The Goddess Embraced

by Deborah Davitt

  “Damnation.” The voice was without inflection, and the valkyrie before her slowly lowered herself to a crouch. “I knew it would not seem like any time at all, but I just tried to fix things. I took one step, and then . . . here you are.” She glared up at Stormborn, and added, coldly, “And you don’t particularly look like you fixed things, the way you were supposed to do. All I see is a lot of fancy armor, and all I smell is the stench of defeat. You let the world die!” Tears trickled from the valkyrie’s cold eyes, cutting channels through the gore on her face, and rain began to spatter down from the clouds above.

  Stormborn reached up and pulled her helmet away, letting her face be seen, her eyebrows rising slightly. You are one to talk, she returned, evenly. Explain yourself. How have you attempted to ‘fix’ things? How am I responsible for the death of the world? You look like me. But I am who I am. You are not me.

  “Oh, we’re the same, all right. Gods, is my stubbornness that irritating from the outside?” A half-laugh, half-sob from the woman crouching on the road. “If we’re the same . . . you should have my ability to heal minds. So . . . take my memories. Give me yours. And maybe we can figure out how you managed to fail so completely.”

  Stormborn’s eyes narrowed, but she took a step forward, and put the fingers of one death-cold, armored gauntlet against the woman’s face. To the valkyrie’s credit, she didn’t flinch. And then, memories. Simultaneously crossing between the two of them. Each of them evaluating, judging. Horrified.

  . . . it had been the end of the world. The end of everything. Sigrun had been called by the gods, like every other valkyrie and bear-warrior, to return to Burgundoi, to defend the city and the Odinhall. She’d been in Judea for the past eight years, fighting near the Wall, in the southern deserts, or going building-to-building in Tyre, trying to save the last vestiges of Carthage. And whenever she hadn’t been fighting, she’d been home. Helping Adam up and down the stairs. Helping him in and out of the shower. Helping him put his shoes on. Sorting his medicines, and ensuring that he’d taken them properly. Ensuring that he’d eaten, since some of the medications destroyed his appetite. Every step he took, he had to grit his teeth against the pain, and he stubbornly refused to take most of the pain medications, because they made his head fuzzy.

  And whenever she hadn’t been with him, she’d been with Sophia. Helping her sister make small, soft animal puppets. Trying to keep Sophia from painting on the walls of the asylum, and putting up with the constant frenetic chatter of prophecy. How this person or that person or that one would die. Die, die, die, it was the only thing Sophia could talk about, until even the loss of her voice was a secret solace to everyone around her, and her death had left Sigrun with a void in her heart that had been filled with equal parts guilt, regret, and relief.

  And then yes, she and Adam had fought. He hadn’t understood why she had to go. She had been assigned to Judea for decades. Why did she have to leave now, when this was her home? Where did it matter where she was, when the end came? Why shouldn’t she be with him? Why couldn’t they meet that end, as they’d faced their lives and countless battles, together?

  She’d finally had to say the words that she’d hated to speak. “My duty to my gods comes before my duty to you.” “What about your love of me? Does your duty to them come before that, too?” “Today, yes, it does. I have millions of people to fight for. If I can put off the end for some of them, even for a day . . . they’re my people, Adam. If I live . . . if I survive . . . I swear that I will come back for you.”

  Stormborn pulled back from the vision, reflecting that her Adam had chosen to put duty to his people and adherence to his faith in his god before her wishes. And that the valkyrie before her had put adherence to her gods’ commands before this other Adam’s desires.

  And apparently, neither of them had won even that battle, let alone the greater war.

  . . . . It had been enough, or so it had seemed. She’d kissed his face—shaving his delicate, elderly skin had become difficult, so white bristles scratched her lips and cheeks. They’d clutched and held each other, and she’d done her best to show him how much she still cherished him. They’d managed to make love, and he’d actually reached release for once. And she’d left him, sleeping peacefully, before letting the Odinhall draw her through the Veil to Burgundoi. She, Brandr, and Erikir had been on a line together, and Niðhoggr had come to them, and guarded her back, silently. Had thrown himself heedlessly between her and harm, again and again. Three armies had ranged against the city. No organization between any of them

  The first had been the coalition of the mad—hundreds of thousands of people from southern Gaul, Germania, and Nahautl, who’d gathered together munitions, and risen up against the gods themselves. Turned their magic against the gods and god-born, seeing them as uncaring and complicit in the destruction of the world.

  The second had been the Nahautl army, commanded by generals and directed by the priests and the emperor of that ravaged province, making its way north.

  And the last had been hundreds of thousands of ghul, raised by the mad godlings.

  Against that array of foes, the city had no chance. The battle was a last-ditch effort fought to allow the people of Burgundoi time to retreat into the countryside. To go further north, into the winter-blighted lands.

  She saw rocket-propelled grenades and missiles pierce the dragon’s wings and scales. She ran to his side, and the world went white around her, and he’d flung his wings around her, to protect her from the power of the blast, and when he’d released her, and she’d had her first breath of air, the dragon’s body was ravaged by the hydrogen spell. The sound of his voice for the first time. The agonized confession of love, and his farewell . . . unendurable. She’d screamed and pulled frantically at the world around her, not knowing what she was doing, lashing out with the power that let her shape minds, and then, he’d vanished . . . alive or dead, she did not know.

  . . . Brandr, dead. Erikir, dead. Loki hadn’t come to the battle—he’d been sorely wounded by Jormangand, and had recovered in Valhalla before leaving its safety to defend the jotun and fenris, his inadvertent ‘children,’ in Judea. The Mitsi'adazi region was little but a pool of molten rock, hundreds of miles in any direction, from the destruction the world-serpent had wrought there, tormented as he had been by the mad godlings. It was visible from space, like a giant eye staring out of the face of Caesaria Aquilonis . . . .

  Sigrun fought and fought, and she and the few remaining valkyrie and bear-warriors fell back. Retreated to the Odinhall, where they and the gods made their last stand, seeing the buildings topple around them. Witnessed the destruction of the gods by the mad ones, but powerless to help them. The look of tired sadness on Freya’s face, as the goddess gave her one last look . . . and died. Thor dying. Odin dying. Tyr dying . . . and then darkness.

  . . . The damnable raven, pecking at her head until she regained consciousness. Dim realization that only her head was visible from where she’d fallen, trapped under Tyr’s body. Pulling herself out of the rubble, covered in the blood of her grandsire. Picking up his spear, because her own was broken and lost. And then wandering, lost and alone, ignored by the ghul as they fought over the bodies of the dead. I have to get home to Adam. I promised. I can’t fly. I’m . . . too tired. Too weak. So I’ll walk till I regain my strength. And then I’ll fly. We’ll be together at the end . . . .

  Walking, until she found . . . a thin place. A place where the ley-lines had fused together, and reality itself was knotted and frayed and knotted again. She hadn’t known what it was, though her skin had prickled as she walked under the trees of the ruined park . . . and then she’d been elsewhere. Here.

  Stormborn raised her head, evaluating the information. This is a place between worlds. A moment of frozen time into which you blundered. A bubble, broken off from our own universe, and steadied by your latent power. Congruent to the Veil, but apart from it. From it, you could reach any other of the quantum realities that diverge
d from the mortal realm . . . or reach the Veil itself, if you so chose.

  Now that she understood that, she could see realities fleeting by outside. Universes like her own, unwinding in time. She could see every moment of them, unfolding like the chain of lives on Juno’s tapestries, except they unfolded off the side of the road, like droplets of rain trickling along the outside of a moving motorcar’s windows. She could stare at them forever, fascinated. Hypnotized.

  “That’s what she told me,” Sigrun admitted, putting her face down in her hands, drawing Stormborn’s attention back to her. She suspected the valkyrie was completely unaware of what lay just off the edges of this narrow band of concrete reality. “Hecate explained it.”

  You went to Hecate first?

  “No.” Sigrun’s voice was raw. “I went through the Veil. Fought my lost and confused way through it. Managed to find Trennus’ woods, and he wasn’t there, not yet. I made my way back to the house on Shar’abi Street. Trennus and Lassair weren’t home—”

  Of course they weren’t. Trennus moved away from the house when he became king of the Picts, and moved the Wood to Judea. And he and Lassair’s paths went separate ways, long ago. Healthier for both of them, really.

  “I . . . what?” Sigrun’s voice was dazed, until Stormborn fed her the appropriate memories, and found Sigrun’s own, in turn, and her eyebrows rose in surprise. There had been surprising differences to every life, apparently.

  For Sigrun the valkyrie, Trennus and Lassair and Saraid had maintained their increasingly lopsided triangle until the end. The faerie-mound house still stood next to her own. And when she’d gone home, aching in body, mind, and heart, ready to face the end, ready to die, as she should have died with her gods, a beast with black armor, covered in spikes had burst out of the front door, his eyes glowing yellow, and had attacked her. Trennus had driven up in time to see her block the spiked forearm with Tyr’s spear, taking it off just under the elbow, and had slapped a binding circle around the godslayer, as Sigrun tumbled backwards, away from the beast. The godslayer had snarled and leaped out of the circle, advancing on her, and Trennus had used every ounce of will and power he and Lassair could muster, to banish the creature, wrenching it out of the mortal world, and its mortal shell . . . leaving behind an armor-covered body. And when they’d removed the helmet, they’d been horrified to discover that the features beneath the mask were those of Adam ben Maor . . . .

  Gods. In your reality, he made the choice.

  “Sophia was right. Damn her and her ghost.”

  Stormborn considered it, sorrow coursing through her. She had a strong inkling that her Adam had made the self-same decision. She wasn’t sure if it helped or hurt to know that even if she had stayed with him till the bitter end, maintained the façade of humanity that had so choked and warped her, as this Sigrun had done, that it wouldn’t have mattered at all. Love wasn’t enough. Caring wasn’t enough. You did everything that I could not. Do not blame yourself.

  And you did everything that I wouldn’t. And it wasn’t enough. The thoughts leaked out.

  Given a universe with such limited options? And facing the destruction of all he held dear? He was always going to make that choice, Sigrun. Stormborn stared into the distance of the blasted, desert-like land around her. More choices are needed . . . The thought tickled the back of her mind, and she set it aside, for the moment. What happened next?

  Sigrun’s voice was dull. “I broke. I ran from Trennus. From all of them. I went into the Veil, and that’s where Hecate found me. I told her . . . everything. I couldn’t look Trennus or Kanmi or Minori in the face—”

  Kanmi was alive? Then again, Sophia always insisted that he would return . . . .

  “Yes, Fritti revived him a few months ago. She used his bones, and drew a little on the life-essence of all his family. None of them died. Just enough energy to put him back in a body. He was a little confused about the whole thing.” Sigrun’s tone remained leaden. “As for the rest? Hecate had stood apart. She’d refused to be involved with Olympus and all their games, for centuries. She’d just watched, and taken care of her worshippers, as best she could. She’d been there, long ago, when Cronus used the nature of the Veil to . . . touch the face of time.”

  Memories fleeted through Stormborn’s mind. A long-ago conversation with Nith stirred, on the subject of slowing time in the Veil, so as to heal in seconds what would normally take hours or days . . . or simply using it to transit to the mortal realm instantly. I have been allowing duration to pass here a hundred times faster than it does in the mortal realm, however. His tone was placid. Thus, about twenty-eight minutes will have gone by, if we were to return this instant.

  She stared at him, her mouth opening and closing. His tail lashed in amusement. You look like a fish, Stormborn.

  I . . . you can do that?

  Technically, yes. But that creates problems that are best avoided. It is not practiced among the Vanir and Aesir. Even my progenitor did not dare meddle with time, any more than she dared meddle with the ley-lines that construct the reality of the mortal universe. Change what you will here, Stormborn. We have time. All that is required is . . . willpower. That, you have in abundance . . . .

  And then Hecate, deep in the jungles of Caesaria Australis, weighing her words to see if they had any effect on Stormborn: Time and space are part of the same matrix. Gravity bends time. We are . . . free of time, if we choose to be. We can bend time and space, Stormborn. Remember that.

  That was the line of thought that had continuously eluded her for the past several days. The puzzle clicked into place in her head. She and Nith had always been soul-bound, because the Veil stood outside of the time-space of the mortal universe. She was not subject to its laws. And time was as subject to manipulation as gravity or any other mechanic that comprised the mortal realm. Trennus manipulated the cosmic strings that underpinned physical reality. Why could she not manipulate time? Especially as the Veil was a single dot of time, where the mortal realm was a continuum comprised of such points? She could enter the Veil, and exit it at any place in reality. And at any point in time.

  The line of thought had only taken seconds. The valkyrie regarded her, steadily. “You . . . don’t seem all that surprised.”

  I am surprised. But it explains much. Hecate assisted you willingly, because she did not wish to see the mortal realm destroyed?

  “She said she’d help me understand. Help me . . . undo the damage. Because only a human had the right to change the face of time. It wasn’t . . . it wasn’t something a Veil spirit or a god could or should do.”

  So you and she went back in time?

  “I did. I found her in the eighties, and told her everything that would happen, and that confirmed her . . . pre-memories. And we agreed that the best thing we could do was to do as little as possible. Small changes. Because . . . . ” Sigrun wavered. “I don’t have the right to unmake people’s lives. To make them never to have been.”

  Stormborn considered that, dispassionately. Her mind moved with remarkable alacrity through the information, and none of it seemed to affect her, really. There was little emotion in her as she responded, People like Vidarr and Ima would never have met, never have married . . . would never have had children, would never have been jotun or hveðungr, if the events of 1970 never occurred. And the jotun and the fenris and the hveðungr are, by and large, fairly happy with their lot. The ones who have been born this way, at any rate. Such is also the case with many of the harpies, dryads, minotaurs, and centaurs. While I may regret the lives lost in the various explosive waves of energy associated with major god deaths . . . it is potentially unethical to unmake the whole of someone’s life. Such as the lives of children who were born to those who became lycanthropes or harpies, and found new mates.

  “Precisely. Though from your memories . . . I am already guilty of having done so. Lassair and Trennus had another child, in my timeline, in my reality. In yours, they separated. That child . . . does not exist now, anywh
ere.” Sigrun’s voice was heavy, freighted with guilt.

  Stormborn stared at the valkyrie, and her eyebrows rose. Did you have Lassair take the child to the Veil before you changed time’s passage?

  “. . . I . . . what?” The gray eyes blinked. “Hecate warned me that if I stayed in the mortal realm, I might be unmade. I would be subject to paradox . . . so I returned here. I . . . didn’t think . . . I never would have thought that Trennus and Lassair wouldn’t . . . . ” Sigrun covered her face and eyes. “Gods forbid that Lassair ever knows.”

  Stormborn crouched, and rested a hand on the valkyrie’s shoulder. You were correct to come here. What exists in the Veil is apart from humanity, apart from time, and not subject to it. Effect can come before cause. Causes may not actually be linked to any effects. It is a separate, congruent reality. What lives in the Veil cannot die. Stormborn watched the valkyrie’s face crumple further, and rain spattered down more urgently now on them both. Do not weep. You did not know that their actions would diverge. You suspected, as I did, that Trennus was . . . weary . . . but he never acted on his exhaustion in your timeline. But take comfort. Your words have given me many thoughts. She paused. Please, continue your tale. What was the course of action that you and Hecate selected?