Mjolnir

by B. C. James

  She led them upstairs to her office. Freya lagged behind and looked over the spa with a sense of longing. The lobby and main floor were like an oversized sitting room. It was stylishly decorated with a number of couches, chairs, and art objects. Freya would have bet her life that these were not at all worthless reproductions.

  Neatly arranged on each of the coffee tables were small leather cases that Freya recognized as the type that held tablet computers. She stood on the spiral staircase, imagining the room full of women in robes lounging on the couches between various treatments. Her mind’s eye saw the wait staff serving small delicacies to snack on and champagne to sip while the customers used the tablets to shop for shoes and occasionally check Craigslist to see if any open-minded pool boys were looking for work.

  Along the walls of this central gathering place were a number of doors that no doubt led to the places within the spa where the real magic happened. Each one was a portal to the sort of pampering that was often a regular part of Freya’s previous life. Since the attack in New York by that strange spectral creature, things had not been the same for her. Adversity has a way of making days feel like years, and for Freya, it seemed like an eternity since she last had a stranger rubbing her feet and prattling on with some sort of celebrity gossip. At that moment, looking down from the stairway, Freya wanted nothing more in this life than to have somebody coat her in seaweed paste and hot towels while she relaxed with cucumber slices on her eyes and whale songs echoing softly from a state of the art sound system.

  She felt a twinge of guilt about this selfish little wish while Thor was in such bad shape, but they were safe now and he would quickly recover once they got some apples into him. So, would anybody really begrudge her the desire for some pampering? She was sure that Idun would indulge a fellow sister from Asgard. For now, though, getting Thor well was the top priority. After that, seaweed and champagne could find its way onto the agenda.

  Freya was the last to enter Idun’s office. Well, actually, the word “office” didn’t do the room justice. While it was true that in this large room was a beautiful, hand carved Victorian desk that would be envy of any opulence-minded CEO, her “office” was more like the bedroom for a 19th century member of the English royal family.

  “This is an office?” Freya’s gaze fell to the luxurious four-poster bed that Brock and Baldr had put Thor on.

  “I know it’s a bit much,” Idun said with a bashful little laugh, “but I value comfort. Truthfully speaking, I do my best thinking with my back to a mattress. You understand, don’t you dear?” She closed the statement with a wink toward Freya.

  The subtle little dig did not go unnoticed. It was obvious that “thinking” in Idun’s little world probably meant lounging in bed while various minions did her nails, fed her bonbons, and exfoliated her brains out. Considering some of the career choices Freya had made, the mention of thinking with one’s back to a mattress would mean something very different for her. This was the Goddess of Youth’s way of letting the Goddess of Love know that they weren’t in Asgard any longer and that in terms of social standing, their positions have now been reversed. Freya’s station was now far below that of a successful woman such as Idun.

  Freya was rankled by the remark but decided to let it slide. Idun was always a bit of an elitist who practiced a brand of popularity politics that would only make sense to a high school cheerleading squad. And, of course, they needed her for the moment. So, rocking the boat was not really an option.

  “Okay, so about the apples—shouldn’t we be getting some into him?” Freya asked. Moving the subject away from Idun’s redefinition of “thinking” was probably a good idea at this point. Plus, it was obvious that Thor was simply getting worse.

  Under normal circumstances, his immune system would simply snicker in the face of the flu, cancer, AIDS, or the Ebola virus. Pitting the diseases that plagued the human race against Thor’s white blood cells would be like attacking the Bismarck with a set of lawn darts. And while dragon venom would affect even the nearly impenetrable bodily defenses of the Thunder God, the extent of the damage would depend heavily on exactly which dragon the venom came from.

  An average, run of the mill, dragon may give Thor something that would be akin to a few moments of morning sickness. He would heave a few times and then be right as rain. A bite from Nidhogg would be fatal to many lesser gods. The strongest gods would spend about half an hour unconscious as something that felt like raw sewage and bleach worked its way through their veins. Looking at Thor it was clear that his body was slowly shutting down.

  Usually, the wounds that Odin had inflicted upon his son would already be well on their way to healing. Even the deep stab wound from the spear should be nearly closed by now. It was obvious that Thor’s immune system had been nuked by the venom. The rest of his body would soon follow. Freya wasn’t worried about his health. With Idun there to feed him apples until he was back to his surly self, she knew that he would be okay in a few hours. She worried about the potency of the dragon venom that Odin had armed the tip of his spear with and the implications of it.

  The amount that got into Thor’s body would be tiny compared to if he had been actually bitten by a dragon. This means that whatever beast Odin milked to get the poison was an amazingly powerful creature. The pool of dragons strong enough to kill Thor with that small amount was pretty shallow. There were only one or two beasts that would actually fit this particular bill.

  The primary candidate would be Jormungand, the Midgard Serpent, son of Loki. In the Ragnarok prophecy, it was predicted that his venom would be what killed Thor. She didn’t know what bothered her more, the idea that Odin would actually use a poison from that brute against his own son or the fact that he had a sample of the venom, ready to use, in the first place.

  This wasn’t the sort of thing that could just be picked up at the corner Rite Aid pharmacy. And if somebody was going to make an effort to harvest it from Jormungand, against the creatures will, they better have paid all their life insurance premiums and left a suicide note. The only way to milk venom from that animal was if the beast allowed them to take it. If that is what happened, it was a truly disturbing thought.

  “Baldr, would you be a lamb and get a couple of apples off of my desk?”

  Baldr walked over to her desk and took a few apples out of a fruit bowl that was next to her laptop. He brought them back to Idun and then plopped down in a rather comfortable love seat. She wrinkled her nose a tad when she saw Baldr put his feet up on the coffee table but kept her complaints to herself.

  “Okay, sweetheart, you have your apples. Now what?” Idun said. In Baldr’s mind this was a reasonable question. It was pretty clear that chewing and swallowing was a bit beyond Thor’s current abilities.

  It never really occurred to Freya that there would be some question regarding just how they were going to get some of the life-giving apples into Thor. She didn’t need to look at him to know what sort of condition he was in. He had not been conscious since before they liberated him from the stadium holding cell that Odin had used to confine and torture him. Most people needed to be awake to eat. So, the question was a perfectly reasonable one.

  “That’s a good question,” Baldr said. “Unless you have a feeding tube hidden up your sleeve Idun, I don’t know how we’re actually going to get that into him.”

  Idun smirked a little, “A feeding tube? Well, no, I don’t have need of one of those in this establishment. But never fear…” Idun walked out of the office to a storage closet. “Some of my clients still hold to the teachings of John Harvey Kellogg. Long before this particular gentleman started making Corn Flakes and Froot Loops, he owned a health spa of his own where he offered some rather...um...alternative approaches to health.” She held up an enema kit for them to see. “Seeing as we can’t get anything into him through the front door, we will simply have to make do with the back one.”

  Brock, seated in a chair and reading a copy of Rolling Stone, was summoned by Id
un to go back down to the coffee station and bring her a smoothie maker and some water from under the counter.

  As she turned a number of apples into applesauce, she started to describe exactly what she would be doing to Thor. Her explanations started with a detailed description about how she would need to “clean him out” before applying her cure of apple mush. Somewhere between the blender’s white noise and her explanation of the process to free his body of toxins, Freya, Baldr, and Brock each fell asleep. Idun put a pillow under each of their heads, covered them with comforters, and went to work.

  Chapter 30

  Freya woke slowly. She was in absolutely no hurry to leave the realm of dreams behind and step back into the waking world. It’s not that she wasn’t enthusiastic about the idea of getting up to start a new day. But this was no different than any other day that her eyes fluttered open before noon. Freya was just not a morning person. The idea of crawling out of bed before the morning talk shows were finished brainwashing the world of stay-at-home-moms and retirees seemed obscene to her. As a rule, if McDonalds were still serving McMuffins at same time she was waking up, something was seriously out of kilter in her life.

  Freya’s eyelids flickered open for a moment and she caught a glimpse of Idun casually paging through an Audi catalog. She was seated in a chair with her back to Thor and her feet up on a small hope chest placed against the wall. Idun seemed to look in Freya’s direction just as her eyes were closing again. At least that is what Freya thought she saw. She wasn’t quite sure. When she was struggling between twilight sleep and a “bright-eyed and bushy-tailed” condition, Freya didn’t always see things correctly.

  After what felt like the passing of an hour, though she knew it was only minutes, Freya’s eyelids finally gave in to the inevitability of the day and opened for good. She sat up and began to wipe the sleep from her eyes.

  “Good morning, sunshine,” Idun said. She was seated very close to Thor and was wiping his chest with a cool cloth. To Freya, Thor didn’t look any better than he did when they first pulled him into Idun’s place.

  “How’s the patient doing?” She took a seat on the bed and stroked his leg. There was something very odd and off-putting about seeing Thor helpless. Now that she could sit down and contemplate the situation without having to worry about the safety of her own skin for a change, she found that all she wanted to do was protect him until he was back on his feet.

  “Your eyes betray you.” Idun stated as she ignored the question about Thor and leaned in very close to Freya. The words fell from Idun’s lips in such a knowing, matter-of-fact way that Freya unconsciously squirmed in her seat.

  Freya was no stranger to betrayal. During her long life, she had been betrayed by everyone and everything—from her own brother to an “As Seen on TV” product from Australia that claimed it could, if used consistently, make shaving her legs a thing of the past. Her eyes, however, were not something that ever betrayed her. She had been so careful and guarded over her emotions for so long that someone would have a better chance of reading the faces on Mount Rushmore than gleaning any information from hers.

  Idun was different than the woman she remembered in Asgard. The Goddess of Youth had an odd, Jedi Master, “I See Dead People” vibe that gave the impression she could actually read Freya’s usually stoic eyes.

  Idun may have picked up the flicker of emotion for Thor that flashed through her. While this knowledge would never put anyone’s life in jeopardy, it bothered Freya when people knew her business. She was also curious about Brock and didn’t want any gossip from an Asgardian busybody screwing things up before she managed to figure out what she felt and who she felt it for.

  The aloof and strangely knowing look that Idun wore suddenly broke into an impish half smile. “Well, actually your cuticles betray you. How long has it been since you have had a proper pedicure, or anything else that those of us in the civilized world take for granted?”

  With that statement, the icy tension that had been building in the room finally broke. Freya chuckled in a slightly awkward manner. “It’s been far too long since something as elegant and wonderful as a hot stone has touched my body.”

  “You know, it’s odd,” Idun laughed, “just how many spa treatments sound like something the Spanish Inquisition would have come up with. Hot stone massages, crystal beds, salt scrubs, deep thermal stamp. Most sound like forms of torture.”

  “Well, I’m always up for a little torture. So how about you just wrap me in seaweed for a few hours while I listen to whale songs. Just no Chuck Mangione, okay?”

  “Ugh, can you believe that they actually kicked him out of Hel?”

  “Sure I can. From what Baldr tells me, he was driving everyone nuts with that damn horn of his. Eventually a lot of the dead were looking into ways to commit suicide.”

  Freya glanced over at Thor. Not only did he not look any better he—in fact, he looked a little worse. Idun noticed the sympathetic tilt of Freya’s head and answered the obvious question before it found its way from Freya’s brain to her mouth.

  “I would like to tell you not to worry about Thor, but the truth is that the damage from the venom is extensive. I’m doing what I can, but the apples are not some sort of magic bullet that fixes everything. His recovery may be slow, and it may not even be complete. He may be damaged in ways that will never heal. Just trust me that I am doing my best and go take a break from reality for a couple of hours.”

  Freya nodded and left the room. One of Idun’s attendants was waiting outside the door to take Freya to a private treatment room.

  After the door closed behind her, Baldr sat up from the love seat where he had spent the night.

  Idun walked over to her desk and took an apple from the fruit bowl, “Playing a game of possum with us Baldr? Did you eavesdrop anything to your liking?”

  “Well, actually I did hear an interesting tidbit, that part about the apples not helping him? We both know that is complete bull. Your apples have even been forbidden in Hel because eating them may result in a spontaneous resurrection. So, what’s the truth, why aren’t they healing Thor?”

  “Oh Baldr, of course MY apples would heal Mr. Thunder and Lightning over there, but these...” she took a bite from the apple in her hand, “these are from Walmart. They’re tasty, but I doubt they would even keep the doctor away, or however the rhyme goes.”

  Before Baldr could respond, something hit the back of his skull…hard. He hit the ground and small flashes, like tiny blinking Christmas lights, were clouding his vision.

  “One punch, nice job, Fenris. Bravo!” she said. Baldr was losing consciousness as he heard Idun compliment the sucker punch from behind. As the lights of his awareness was dimming, he saw a massive, brown paw step in front of his narrowing field of vision. It morphed into a human foot just before he blacked out completely.

  Despite the words that had passed between Freya and Idun earlier in the morning, the song “Feels So Good” was being piped into her room on a loop. This was the sort of music that would leave even the stodgiest elevator screaming for some Steppenwolf. Idun forcing her to endure this musical torment seemed like nothing more than lighthearted ribbing by her fellow goddess.

  She had never been a big fan of Idun and the two of them were not especially close. Actually, Freya wasn’t close to any of the Asgardian women. The fact of the matter was that when it came to female relations, there wasn’t much difference between the realm of the gods and high school. It was all cliques and backstabbing, usually over men. Freya wasn’t even sure she really trusted Idun at the moment, but what could she have done? Even if a hospital would have taken Thor without reporting him to the authorities, what could they do for him? No medical school that wasn’t called Hogwarts ever graduated a doctor who knew how to treat a god for dragon envenomation. Trust her or not, Idun was the only solution.

  Freya let her thoughts drift away from paranoia and wondered exactly what her hostess had put in the detoxifying tea she had been served before t
hey applied the seaweed mud concoction and wrapped her up like a mummy. It was delicious. She tasted hints of lemon and cayenne, but there a few things her taste buds couldn’t place.

  The aroma therapy from the atomizers was also a beautiful experience. She couldn’t quite place the scent, but it was pleasantly sweet and relaxed her tremendously. She was feeling so good that even the mud felt tingly against her skin. She was curious about what had been done with the mud to make her feel this way but didn’t care so long as the magic continued. It had been far too long since she had such pampering.

  Freya’s rare moment of R&R was rudely interrupted by Brock slamming through the door. He was disheveled, out of breath, and on the verge of panic.

  “We gotta get out of here, honey! All sorts of stuff is hitting the fan upstairs and we need to am-scray before we get caught in the splatter!”

  Freya’s face twisted into an expression of shock and confusion. While her mouth busied itself opening, closing, and waiting for her brain to send it an appropriate word, Brock caught his breath and continued his panicked little news flash about the quickly declining status of their day.

  “Baldr’s knocked out, Thor is a vegetable, and Idun has this Odin guy you were talking about earlier on speed dial. We have to get out of here…just you and me…now!”

  Freya’s brain finally found some words, and even she was shocked at what was coming out of her mouth. “Brock, I…I’m sorry. I can’t just leave them. We have to get up there and get them out. C’mon, help me out of this wrap. I saw a few swords hanging on the wall we can use. Don’t worry, it’s going to be fine.”

  Even though she was doing her best to sound calm and confident, even she wasn’t convinced that things were going to be fine. Apparently she hadn’t won Brock over either. He just walked closer the knelt next to the table she where she was lying. He grabbed her hand and started rubbing his face on it.