,” Magni said. “But I assure you, I’d know my father anywhere. This is him. We have our proper king.”
Hannah stared at him. She was an accountant, and that was all she wanted. She didn’t have time for a second job, and being king—or queen, however it would work—seemed really demanding. “Wait, what? That wasn’t what we discussed.”
He offered an apologetic grin before turning back to the increasingly confused archers. “Come now, you know us. Where are the others? They must see them. I’m sure Baldur will be thrilled to find his brother.”
A murmur echoed through the ranks as their bows lowered one by one. “Very well. Erik, would you go alert the regent? We have guests, and I’m certain they’ll need a feast.” The man doing most of the talking was dressed differently than the others. Hannah guessed he was a captain or some other sort of military rank. “Pray tell, what is this contraption you’ve arrived in? It’s a strange carriage.”
“Tiny horses,” Emily said. “Like ten of them in there.”
Modi stared at the idling engine in awe. “Truly?”<
br />
She shrugged.
This was not the time to try to explain internal combustion. Hannah highly doubted that either of them were capable of that explanation either way.
“All right, well, come with me.” He slung his bow on his back and waved for them to join him. “I trust you’re tired after your travels?”
“No, I’m good,” Emily said.
“Definitely up for that feast, though,” Hannah added. Perhaps she should start thinking of herself as Thor while she was here? Thor followed. No, she hated it. As much as she might be Thor, she refused to stop being Hannah, even for a moment. “We brought beer.”
“Oh, I forgot it,” Magni cried, running back to get it from the car. He looked startled when the car beeped as Emily unlocked it and then did it again as he carried the crates from the trunk. “Strange horses.”
“We really need to explain that later,” Hannah said.
“You’re welcome to try.”
There was a lot more of the courtyard than Hannah had expected, but soon they found doors several times her height or even the height of Modi and Magni. Servants or guards, she wasn’t sure which, opened the doors and revealed a hall that could have fit Alys’s entire house inside. Torches on either side lit their path, but the hall seemed to go on for miles. Hannah was starting to wish they’d brought the car.
It took them almost an hour to find the dining hall, but they were promptly met with a feast. Was it really going to be this simple? They’d just show up, say they were gods, and have a feast? She’d expected something more.
✥ ✥ ✥
“I thought you said Thor was here?” a voice asked from the back of the dining hall. It seemed to come from the raised row above the rest of the tables. If April’s historical dramas had taught Hannah anything, that was where the king would be sitting. Or was it regent, since it sounded like they didn’t have a king?
The room was half-full of people. Their clothes looked medieval but clean and maybe even pressed. None of them looked dirty, and several had flowers braided into their beards or hair.
“She is,” Magni said.
“Did his beard run away along with the last two feet of him?”
Several of the other Asses laughed at what was apparently the height of godly humor.
The insults were getting ridiculous. Hannah was comfortable with her height, and she was one hundred percent comfortable with her gender. She loved dresses, and she sure as hell didn’t want a beard. She just wasn’t used to being made fun of. “All right, if any of you doubt who I am…” she found herself bellowing in the deepest alto she could manage. “I’ve brought enough beer to start out-drinking you, and I’ll arm wrestle any of you fuckers who decide you’d like to tussle with the god of strength.” God, she hoped Thor was actually the god of strength. That boast would really backfire if he wasn’t, but Magni had made it sound like he was. She was? Pronouns were very confusing when your past-self was a god. She wasn’t even sure why she cared so much. Maybe she just didn’t want to disappoint Modi and Magni? Or maybe she wanted more answers.
“Okay, that might be Thor,” someone at one of the low tables stated.
Hannah showed her teeth in what she hoped was an intimidating smirk directed at whoever this asshole was. She had not expected that to work. She had mostly hoped to get to the drinking.
“Come now, you can’t expect me to believe those are Thor and Sif,” a man to his side said.
“If that is Thor,” the regent said, “that trick isn’t going to satisfy me. How do we know she’s not simply a Jotunn in disguise? It wouldn’t be the first time.”
“Jotunn means giant, right?” Hannah whispered into Emily’s ear.
“I think so.”
“Do I look like a giant?” she asked loudly. She was trying so hard to prove herself to these people. It was just like how hard she tried to prove to Emily that she was gay. That was it, wasn’t it? She couldn’t stand the idea of hiding part of herself, no matter how crazy that might be. She wasn’t willing to uproot her life, she didn’t want to be Thor, but she was him, and she needed to know what that meant.
The lower tables laughed again, but the high table, which she was starting to assume was comprised of the other Aesir, only watched her with unamused looks on their faces.
Save for one. A blond near the center looked quite tickled by the joke. “Look at his…her eyes. I’d know my brother anywhere.” He rose, his fair features lighting up with a massive grin as he hopped down, ignoring the stairs, and sprinted to Hannah, wrapping his arms around her. “Oh, how I’ve missed you. Clearly, my son has had far too much to drink today if he can’t recognize his own uncle. I do hope you haven’t forgotten me.”
Well, that was convenient. Hannah pulled away, looking into the fair features of the man in front of her. He had pale blond hair and eyes the same light blue as April’s. The regent looked a lot like him, though his features were a few shades darker. “It doesn’t work like that, unfortunately. I still don’t know how this happened, but I can’t remember a thing.”
“Well, you always did take a few too many blows to the head. Do you at least recognize me, dear Sif? It’s your brother-in-law, Baldur.”
Emily shrugged.
“Well, that should prove it for you, Forseti!” He turned to the regent, flashing an impressive smile. “If they were Jotunns, I just gave them more than enough reason to lie, and it wouldn’t have cost them a thing. Why would spies do such a poor job pretending to be Thor and Sif? It’s them, I’m sure of it.”
The regent—Forseti, apparently—looked them up and down before whispering to a woman to his left. She was wearing silver armor with wings and seemed to be listening intently before she nodded and said something back. He turned to Modi. “Your guests may stay the night, but without proof, we can’t accept them as who you claim.”
“You’re just scared they’ll take your throne,” Magni cried.
“Brother, please.” Modi’s hand rested on Magni’s chest. He didn’t need to hold him back quite yet, but he looked perfectly prepared to do so should the need arise.
“Forseti, I swear, I would know my brother anywhere,” Baldur insisted. “You wouldn’t doubt me, would you?”
“I’m sorry, Father.” The younger man, who still looked substantially older than even Emily, shook his head, looking sadly at the blond. He ran his hand through his own sandy hair, leaving a faint trace of grease from the bird he was eating. “I’ve been entrusted with keeping Idavollr safe. I want to believe this is truly Thor returned to us. But why wouldn’t he have come back when you did? Why would he be a woman? I can’t believe it yet, and even a display of Thor’s might would do little to quell those doubts.”
“Well, what can I do?” Hannah asked.
“Why do you even care that much?” Emily muttered.
She wished she knew. A new job didn’t sound that enticing, she didn’t want to rule—she didn’t even want to leave Earth—but she’d just found out that she was a god and could lift a car without breaking a sweat. How could she not want to know more? Maybe she didn’t need to convince these Asses, but why shouldn’t she? They were her family, weren’t they?
She sighed, meeting the steely gaze of the man above her. “I don’t want anything from you, but if I’m Thor, then I want to know it as badly as you do.” She did kind of want that apple, which was maybe reason enough, but she knew the rest was true too. Immortality just sounded cool. “I’m not trying to take over. I don’t want your throne. All I want is to know how I could be some old Norse god. Until the other week, I thought I was a normal accountant from Seattle. Then these guys came up and insisted they were my children, and all of a sudden, I’m a superpowered god in another world. If you don’t believe I’m Thor, then at least believe that I’m as confused as you are.”
“Well, now I know you’re not Thor. He couldn’t give a speech like that to save his life. Especially not sober.”
“Maybe the beard made me dumb.”
&nb
sp; Finally, she managed to get a chuckle out of His Excellency. She had no idea if that was how you addressed a regent, but she hoped it wasn’t. “As I said, you can stay for the feast. You’re welcome to join me at my table. I want you to be Thor. In fact, I’d want it even more if you did want to rule, but I won’t let an impostor harm those in my charge.”
“We don’t want to hurt anyone,” Emily said, stepping up to face the man as well. “We just want answers. This was sprung on us, and if I’m a goddess, I’d really like to understand better. Like, maybe find out that I’m more than just pretty hair?”
He nodded somberly and gestured, causing a servant to bring out two more chairs for them. Hannah hoped the servants were paid well. If they were slaves, she would absolutely get rid of that if she was in charge. She shook her head. She didn’t want to be in charge, and entertaining the idea was asking for trouble.
“Please. Sit down. Magni, Modi…grab a cup and explain why you thought this was true.”
“We talked to Mimir,” Modi began once they were seated and enjoying cups of godly beer. It wasn’t quite as good as the stuff they’d brought, but that could wait for later. “I asked him if any prophecies mentioned the Jotunn continuing these recent raids. He said there wasn’t anything about them, but he suspected they would. Then Magni said he wished Father and Mother were here, that they’d know how to keep our home safe, and Mimir…” He stared at his plate as if he was trying to remember the exact words. “He started to say something about how they’d both fallen and offered advice on how to move on, like he did the last time Magni said it, but then he stopped. He didn’t seem sure how he knew, but it was as if there was a whole new prophecy. He said that we’d find the ladies Thor and Sif—that’s how he phrased it—in Midgard, in the very city the Bifrost had connected us to. We went to Midgard, but we couldn’t find them. We looked for a week.”
“Then we went back to him,” Magni said. “He told us that he’d heard that Mjolnir would be able to find Thor if we were in Midgard. He wasn’t sure how, but it was supposed to work. So we took it with us, and we found her. Mjolnir wanted to return to her hand. It was like every time Father had thrown it. It knew it needed to return to his grip, and now it knows it for Hannah. If that’s not proof, I don’t know what is.”
Thor: Daughter of Asgard Page 14