Moon Dog Magic

by Jennifer Willis

  Freya shrugged. “I didn’t know what he was going to do.”

  Odin ran his hands over the Yggdrasil’s trunk, smearing the bark with blood.

  “Accept what strength remains in me.” Odin’s hands came to rest at the base of the Tree. “I nurture and feed you!”

  The ground shook and Heimdall was knocked off-balance again. Whole sections of earth shifted and were displaced, and Heimdall threw himself flat across the dirt and moss. “Earthquake!” he yelled at Freya.

  Freya stumbled first in one direction and then another as she tried to keep her footing. Leaves from the surrounding saplings rained down as their branches swayed. Heimdall tried to get hold of Laika and watched Freya fall forward, her mouth open in awe as she pointed to the Yggdrasil.

  The rumbling earth fell suddenly silent. Staring at the Tree, Heimdall climbed to his feet in shock. Laika ran wide circles around him and Freya, barking madly.

  The Yggdrasil now stood more than a hundred feet tall and nearly fifty feet in diameter. The surrounding saplings had keeled over, displaced by the sudden and massive growth. Odin had been knocked backward by the Tree’s now colossal trunk. Heimdall looked down at the raised berm he was standing on and realized it was one of many massive roots fanning out from the Yggdrasil.

  “How?” Heimdall gaped at the crackling sound of branches extending overhead and the buds of new leaves bursting open.

  Replacing his eye patch, Odin climbed to his feet and rested his hands on the Yggdrasil’s broad trunk, now covered in thick layers of protective bark. “Remember always that I am your servant. You are the source of all life, the anchor for all worlds—for Ásgard, Vanaheim, and Midgard. For Niflheim, Muspellheim, Svartálfaheim, and Álfheim. For Nidavellir and Jötunheim. As long as I or any of mine draw breath, you have a steward and a devoted guardian.”

  Odin pressed his bloody palm to the front of his shirt and turned to Heimdall and Freya. “That’s more like it,” he chuckled.

  “By the eyes of the Dvergar!” Heimdall exclaimed. “How did you do that?”

  Odin glanced over his shoulder at the darkening bark. “Teamwork.”

  Laika ran around and around the Tree, yipping enthusiastically. She stopped and rose up on her hind legs, resting her forepaws on the massive trunk. Pink tongue lolling out of her mouth, she looked over at Heimdall and panted, her tail wagging high in the air.

  Heimdall shook his head. “Now it will be doubly easy for Managarm to figure out which tree he’s after.”

  “True,” Freya replied. “But I don’t think the Yggdrasil is now so easily dispatched, do you?”

  “Unless he’s planning on dropping an atomic bomb on the Tree.”

  Freya groaned. “I wouldn’t put it past him.” She turned and walked over to Heimdall’s bag. She picked it up and rummaged through it until she found a small pad of paper, then she sat on the ground and uncapped a pen.

  “What are you writing?” Heimdall gazed up at the branches of the Yggdrasil looming over his head.

  Freya scribbled furiously. “Making a list of supplies to continue the work here.”

  Heimdall stared at her. “There’s more?”

  Odin stepped up beside his son and patted his arm. “I’ll see to it you have what you need.”

  Freya nodded and kept writing.

  Alone in a clearing deep in the woods, Managarm crouched by the fire and uncovered the rounds of wood he had cut. He’d already set up his new camp—rather, he had gotten Sally, her suspicious friend, and the mostly useless Berserker to set up his tent and supplies for him. The trio were now hunting for more firewood, leaving Managarm alone to work.

  There had been a moment’s hesitation when he started to carve the first round from the slab he’d stolen from the Yggdrasil, but no bolt of lightning came down from the sky to blast him. No tremor opened the Earth to swallow him when he sawed into the Tree to begin with, either.

  Managarm caressed the wooden rounds, each about the size of a squashed grape. Things were not exactly proceeding according to plan. The single Berserker who’d appeared barely acknowledged his presence—when he wasn’t demanding more food. Managarm also had not foreseen a mortal witch, but she was an important tool that he would wield with care and skill. Just as soon as he figured out what to do with her tiresome friend and her fiendish cat. For the time being, Sally was too star-struck in the presence of one of the Norse gods to put the pieces together, and he meant to act quickly to take advantage.

  Managarm couldn’t get over the idea of Saga working a menial job in a bookstore. Lucky that Sally hadn’t recognized the goddess of history for what she was—rather, what she used to be. But Managarm was bothered more by the idea of Odin’s daughter working for wages than he was by how close he’d accidentally come to one of the others of his kind.

  Were all of Odin’s kin slaving away like that? Managarm looked up at the mid-day sun, obscured by clouds, and laughed. This was going to be so much easier and more fun than he’d imagined.

  He picked up one of the rounds of wood and closed his foot around it.

  “The witch is mine,” Managarm boasted to the fire. He’d spent a sleepless night on a bed in Opal’s apartment, not used to not being able to see the night sky over his head, nor the idea that a mortal—a naïve and weak-minded one at that—could recapture Norse magick. Was Sally the descendent of some ancient mage? Or perhaps a halfling, the unwitting offspring of a human and a roving deity?

  The source of Sally’s power didn’t matter, Managarm decided. He needed magick, and she had it. Even if she had only a single trick in her arsenal, calling up Berserkers was enough.

  He pulled a small iron from the fire and pressed the tip against the flat surface of the wooden disc in his hand. He burned a straight line in charcoal black, then two shorter branches coming off it.

  “Fehu,” Managarm whispered. The wisps of smoke rising from the wood were almost heady. He could smell the old Yggdrasil’s secrets and magick. He stuck the iron back in the fire and gazed in satisfaction at the rune of wealth in his hand. He laid it carefully on a newly tanned rabbit skin and reached for another wooden round.

  Pulling the iron out of the fire, Managarm burned two parallel lines into the wood, one longer than the other, then connected them with a diagonal dash. Uruz, the wild ox. Rune of strength and speed. Again, Managarm inhaled the scent of the burning wood, and he started to laugh.

  He imagined the looks on their faces when Odin and the others realized what Managarm had done. They would fall on their knees before him. Managarm would never again be their slave-dog, eternally chasing the moon and devouring the dead flesh of fallen enemies.

  He imagined their hair and clothing streaked with blood, sweat, and mud as he forced them into the dirt. He’d spit in Odin’s eye. He would make Thor lick his boots. The cold ashes of the Vikings would kindle the flames of a new era. The Age of the Wargs. The Return of the Wolves.

  Entertaining himself with his vengeful plotting, the work of creating the runes went quickly. Managarm laid the twenty-four marked rounds on the rabbit skin in front of the fire, then grabbed the sage and lavender wand Saga had given to Sally and tossed it onto the flames. The fire hissed as the herbs started to smoke.

  The air grew heavy with the rich, pungent scent of the sacred plants. Managarm let the purifying smoke fill his lungs. The first few breaths made his sinuses sting, and he coughed in a furious spasm before reaching for a bottle of water. He took a long drink, then splashed the rest of the water on his face and tossed the empty bottle inside his new tent.

  Managarm leaned over his new runes and smiled. He picked up a handful of rounds and his grin widened as he turned each piece between his fingers.

  At the sound of footsteps approaching his camp, he laid down the runes and rose slowly to his feet. He reached for the hunting knife strapped to his belt. But when he heard a pitiful wail of frustration, he relaxed his grip on the knife.

  “Sally?”

  With pine needles and to
rn leaves stuck in her hair, Sally emerged from the brush and low-hanging branches marking the perimeter of Managarm’s camp. She dropped a load of sticks and chunks of rotting wood in a heap on the ground and brushed herself off before she limped a few more paces into the clearing. Opal followed quickly and lay down her own load of firewood and kindling in a more orderly pile.

  “I’m sorry.” Sally gave an awkward half-curtsey. “I had a little difficulty.”

  Managarm tried to smile, hoping to put her at ease. He gestured toward the fire. “Rest yourself. I’ll put on a pot of coffee, and we’ll sit together and discuss how to repair this world.”

  Sally limped painfully toward the campfire. Managarm stepped in front of her, and she stopped abruptly.

  “Have you injured yourself?” he asked.

  “No,” Sally sighed in annoyance. “I got a rock in my shoe, about a half-mile back.”

  Managarm swallowed the growl rising in his throat and forced a syrupy tone into his voice. “Why didn’t you take it out?”

  “I didn’t want to keep you waiting.” Sally hobbled toward a patch of dried pine needles and sat down. She pulled off one of her pink shoes and shook out a few pebbles onto the dirt.

  Managarm turned his back on her—with the excuse of filling the camp kettle with bottled water—and cursed quietly. This was his witch? So passionate about all things Norse but too daft to remove a few stones from her shoe? Mighty warriors marched for days with bloody wounds and even arrowheads and spear shafts embedded in their flesh, and they’d done it with honor and vigor, not with whimpering complaints and cowardly limping.

  Managarm turned back around. “Where is the Berserker?”

  Opal looked up from the firewood pile, which she was trying to stack more neatly. “Prowling around in the woods someplace. That kid is seriously disturbed.”

  Managarm scowled at the kettle. A Berserker on his own in the woods? He was about to snap at Opal for letting the Berserker out of her sight—what if someone stumbled across him? What if he made his way into the city, or to one of the other gods? But then he realized David would make a beeline back to camp as soon as he got hungry again. Probably be any minute now.

  “All right, then.” Managarm set the kettle on a rack over the flames. He settled down onto the ground at Sally’s side and caught Opal eying him from her position by the firewood. “You there. Why not set about making up some lunch? Sally needs to rest.”

  Opal rolled her eyes, then disappeared into the tent where she could be heard digging through about a dozen plastic and paper bags while muttering to herself. “ . . . Don’t even know why we have to be out here in the middle of the woods . . .”

  “And please keep that cat inside the tent!” Managarm called over his shoulder. He turned his attention back to Sally, enjoying how her body stiffened at his nearness. “For his own comfort and safety, of course. Who knows what might happen to your kitty, if he were to get lost in the woods?”

  “So, umm, I want to thank you for this invitation.” Sally stared at his beat-up work boots. “I am honored that you would seek the assistance of one such as myself, a humble . . . I mean, that you would ask the help of a humble servant of the gods, like me, for assistance in helping . . .” Sally was practically hyperventilating. “It is an honor that you would choose to bestow the honor of assisting you—”

  “Let’s skip the small talk.” Managarm looked her square in the face. “There’s work to be done, little witch.”

  He pulled the rabbit skin across the ground to position the newly crafted runes in front of her. “You know what these are?”

  Sally nodded.

  Managarm picked up a wooden disc marked with a symbol that looked like a pitchfork and placed it in her hands.

  “Algiz,” Sally whispered.

  Managarm grimaced at her bastardized pronunciation, but at least she had identified it correctly. “And you know what it means?”

  Sally nodded again. “The rune of protection, friendship, and sanctuary.” Her voice cracked. “Trust.”

  “Yes. Trust.” Managarm scooted closer and rested a hand on her shoulder. She was shaking. “Also the rune of faith. It can be used to open a channel for communion with the gods.”

  “Are there others? From your pantheon, I mean? You didn’t tell me if you’re alone in this world.” She grasped Algiz tightly in her hands, as if she feared Managarm would evaporate before her eyes if she let go. “Odin and Frigga and Freya and the others, are they trapped somewhere? In a parallel dimension or some metaphysical void? Do you need me to help you free them? Is that how we bring the Old Ways back?”

  Managarm sat there looking at her. He was torn between laughing in her face and tearing her head off. “No, it’s not like that,” he replied gruffly.

  Opal stuck her head out of the tent. “How many cans of SpaghettiOs do you think a Berserker can eat in a single sitting?” She frowned at Managarm and Sally, then ducked back into the tent. “Never mind. I’m pretty sure the answer is all of them . . .”

  “The others, they’re gone,” Managarm lied. “But there’s still a way to preserve what they created and what they embodied. Consider David. I know you’re trying to accept that he is a Berserker. Think of him as one of the new warriors in our mission to bring back the Old Ways.”

  Sally opened her hands and looked down at Algiz lying flat in her palm. “But why do you need warriors? Are you planning some kind of battle?”

  Managarm couldn’t suppress the low growl of displeasure, and Sally instinctively shifted away from him.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you. I am simply unaccustomed to answering questions.” Or to humoring mortals.

  Sally nodded but kept her distance. “I honor the Earth and the cycle of seasons, and the sacred circle of life and death and life again. I understand having to embrace the dark as well as the light.” She looked again at the rune in her grasp and closed both hands around it in an unconscious gesture of prayer to the Old Ones. “History remembers the Vikings as invaders, not farmers or explorers or poets. I’m not stupid. I know there was a lot of fighting and conquering going on, but I don’t think you and your people were blood-hungry demons.”

  Sally fidgeted where she sat and clenched her hands more tightly around the rune before she looked up and met Managarm’s eyes. “The Cosmos is all about balance. There’s a lot that’s wrong in the world right now, and if you think the only way to set that right is through . . .” She lifted her chin and swallowed hard. “I need you to tell me what the Berserkers are for.”

  Brave little witch, Managarm thought, though he was literally sitting on his hands to keep from strangling her. He didn’t know how Odin managed to live in human societies without slaughtering the lot of them out.

  “The Berserkers will be our missionaries.” Managarm felt smug at how her eyes lit up at his words. “They will arise from their everyday lives and seek to repair the planet. They will spread the truth of the Old Ways far and wide. They are our foot soldiers in this mission to heal the world. Do you understand?”

  Sally nodded in silence.

  David burst into the clearing, covered in mud and with bits of moss stuck to his clothing. He took a second to scan the campsite, then erupted into a gleeful, laughing jig.

  Opal stuck her head out of the tent again and stacked cans of spaghetti and beef stew and several cooking pots on the ground. She looked at David and shook her head. “Let me guess. You’re hungry?”

  David hopped from one foot to the other and spun in a circle, lifting his knees and kicking his heels. “Hungry! Hungry! Biscuits and gravy! Cheeseburgers! Snow cones!”

  “Look, we don’t have any of that!” Opal shouted from the tent. “You’re going to have to be satisfied with Chef Boyardee, okay?”

  Managarm nodded toward David and sighed, trying to make Sally laugh. “Berserkers, eh?”

  Instead of relaxing, Sally’s shoulders stiffened. She moved like she was about to get up from the fire. “Listen, thi
s all might be really normal to you, but—”

  Managarm grasped her elbow and held her in place. “I created these runes for you, a sacred tool equal to your power.” He hated flattery, but the frazzled teenager seemed to eat it up. She settled back down and started studying the runes laid out in front of her.

  Managarm reached for Algiz in Sally’s hands and placed it on the skin with the others. “There’s one last piece left.”

  Ignoring David, who was now running circles around the tent and leaping with an elated howl every few paces, Managarm slid his hunting knife out of its sheath on his belt. “To consecrate the runes with blood.”

  Sally’s eyes grew wide as she stared at the blade glinting in the firelight. She shook her head and opened her mouth, but words wouldn’t come out.

  Managarm chuckled. “No, this is not your sacrifice.” He sliced into his open palm, then squeezed his hand into a fist and let a steady rain of blood fall onto each wooden disc. The air sizzled with every drop. “Just as Odin gave of himself to the Great Tree to learn its secrets, so I offer my own essence to bind these runes to true magick. An old god’s blood to stir the powers of the Cosmos.”

  Having touched the last round of wood with his blood, Managarm pressed his wounded palm against his jeans. The newly anointed runes glistened red.

  “So now—” Managarm’s voice was cut off by a shadow moving over him. He looked up just as David swooped down and grabbed the hunting knife out of his hand.

  “W-what are you doing?” Managarm stammered, instantly hating the weakness in his own voice. The youth stood over him, weighing the broad knife in his hands. What had gotten into the Berserker? Had he guessed how Managarm intended to use him? Had he somehow been reclaimed into Odin’s service?

  David looked down on Managarm with a wicked grin. Managarm eyed the blade in the boy’s hand and saw the metal still slick with his own blood. The gash in Managarm’s hand throbbed painfully. Centuries ago, such a wound would have healed almost instantaneously but these days even splinters and burns could get infected and take days or longer to resolve. Managarm didn’t know if he could survive an attack from an armed Berserker, much less beat him back.