by C. Gockel
The second raven hops to the edge of the fountain opposite Amy and Steve. “What are you talking about, Muginn? That never happened...”
“You don’t remember anything, Huginn!” squawks the bird that must be Muginn.
“Amy....” says Steve.
But Amy is beyond hearing or caring. Picking up a rock from one of the planters, she hurls it at the closest bird — and hits her mark.
It gives an angry rawk and then both birds take to the sky in a flurry of feathers, one with noticeably more difficulty. “You whore! You hag!” they shriek.
Beside her Steve picks up another rock and throws it at them, just grazing one of their wings. With a shriek they both take off.
Amy turns to Steve. His face is a reflection of the fury she just felt. “Damn things have been following me everywhere,” Steve says. “I still haven’t figured out why me and not Loki.”
Amy tilts her head. She knows who the ravens are. “Those are Odin’s messengers...They’re following you?”
Steve doesn’t answer.
Amy takes a deep breath. “You’re a scary guy, Steve.”
Chapter 7
“Is that a poodle dyed pink, or a Midgardian animal I’ve never seen before?” says Loki, staring at the Star Trek Original Series episode on the television screen. He tilts his head. “Hoenir would approve of this evolution.”
“Poodle dyed pink,” says Amy, and he frowns. She and Loki are on her EZ Boy chairs, watching Star Trek and eating Chinese food. It’s just a few days after Mr. Slithers graced Chicago with his presence. This isn’t how she expected her evening to go, but it’s great. Granted, seeing the line of caterers with pan loads of Chinese food outside when she got home from work was a little disconcerting — especially when they started demanding payment. But as soon as Loki stepped out of her apartment, it all made perfect sense.
“So you’ve never heard about the Three Billy Goats Gruff,” says Amy. She has her list out. “I was sure there was a connection between that and the trolls finding goat meat irresistible.”
Loki gives her a look that is almost sympathetic, or maybe it is just the headache he was complaining about earlier that is causing his brow to furrow. “It doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. It just means I’ve never heard of any goats speaking troll.”
She looks down at her list. He can’t animate statues, either — though he says Hoenir could do it. And he’s never turned anyone into black-footed ferrets. Those were questions that Bryant and Brett said they’d snagged from the comics.
She looks at the last entry on her list. “Can you teleport?” It’s something comic-book and movie-Loki can do, but myth-Loki can’t.
Loki chokes on whatever he is eating. Thumping his chest, he sputters. “Teleport?”
“Yeah, you know...” She moves her hand in empty air.
He stares at her blankly.
“It’s when —”
Pulling out his mobile phone he smiles triumphantly. “Tele as in telephone, and port, as in to carry or move! I only use temporary mobile services, but I always teleport. I thought you knew?”
Amy’s brow furrows. “Actually, it means, um, like in Star Trek, when they dematerialize through the transporter...”
Loki gives her a look like she’s kicked a puppy. “The only way my atoms will dematerialize would be with a rather large explosion...and there would be no putting them back together.”
He looks down at the noodles he was just eating and puts them aside, looking a little disgusted.
“Right,” says Amy. She’ll put that down as a ‘no.’
“Awww...the pink doggie died...” says Loki looking back at the pre-CGI pre-Muppet alien on the screen.
They watch several more episodes of Star Trek. It’s kind of fun, like old times at Amy’s grandmother’s house. But with agents with guns parked outside, a portal to dwarf world’s troll lands a few blocks off, and an apartment filled with surveillance devices. There’s also lots of Chinese food — lots and lots of Chinese food. It was fun sampling all the dishes. Apparently if you can order in Mandarin, you really get the good stuff.
Abraham Lincoln is chatting with Captain Kirk, and Amy is about to fall asleep when she remembers one last thing. “Steve says to tell you those places in Europe and India are under surveillance.”
Loki is silent. She turns to see him giving her a bright, mischievous smile, the tension in his brow completely gone. “Thank you, Amy.”
Fenrir starts to whimper up at empty air and then runs over and jumps into her lap. Loki turns back to the screen but he’s unusually quiet. Captain Kirk and Abraham Lincoln are saying their goodbyes when Amy suddenly gets suspicious. Picking up a chopstick, she throws it at his shoulder. It passes right through him and lands on the floor.
Astral projection Loki turns and sticks out his tongue and then vanishes. Amy looks to the door, wondering just how long he’s been gone.
x x x x
As soon as Amy tells Loki that the gates to Vanaheim in Europe and Asia are covered, Cera, who’d been whining all night, suddenly becomes irritatingly sycophantic. “You were right! They covered the gates to Vanaheim! Now Frey, puppet king and liege of Odin won’t be able to get me! Oh, I am so relieved. You are so wise, Loki, so wise!”
Not that Loki trusts ADUO’s word for it. He creates an astral image of himself in the chair, turns himself invisible and slips out the door. Cera follows close behind.
As soon as he’s certain he hasn’t been followed, he slips into a dark alley. Looking up at the sky, he creates an illusion of himself and lets it keep walking...just in case Heimdall is watching.
Cloaked in invisibility, he takes a breath, wills all the magic around him to himself, steps forward … and into the nothingness of absolute vacuum in the In-Between. It is beyond the reach of even starlight and there is only cold, darkness, and Loki’s own magic. He panics momentarily. He needs a landmark at his destination to anchor to. Throwing out a hand, he imagines a stone in the ring wall of Visby, Sweden. Magic splits the nothing and pulls him forward and out.
He is suddenly falling forward and gasping for breath in a chilly Swedish autumn. His face hits the ancient stone wall that surrounds Visby’s old city. Thankfully, it is very early in the morning. He’s in a field next to the water, and there is no one about.
He staggers back and falls into the grass. His head is marvelously clear, and Cera’s whining is gone. He lies back and closes his eyes. Tomorrow he’ll check that surveillance of the gate inside the ringwall is adequately protected.
He throws an arm over his eyes, grateful he’s in his armor and it has some temperature modulation. Only his chin and his exposed left arm are cold. His stomach grumbles despite the meal he’s just consumed.
He’s definitely sticking to air travel when he checks the gate in India...Teleporting is just so exhausting.
x x x x
Hopping off the ‘L’ at the Racine stop, Amy makes her way to Lexington Avenue just north of Arrigo Park and walks towards the statue of Columbus, two bags of groceries in her arms. The gate where the troll arrived is cordoned off with police tape.
Other than the police line there is no sign that anything unusual is afoot. It’s a warmish fall day and there are people playing soccer on the open field. Kids and their parents are riding bicycles on the little trail that makes a large oval around the green.
It’s been over a week since Amy has seen Loki. Her life is returning to its previous state of depressing normal. Her mother is still waiting to transfer Beatrice to another nursing home. Amy’s waiting to hear back on her scholarship. She’s still a receptionist for ADUO who moonlights as a vet tech.
She shakes her head. She’s starting to worry about Loki. Or miss him. Or both. He showed up so soon in her apartment after Mr. Slither’s visit...she thought they were friends. Or something. But friends share phone numbers and email addresses, don’t they?
She feels her face harden. He’s the only thing in her life right now that makes her f
eel special and hopeful, and that can’t be good. He is literally a mirage half the time...but he’s also the only person she can really talk to. She can’t tell her friends outside of ADUO about anything that has happened in her life recently. Breathe a word about Loki, Odin, trolls, ravens, or wyrms and she could wind up in jail.
Leaving the sidewalk, she walks through a gate and steps onto the path that goes around the green of the park — and freezes. On a bench up ahead is someone she never thought she’d see again. He is alternately reading and watching the soccer match. He turns his head towards the cordoned off area where the troll arrived, and then back to his book.
Heart picking up speed, Amy turns off Lexington and almost jogs down the little trail.
“Liddel!” Amy calls when she is a few feet away.
The man looks up. Liddel was one of two elves Amy met in Alfheim who was not royalty. He and his wife Dolinar were planning to escape the land of the ‘light’ elves and journey to the dark lands to save their unborn child.
This man looks so much like him. He has blonde hair and brown eyes, and he is somewhat attractive...and yet...elven beauty is perfect. This man’s nose is a little disproportionate and a bit crooked. One of his eyebrows seems a little higher than the other. His lips are a tad too thin, and he has a scar on one side of his mouth. His short haircut just barely covers the tips of his ears, but Amy doesn’t need to see them to know that they’re round.
He is just a vision of Liddel in a warped mirror.
His mouth drops for a moment, and then he says, “Pardon?”
Amy backs up a few steps. “I’m sorry...I think I mistook you for someone else.”
Closing his book, he stands up abruptly. “Well, no harm done. Have a good day.”
He walks past her without giving her a backwards glance.
She’s read that you’ve reached middle age when everyone starts looking like someone else you know. Is she middle aged at the advanced age of 25?
Adjusting her groceries, Amy starts walking home again.
x x x x
A little more than a week after his hasty departure, Loki collapses gratefully into an EZ Boy chair in Amy’s apartment. It’s good to be back to his temporary home. Travelling by plane is exhausting, too.
Cera hums in frustration above him. “I don’t see this visit is necessary. The gates to Vanaheim are under surveillance.”
He sighs. Cera’s Josef wasn’t one for keeping oaths unless they involved killing or maiming someone and she just doesn’t understand.
The little dog-rat beast jumps into his arms and growls at Cera’s floating form. Smiling, Loki squeezes the shaggy creature to his chest and scratches between its ears. Fenrir yips and whines happily, giving an occasional angry bark in Cera’s direction. Loki closes his eyes for just a moment. His mind feels fuzzy. A side effect of travel by plane — or just a headache from Cera’s whining?
Cera hums angrily. “You don’t even exchange genetic information with her like you did with the females in Visby and Chidambaram...”
Loki tilts his head, remembering those encounters. They had helped him sleep, something that is more and more difficult to do. He dreams of Nari and Valli, Helen, Aggi, Sigyn, Hoenir and Mimir, but also of faces he doesn’t recognize. They leave him waking to the chill of his own sweat.
He feels as though there is something he is forgetting. Something just at the edge of his consciousness.
Loki looks at where the mist is thickest. “I still need to keep tabs on ADUO, and she’s the easiest way to do that.” And he likes not eating alone. He likes to be distracted from whatever it is hovering just at the back of his mind.
Cera withdraws with a misty equivalent of a huff until she is just a faint pink halo at the edge of his vision. Fenrir tucks her nose under his unarmored arm, and Loki rests his eyes, just for a moment.
He awakens to the sound of a key in the lock.
Loki puts his hand to his mouth to stifle a yawn and blinks. His hand is blue — just like when he woke up in Visby with that woman. Throwing Fenrir to the floor, he jumps from the chair, vaults over the half bookshelf and checks his appearance in the mirror by Amy’s bed. He looks like one of the blue idols worshipped by the Indians in Chidambaram — blue skin, black hair, but eyes as empty as the void. Running his hands through his hair, he turns it back to ginger and pauses. Those idols...if Amy’s hypothesis is true...could they have been suffering from the same affliction plaguing Loki? He’s never met a Shiva, Brahma, or Krista...or whatever. They’re long gone if they existed at all. Could this affliction be the cause? Is he dying? He clenches his jaw and looks down at his blue hands. He will not die until he has his vengeance. Odin will kneel and all of Asgard will burn.
The blue in his body slips away like water leaching into sand. At just that moment, the door opens. Loki spins around and pulls a book from the shelf at random.
“Hey!” says Amy, her head between two bags of groceries as Fenrir hops beside her. “Um...nice to see you, long time no see....What are you doing?”
Smiling, Loki looks down at the book. “Oh, just reading...How to Teach Physics to Your Dog.” Holding it aloft he chuckles. “Is Fenrir benefiting from this?”
Looking far too smug she walks by towards the kitchen. “It’s super simplified quantum physics for humans.” She begins to unpack the brown paper sacks. “Since you told me magic is just basically quantum mechanics, I thought I’d read up a bit. I don’t think Fenrir gets it, but I bet she’d have fun putting a cat in a box.”
Loki actually laughs at the reference to Schrödinger's cat. Amy smiles and bites her lip. He wonders how long she’s been waiting to tell that little joke.
Pulling something from her bag, she says, “Hey, I have portobello mushrooms — want a portobello mushroom burger?”
Loki purses his lips. “Let’s skip the fungus on toast. Get changed. We have reservations at one of the premier molecular gastronomy restaurants in the entire world!”
“Molecular what?” says Amy.
His eyes widen. “How can you be oblivious to one of the greatest revolutions in your species’ history? Especially when one of the best establishments for said revolution is in your hometown?”
Amy’s lips quirk. “Do I need to bring a gun to this revolution — or explosive-laden goat meat?”
Loki smirks. “Ha. No. Just a nice dress.” He rolls his head and bounces on his feet. “Come on. I’m hungry.” The last comes out a whine.
Walking towards her closet Amy says, “Okay, Comrade.”
And then suddenly Cera is filling the room and Fenrir is growling at the air.
“She is not a Comrade! She is a petty bourgeois!” Cera screams — in English. Of course being human, Amy can’t hear her magical wail.
“Shut-up,” says Loki, being careful to use Russian. And then he blinks. “When did you learn English?”
Cera retreats immediately and Loki scowls.
“Loki?” says Amy.
Turning to Amy he says brightly, “Nothing.” He looks at the dress she’s pulled out and the shoes. He purses his lips. “Heels, please.”
“I fall down in the heels,” says Amy scowling at him.
Loki smirks. “So earn your danger pay honestly for once.” He looks down at the book in his hands as she glares at him and goes into the bathroom.
x x x x
“Turn right!” says Loki. The cab driver turns sharply onto Ashland Avenue and Amy slams into the door so quickly that her high-heeled shoes fall off.
How did she let Loki convince her to wear heels again? She shakes her head, remembering overhearing Bryant in the hallway in the office. “Amy isn’t a reliable go-between. She’s got a crush on the guy, and he’s dangerous.”
Amy looks at Loki. He is looking out the back window, lips quirked in amusement, completely oblivious. “Brett must have significantly adjusted the sensitivity of the magic detectors,” he says.
Amy sees the cab driver, an older guy with a little round cap and a lo
ng beard, maybe Indian, maybe Pakistani, raise an eyebrow in the rearview mirror. She shrugs at him.
Beside her, Loki’s face pinches. “But I’m too hungry for games.”
He turns his head northward. All of the street lights as far as the eye can see suddenly go green. “Drive faster,” he says.
“Okay, Boss,” says the cabbie in a thick accent. The cab jumps forward, and Amy falls back into the seat. She turns her head. As soon as they pass through a light it goes red and cars stop.
Loki leans back next to her and sighs happily. “Now where were we...Molecular gastronomy...where food preparation meets modern science...”
x x x x
The restaurant he’s so excited about is Alinea. Amy’s heard about it, but she’s never been. It serves what Beatrice would call derisively, ‘overpriced hoity toity food,’ and once Amy might have agreed. But Beatrice would have turned up her nose at all the Chinese food she’s been sampling with Loki at her apartment and the sushi, too. Alinea is located in an uber-rehabbed slate gray row house on Chicago's north side. Inside it's narrow. The decor is very modern, but with lots of rich browns and deep chocolate wood, it feels warm.
They're seated at a small table in a room with two small tables and one table set up for a large group; Loki takes the far seat facing the entrance. The large table is empty, the other small table, behind Amy, is already occupied by two men in suits.
The wait staff isn’t hoity toity, they are all really friendly. Everyone smiles at them. Their waiter has dreadlocks and is very passionate about the menu, but Amy’s too busy digging out her list to really pay attention.
“We’ll take the 21 course option, and wine pairing,” she hears Loki say. Hand still fishing in her purse, Amy grins and her feet do a little staccato dance step under the table. Loki raises an eyebrow at her as the waiter walks away. He looks businesslike this evening. He’s wearing a dark gray suit over a green shirt — or well, that’s what it looks like he’s wearing anyway. He’s probably in his armor. His hair is neat and brushed back, or looks like it is.
Leaning across the table she whispers. “I never have to feel guilty about ordering too much food with you...” She just takes a nibble of everything and then hands the rest off to him. It’s so much fun sampling all the flavors and textures.