Master of Miasma (The Valhalla Series)

by Poppet

  A voice clears a throat and the shadows fall away from the wall, exposing Mac inside his camouflage. “Emma please, stop being so angry.”

  I lift up my palm and jut my hand at him, “You did this! I hate it! It's horrid and you … you... you damn man!”

  Kake sits down opposite me, chuckling, his amusement pretty obvious, “Aah, lust and love are a torturous cocktail. You want him but don't. You love him but wish you didn't. You need him and that scares the sense out of you. Now I see the dilemma here.”

  “When I need a shrink I'll find my own, thanks,” I snap sarcastically.

  “Pain is such a familiar bulwark isn't it? You pretend to be brave and fearless when inside all you are is afraid, there's nothing else in there. That's why love scares the heck out of you. You don't know what to do with it because for you it's unpredictable.”

  I open my mouth to tell him to keep his pseudo-psycho snark to himself when he holds up his hand, staying me.

  “You will hear me out little raven. You will not interrupt when a sage offers you pearls of wisdom with insolent belligerence.”

  That does it. I refuse to have a man tell me what to do again. I am not a child no matter how old he is, I'm an adult with my own car, my own money, my own home.

  Read my lips Kake, I don't need this shit!

  Turning his back on me, exposing the back of his head which is surprisingly covered in long ebony dark straight hair, he says to Mac, “Go. When she's over her issues I'll review the situation.”

  “No!” he shouts at the old man. “I will not just abandon her. She's got my mark on her hand, she's my responsibility!”

  “Well she doesn't want you anywhere near her, Macala. Do not unleash what you don't understand and what she clearly can't yet control.”

  “Exactly! She pulled down bright mist instead of shadows. It scared the fuck out of her and when I helped her to release it, it frightened her. She's just in shock, come on Afi, let me help her. I'm the only one here who understands her,” pleads Mac.

  “If you understood her this wouldn't have happened. My decision is final grandson, go help in the kitchens or something, make yourself useful–”

  “But eagle is coming! We don't have time!”

  “Do I strike you as a novice? I will choose another to train her until she has forgiven you.”

  And with that poisoning the air in his elaborate cave, the old guy points at the tunnel leading away from his chambers, “Out.”

  I can see his eyes shining a glow of warning at Mac, and now I'm second guessing the wisdom of clashing wills with him.

  Mac stalks past me, his expression a dark brooding sufferance, glancing at me once on his way out, the look saturated with recrimination.

  My heart sinks, my fight dissipating. I hurt him. This should be our business to slug out between us in private, not made a public affair where the judge and jury executes us for having a disagreement.

  Okay, maybe I overreacted, but when he took my hand and blasted that energy up my arm it napalmed my heart, and it freaking hurt! My reaction was justified. But now that he's gone and I'm alone with Sir Strange I feel too vulnerable. I'm a foreigner in my own home.

  *

  Macala:

  I gave her my eiðr and now Kake has stolen her right out from under my nose. What the hell is he thinking?

  I am her friend and guardian, we have handfasted, and yet he undermines me as if I am still a sveinn, pulling rank and royally screwing me over.

  Fucking fabulous move.

  Why the hell did she freak out so bad? One second the world is our pillow and the next she's all PMS over my show of respect. Why must life always be one long vig?

  I am still young enough to blend into society, I'm the one they rely on for reconnaissance, I'm the one they send for supplies because I still look very human, I'm her only ally who she can relate to as familiar and they strip her of me? I understand modern lingo and slang, it's as much a part of me as it is her, and now they're going to send her into a mental spiral she's in no way prepared to handle.

  Kake is an idiot! This disrespect is outrageous.

  Stalking to the Book, I have to read what was going on in her head so I can understand and don't make the same mistake twice.

  Arghin is walking the other way, to Kake's caverns. “Where are you going?” I ask when we're close enough.

  “Kake wants to see me.”

  “Why?” I demand, fury igniting my veins.

  “Dunno. I'll let you know when I do.”

  Gripping his arm I drop my voice to confidential, “If he asks you to train Emma, say yes. I can at least trust you.”

  He nods, giving me an odd look.

  I watch him go, bitterness mangling my innards. Shaking off anger I storm to the study to flip through the pages.

  Some of them are thick and sturdy parchment, yet other pages are fragile as onion skins, delicate as rice paper. It took me awhile to realize the old souls are the ones worn thin, the resilient pages belonging to younger Ravens.

  Finding hers I lean on my elbows, reading.

  It doesn't take long before I'm using the heel of my palm to pound my forehead in agitation.

  Fuck! I should have known this, I should have felt it.

  The second we clasped hands and she willingly accepted the dominion of my valhalla mark, the bond was forged. Prior to this she found me intriguing and I appealed to her lust, but infatuation was eradicated with the handfasting, replacing it with the kindling of a forge. The loyal until death and beyond kind.

  Scanning feverishly I read her words as she thought them.

  You don't get it, Mac! My own mother rejected me, dad vanished and never came back, Guy ran away with Des, the wound is still there, a weal so sore it has yet to heal despite the burgeoning of emotions I have... and then you suck me into your gravity just to change the polarity when I get a taste of what I'm craving. You rejected me! I can't take another rejection, fuck it, I'd rather be alone than play this demented game of masochistic 'love'.

  It wasn't what I needed, I don't need the orgasm Mac, what I needed was you validating me as the special entity you proclaim I am.

  Boosting off the table I need to punch the shit out of something for being such a class A idiot. She loves me more than even she can admit for it to hurt her like that. Love is a commodity she's seen perverted, one with an agenda when mine has none. Shit!

  I just wanted to show you that you're more precious than Skadi. To me you already are half my soul, my future, my forever-after in the halls of Asgard. I've yearned, I know your patterns, I know your routines, I know your likes and dislikes, and now I pretty much know what you're feeling and thinking. I've had moons to fall stupidly in awe of you and now you're becoming jötunn and it's sexy as all hell. I want to, of course I want to, I just stupidly, in vile error, thought you needed a little bit of coddling. I thought you deserved the fucking romance! I erroneously presumed to think you needed to know what it's like to be a man's lady instead of his convenience.

  But you don't want the romance, you just want me.

  Fuck!

  Walking through the doors to the forest I punch the first tree I reach, splitting the wood in an unholy pop, the drawn out creak as the trunk peels and the top half falls to bow under the assault instantly makes me guilty.

  Shaking off regret I lose the human form, adopting the freedom of wings and Raven sharp eyesight, flapping hard to gain altitude, flying off the rage.

  *

  Emma:

  “I've called for Arghin. You at least know him. He'll take you to sort out your chambers and take over your training,” says Kake, interrupting my reverie.

  Speak of the devil, here is the dude with the freaky eye and Viking outerwear now.

  I half listen while Arghin gets his orders, the whole time I'm watching that Odin eye. It occurs belatedly that none of them can lie. They can never tell a half truth because that eye reveals the truth constantly. What they feel, see, think, it's exposed. No
hidden agenda, no way to hide hurt or fake bravado. And I have the cheek to feel vulnerable?

  Mac... damn it! I'm sorry! I know you told the truth now, I know you can't lie if it could save the world from doom, because if anything you are a race of folk who live and die with nothing but truth on your faces, in your eyes. The window to your soul never disrespected me. If anything when I looked in your eyes I saw gentle caring, understanding, compassion.... desire.

  My eyes are filling with tears when Arghin helps me out of my chair, marching me in the guise of disapproval to my own rooms. Right next door to Mac, and three millions light years apart.

  Chapter 17

  Emma:

  Propped on my pillows on my old bed, it's too small after experiencing the space in Mac's bed. His made me feel like a ten year old the first time I experienced sleeping in a double bed all to myself. But that was just the once, at Sandy's house. Lucky bitch.

  As a child I had an uncomfortable single bed that belonged to the Cold War, an archaic design of interlocking iron springs which had slept bodies tons heavier than mine, leaving the springs lax and distorted, forcing me to sleep on a board shoved across the metal frame to keep my mattress from slumping in hammock style when it molds to the destroyed springs.

  My own bed is familiar, a slice of normal, but a normal that is now as alien as living on gas and having a thorax. I hate everything it represents because it burdens me with the weight of what I've lost, because I reacted like a drama queen.

  In hindsight I have to admit I overreacted. I have anger accumulated from so long ago I just lash out, any pain to my heart at all is enough to tumble the carefully stacked breathing room and the whole barn of past transgressions come crashing down to stifle me – and then I freak out.

  I did.

  And now I'm alone in a strange place without even a firefly for company, to keep the impenetrable black at bay. They could have at least left me with a colony of glow worms. Something!

  The dark is so complete it's suffocating. I've not held a fear of the dark since a young child. Hitting my teens I discovered the night was a vista of sophistication and fun.

  I longed to be old enough to go out for dinner to restaurants, to wear high heels and sexy skirts, to receive flowers and dance the night away. But it's a long wait because it's a societal age-ladder we have to climb, rung by crusty crumbling rung. First we have to haunt pool halls, frequent dodgy bars and nightclubs, before graduating to upscale jaunts.... the sleek cars and romance is something that just doesn't happen... well it didn't, not for me. And yet I always kept an outfit in my closet for just such an occasion. And now I'm too buxom and tall for it.

  That's my life in a nutshell, a wardrobe of opportunities which pass as they become redundant.

  This room is a shrine to a history that isn't me. I've been more alive in the recent twenty-four hours than I have in all the twenty-nine years leading up to this apex. I've reached my sell-by date, Guy running away pretty much surrendered me to a spinster life where I'd start painting watercolor postcards and taking group holidays so I have some old fart to share vacation photos with.

  Alcohol was a refuge for a short interlude, hiding in the dark recesses at the Fallen Fraternity gave me a semblance of belonging, but romance is personified by Macala. The way he looks at me, the way he holds my hand, the way he carried me as if I was the most precious gift he'd ever found when he brought me here.

  Screw Kake!

  Sneaking out of bed I rebelliously tiptoe barefoot across the floor until I find wall, scavenging my way around the cave inch by painful inch, blindly feeling my way with sensitive fingers, following the labyrinth into the tunnel, creeping along until the dim light of his suite of caverns burns a twilight into the dark.

  Running for it I sprint right to his bedroom, disappointed to find it vacant, everything exactly the way it was when I passed out. My love crystal glows warmth on the bed and I stroll to it, stroking the facets the way I would caress his face if he was here. Then I'd say I'm sorry, and cry, and climb into his lap and ask for a hug, and I know deep inside he wouldn't say no. He wouldn't hold a grudge or make me grovel.

  He has no conditions.

  Sighing miserably I heft the heavy crystal into my arms, checking the bathroom, dining nook, and his lounge, before giving up, dawdling despondently back to my room with a light that's truer than the rumor of heaven.

  “Where are you sleeping tonight?” I ask the darkness, wondering if he's one of the shadows dancing in grotesque distortion against the tunnel arch now that I hold my stone of light.

  It's a balsamic mural, turning even my shadow into a monstrosity that would terrify children. I've become the devil of nightmares. I'm a giant, a myth, and as miserable as the child I was back when the dark scared the sweat out of my body.

  *

  Macala:

  Settling into the raven's nest, I volunteer for tonight's guard duty.

  I know I'll seek her out if I'm indoors. I'll hurt her because of Kake's adherence to protocol. Emma won't understand if I leave again, following orders, and that will permanently crack the fragile foundation we've built.

  It's better to be a blackbird for a night, sleeping in the brisk night air, clearing my head and getting the foresight I need to plot my next steps with the utmost care.

  Chapter 18

  Emma:

  I'm left to my own devices for what feels like days. Company appearing in the form of strangers bringing food to a prisoner. They come and go like breezes on the ocean, sometimes too shy to even announce their presence, arriving and leaving as shadows. Am I such a bitch?

  Arghin finds me in my bedroom in the 'morning' of what I think is my fifth day here. It's hard to tell, being underside instead of topside. I'm deep in the underworld, which would usually thrill my inner Goth, but not so much right now. My room is full of old stuff that no longer fits my new life. Everything I held dear, everything that seemed important no longer seems to matter one iota. Arghin nudges his head, “Wanna read the book?”

  “What book?” I grumble, aggravated to the tips of my toenails.

  “The Book of Shadows. You, me, all of us, we're shadows.”

  Blinking in denial, I attempt to halt my runaway careening fear of the implications that he's casually spewing, as if it's no biggie. “Dude, what?!”

  “That big book your blood wrote in, the day you arrived, Odin's book, it's the book I'm referring to sweetcheeks.” He shrugs nonchalantly, “Hey if you don't wanna go reading about Mac's lineage and shit, it's no sweat off my back.”

  Oh hell yeah!

  “Sure thing!” I say quickly, pouncing off my pity pot and meeting him in the doorway, walking in a hurry to keep up.

  “After this we'll have your first training session, then you go to Gudmund for botany lessons.”

  “What do I need botany lessons for?” I snap, annoyed all over again.

  “So you can live off the land. He has three caverns at different temperatures, where he grows our supplies. It'll teach you a lot,” he nods, as if fate has already been written and there's no point struggling against what will be.

  Examining the corpus splayed before me I find Mac's story incredible. His mother died in childbirth and he was raised here in these mountains, sojourning often into the modern world on supply gathering and reconnaissance, looking specifically for me.

  His father, like mine, is the giant. His mother human.

  He knows what it's like to walk in my shoes but let me rant like a snotty brat instead of revealing that he understood. Would the exposing of that secret have killed him?

  Reading faster I find his reasons much further down the page, writing in a bold script full of ornamental flourishes. His page is a thing of beauty, the attention to detail minute. Mirroring the man.

  He respects my journey, knowing I needed to purge what's eating away at me, so instead of nullifying my experience with his own he simply absorbed it, being the proverbial shoulder.

  Aw! See, once your
perspective changes you simply fall harder for mister perfect. He is, truly, gorgeous, in every way possible. But I'm going to kick him for letting me ruminate on my agony and wallow in the shortcomings my parents embodied.

  Clearly bored, Arghin interrupts, “Come on Emma, we've got stuff to do.”

  Petulant, I glare at him, left no choice but to follow him to the gymnasium where a big oaf waits on the mats with a bunch of armory.

  “Emma this is Vigorn, he'll be helping me demonstrate the moves to you.”

  “Okay,” I mumble.

  “So you're Mac's new guest?” he says, way too enthusiastic.

  “Yup,” I nod, looking around at the items on the floor as we reach him.

  “Nice to greet you,” he says, grabbing hold of my hand and yanking me in for a kiss, on the freaking mouth!

  Ugh!

  Leaping back, I'm ready to dislocate my hips kicking the bastard in the groin, but hell I want to!

  He gives me a leery smirk, releasing my hand.

  “Let's start with the basics,” booms Arghin's baritone.

  Shifting to face him I prop hands on hips and wait for the big revelation.

  Scratching his head, scooping his long bangs out of his eyes, he looks me over with his freaky eye, “Can you change into your avatar?”

  “What's an avatar?” I volley.

  “Your bird form. Or animal form, to be more specific.”

  “Nope,” I shake my head. “Wouldn't that be better taught by a woman?”

  He shakes his head, “Nope. It's a fallacy that we lose our clothing when we change form. It's a gift from Odin, we are always prepared for battle, we're never vulnerable like that.

  “Oh,” I nod, appreciating the intel.

  “Okay, how about shadow? Can you shadow yet?” he delves, scratching at his cheek now.

  I shake my head again, beginning to feel inept.

  Exasperated Arghin looks across to Vigorn, who's ogling me blatantly.