The Lost Gods

by Francesca Simon

  Clare jumped.

  ‘I’ll switch with him,’ said Freya. ‘He’s nervous about doors,’ she whispered. Oh Gods, what next?

  Roskva and Alfi went and stood behind Thor’s chair.

  ‘Fine, fine,’ said Clare, flustered, ‘and Roskva and Alfi can sit …’

  ‘On the floor,’ said Thor.

  ‘What?’ asked Clare.

  ‘Mum, students don’t eat with teachers in Iceland,’ said Freya.

  ‘Well. I’m afraid they do in Britain,’ said Clare firmly.

  Thor scowled.

  ‘We must follow the custom of the country,’ said Woden. ‘Bid the slaves sit at the far end of the table.’

  ‘Slaves?’ said Clare. ‘I—’

  ‘Mum, it’s Icelandic for student,’ interrupted Freya. ‘It’s pronounced Slowe-ve. We learned that today in school when we were hearing about the exchange students.’

  Clare paused. ‘I must remember that,’ she said. ‘Very interesting. I might use it in my sermon this week, how important it is to honour children, and not treat them as commodities.’

  Roskva and Alfi seated themselves awkwardly. Freya looked at them. Help me out here, she begged silently.

  ‘We are looking forward to seeing more of your beautiful town, Priestess,’ said Alfi.

  ‘Why not take a bus tour?’ suggested Clare.

  Freya looked gratefully at her mum. That was a wonderful idea.

  ‘Bus?’ said Thor.

  ‘You know, big, red, double-decker,’ said Clare.

  ‘A chariot for many people,’ said Freya.

  ‘Pulled by goats?’ asked Thor.

  The doorbell rang.

  Freya froze. Were yet more Gods coming to camp out with her?

  Clare came back into the kitchen carrying four steaming cardboard boxes. Freya breathed again as Clare set the large pizzas out on platters and placed them in the centre of the crowded table.

  ‘Food at last,’ said Clare. Freya could see how tense she was.

  The Goddess Freyja sighed loudly.

  ‘About time,’ she said. She held up a fork. ‘What is this for? To stab enemies?’

  ‘A fork,’ said Clare. ‘To eat with.’

  The Goddess frowned. ‘What’s wrong with your fingers?’

  ‘What is this strange food?’ asked Woden.

  ‘Pizza,’ said Clare. ‘I’ll just slice—’

  Thor scooped up the gargantuan chicken and pineapple pizza, shoved it whole in his mouth and gulped it down.

  ‘Tasty,’ he said, wiping his mouth. ‘I’ll have another ten.’

  ‘Ten?’ said Clare weakly.

  ‘I’m hungry!’ bellowed Thor, grabbing a second one and guzzling it whole. ‘It’s been a long day.’

  The great God of Storms and Justice was such a pig, thought Freya. She avoided her mother’s eye.

  ‘Freya says you’re all teachers,’ said Clare, passing round the remaining slices away from Thor. Her hand shook slightly. ‘So … what subjects do you teach? English?’

  Woden smiled.

  ‘Poetry. War. Magic,’ he said.

  ‘Like the All-Father,’ said Clare. ‘How interesting. Are you a professor of Wodenic studies?’

  ‘You might say that,’ said Woden.

  ‘Justice and law,’ said Thor.

  ‘Fertility and sex—’ said Freyja.

  ‘She means sex education,’ said Freya.

  Clare picked up her sliver of pizza then put it down.

  ‘What an incredible coincidence,’ she said. ‘You all teach the subjects that the Almighty Gods you were named for represent. Come to think of it, what a coincidence that your parents all named you after the All-powerful Gods. Like I did with Freya.’

  Woden bristled.

  ‘We are not named after the Gods, we are the—’

  ‘—teachers,’ said Freya.

  ‘Gods,’ said Woden.

  Clare choked on a piece of crust.

  ‘Excuse me?’ said Clare.

  ‘You’re my priestess. You should recognise me,’ said Woden angrily.

  Clare looked at him.

  ‘He means they are Gods to their students,’ said Freya. ‘Isn’t that right, Roskva?’

  ‘They are Gods to us all,’ she agreed.

  *

  After the longest dinner of her life, Freya suggested watching TV.

  As the Gods sat riveted in front of the telly, squabbling over who controlled the remote and flicking madly between channels, Clare asked Freya to come up to her study. What now? Reluctantly, Freya followed Clare to her small office on the landing.

  ‘Freya, I know this is arranged through your school, but those teachers don’t seem quite right to me,’ said Clare.

  ‘Really?’ said Freya. ‘They’re just … foreign. They have an odd sense of humour.’

  ‘No, I get the feeling Oski really thinks he is Woden and not just named for him,’ said Clare. ‘It’s not funny.’

  ‘Mum, he is Woden,’ said Freya. What the Hel.

  ‘That’s enough, young lady,’ said Clare sharply. ‘I’m putting up with your weird guests, I do not have to put up with your cheek.’

  Well, she’d tried.

  ‘Mum, never hold up to scorn or mockery a guest or a wanderer,’ Freya quoted.

  Clare flushed.

  ‘I’m well aware of the wisdom of the All-Father, thank you very much, Freya,’ she said. ‘I am not mocking them. I am questioning their … sanity. That’s quite different.’

  ‘Mum, honestly. I bet they think we’re the weirdos,’ said Freya. That, at least, was true.

  Clare opened her mouth and then closed it. Freya leapt at the chance to change the subject.

  ‘Mum, I’ve been thinking, how can we get more people to come to Fane?’

  Clare’s face lit up.

  ‘Ah, Freya, how lovely of you to take an interest,’ she said. ‘That’s something I ask myself all the time. Last Sunday we had a Throng of eleven people, including me and old Mrs Kelly, who dozed the entire time in the front row. I’m wondering if I should start tweeting, or maybe we should run a teen drop-in centre, or—’

  ‘How about scaring people into coming?’ said Freya. ‘Warning them about the end of the world and how we need the Gods to protect us?’ A note of hysteria crept into Freya’s voice despite her efforts to keep control.

  Clare stopped scrolling through her emails.

  ‘Is something worrying you, Freya?’ she asked.

  No, thought Freya, just that frost giants are coming to kill me, and will freeze the earth while they’re at it, and I’ve got three Gods camping at my house …

  She smiled weakly at her mum.

  ‘No,’ she lied.

  ‘Because you haven’t been yourself all evening. Is it those foreign exchange people?’ asked Clare.

  ‘Looking after them is a big responsibility,’ said Freya. ‘That’s why school gives us time off.’ Wow. She’d just thought of that. She couldn’t leave the Gods alone for a moment.

  ‘Time off?’ said Clare.

  ‘Well, yes, to show them around London,’ said Freya. ‘They’ve already been to my school.’

  ‘I’m sure your friends will be fine exploring London on their own,’ said Clare firmly.

  ‘I’ve been given the next week off, Mum,’ said Freya. ‘We’re supposed to look after the foreign exchange students. It was all in the letter,’ she added.

  Clare sighed. ‘Freya, there have been a few too many surprises this evening. And by the way, where’s everyone going to sleep? If you’d given me proper warning I could have made arrangements.’

  Oh Gods.

  ‘Well, Freyja can sleep in my top bunk,’ said Freya. ‘Wo – I mean Oski,’ she corrected herself quickly, ‘can have the sofa, Atli can have the table, and Alfi and Roskva can sleep in sleeping bags on the floor of your office,’ she finished. ‘See Mum, it’s okay.’

  *

  Freya lay in bed in the bottom bunk, and tried to ignore Thor�
��s booming snores rumbling through the house. What a terrible day. What a horrible evening. She was so stressed she was sure she would never get to sleep.

  The Goddess had refused to share a room, insisting she needed her own chamber, but had reluctantly agreed to let Freya keep her bed, so long as Freya would fetch anything the Goddess might require during the night. Rat poison, hopefully, thought Freya.

  Then there’d been a bad moment when Thor had demanded that Roskva and Alfi sleep outside the kitchen in the hall, in case he needed them, and when Clare had protested, Freya had had to explain that students were very respectful of their teachers in Iceland. Okay, it was lame, but she was firefighting from moment to moment.

  On the other hand, it could have been worse. Snot could have burst in. Thor could have bashed someone with his hammer. Woden could have started reciting poetry.

  Luckily, Clare had believed her foreign exchange student story, and even though she wasn’t happy about having so many house guests, Freya hoped her mum wouldn’t make too much fuss. It was now Freya’s job to get the Gods out of her house ASAP, and then leave Midgard with the roar of worshippers in their ears, powerful and ready to stop the frost giants before they invaded.

  I think I got away with it tonight, thought Freya. Long may her luck hold.

  But how could she restore faith in the Gods? Wodenism was dying in Britain. She needed a big plan to fill those empty pews.

  But what?

  Freya saw herself walking up and down Oxford Street with a megaphone, urging people to get to the Fanes and praise the Almighty Gods … or else. She’d seen people preaching on street corners, you could reach a lot of people on a busy street like that.

  Meanwhile, she’d speak out at school. She would organise a club, tell everyone to go to Fane more, pray harder, bring more offerings, warn that the end of the world was coming soon. Her movement Regain the Fane would spread, linking school with school, Fane with Fane …

  Gods willing, people would heed her warning and rush to worship. She saw her Mum beaming as she looked around her packed Fane, her ginormous Throng bowing and sacrificing and singing praises. How happy that would make Clare. To say nothing of the Gods. Maybe she could persuade them to perform a few miracles when their divine powers returned.

  There was a sharp knock on her door.

  ‘One more thing …’ said Woden. He handed her a carved wooden box. ‘If you value your life, keep this eski safe for us. Just in case the giants overrun Asgard, or Loki.’

  Freya didn’t need to ask what was inside. She took the precious eski, laden with the apples of youth, and hid it deep inside her wardrobe.

  The God of the Bitten Apple

  The red, open top, double-decker London tour bus pulled into view and stopped outside Green Park Tube, where Freya waited with the Immortals. Her heart was pounding. The Gods just charged into roads expecting everyone to stop for them. Snot had twice attacked a car.

  Woden looked around, absorbing everything he saw, as if he were breathing in the new world, but Alfi and Roskva jumped with fright every time a bus went by. Snot bellowed and brandished his axe at anyone who didn’t immediately get out of his way. Thor scooped up a basket of fruit from a street stall and guzzled the lot, ignoring the shouts of the market trader.

  ‘The merchants here have so many wonderful jewels,’ babbled the Goddess, eyeing the shop windows. ‘Even more than the dwarves.’

  ‘The roaring chariots you have now,’ marvelled Alfi, ‘that move without horses or oxen or goats. And the palaces. So many great chieftains everywhere.’

  ‘So many colours. So many people,’ said Roskva. ‘More in one place than I have ever seen.’

  They bombarded Freya with questions.

  ‘How can you think in all this noise?’ asked Alfi.

  ‘Or breathe this air?’ said Roskva, grimacing and waving her chapped red hands.

  ‘Why is no one armed?’ said Snot. ‘Are all the swords concealed? Bah! Soft times.’

  Freya didn’t reply. Walking with the Gods was like herding unruly children. Children with sharp teeth who were liable to run away or attack at any moment. She needed six pairs of eyes. For a wild moment she imagined herself strolling with toddler reins firmly harnessed to each God.

  ‘Oy, wait your turn!’ protested a tourist, as the Gods shoved to the front of the tour bus queue.

  ‘Out of our way, driftwood. How dare you block us?’ boomed Thor, pushing people aside.

  ‘That’s £20 per adult, £11 per child. Or get a family pass for £50,’ said the conductor, looking at them uncertainly.

  ‘Pounds of what?’ said Woden.

  ‘You can’t mean pounds of silver,’ said Thor.

  Freya blanched. She’d forgotten to bring money. Whenever she went out with adults they always paid. The Gods looked at her as if she could somehow magic that vast sum out of the air.

  Snot reached inside his bear skin and handed Freya a crumpled wad of cash.

  ‘Don’t thank me,’ he snarled.

  Freya decided not to ask where the money had come from. She had horrible visions of Snot raiding houses and menacing passers-by, and quickly banished the image from her mind as she bought tickets.

  Woden shook his head. ‘People accept bits of paper instead of gold or silver. What madness is this?’

  They climbed the slippery stairs of the open-air bus and headed for the seats at the front. They were already occupied.

  Woden strode to the front row.

  ‘Move,’ he ordered.

  The German tourists looked at each other.

  ‘But vee vere sit here—’

  ‘Move!’ roared Woden, fixing them with his malevolent eye.

  The couple scrambled to their feet and scampered to some empty seats at the back. Freya shivered. The air was crackling with cold as the pale, icy sun shone dimly through the clouds. The Gods seemed oblivious to the chill.

  A woman approached the empty place next to Snot. Then she sniffed and moved away fast.

  Snot smiled with his black, chipped teeth.

  ‘Anyone sits next to me I’ll kill them,’ he muttered.

  ‘We started all this,’ said Woden as the bus headed slowly down Piccadilly towards Hyde Park Corner, gesturing at the stone buildings and hustle and bustle. ‘We are greater Gods than even I knew.’

  ‘Amaze-balls,’ said Thor.

  ‘Amaze-balls?’ repeated Woden.

  ‘That’s what people in Midgard say now,’ said Thor. ‘I heard it on the magic box last night. We have to keep up with the times.’

  ‘We do not,’ said Woden. ‘We are eternal Gods.’

  ‘If we’re not careful, we will soon just be worshipping one another,’ said the Goddess Freyja, ‘because no one else will care.’

  ‘What chieftain lives in that great hall?’ asked Woden, pointing across Green Park.

  ‘Your descendant, Queen Elizabeth,’ said Freya. ‘The High Priestess-Queen of Britain.’

  ‘Buckingham Palace has been the London home of Britain’s monarchs for nearly two centuries,’ said the recorded commentary. ‘The Palace has 775 rooms, including over 200 bedrooms and 78 bathrooms.’

  ‘We should be staying with the Queen,’ muttered the Goddess. She held her dainty hands over her ears as an ambulance roared by, followed by two police cars. ‘The noise,’ she shuddered. ‘Worse than a thousand clashing shields and clanging swords. The chariots belching smoke like chimneys on wheels. Horrible. The fires without flames. The painted images which keep changing. The stink of humans – Gah. I like the clothes though … not yours,’ she added, wrinkling her face at Freya’s leggings and jumper. ‘And the shoes,’ she added. ‘I do like those clicky-clacky shoes. The heels on spikes! The sparkles! I’ve never seen anything like them.’

  ‘They’re called high heels,’ said Freya. ‘Hard to walk in, though.’

  Freyja sniffed.

  ‘I think I’d manage it,’ she said.

  ‘Give you bunions,’ said Freya. ‘That’s
what my mum says, anyway.’

  ‘You must suffer for beauty,’ said the flaxen-haired Goddess. ‘And it’s obvious to all that you aren’t brave enough. I don’t like these carriages,’ she added, as the bus jolted to an abrupt stop outside Marble Arch, ‘I much prefer my chariot drawn by cats. It’s a lot more – Who is that God?’ she gasped, swivelling and pointing to a huge advertising hoarding of a muscular, heavily tattooed man in his underwear. ‘And where are his clothes? How can a God be so poorly clad?’

  ‘That’s David Beckham,’ said Freya. ‘He plays football. He’s not a God.’

  ‘So you have built a shrine to another human,’ said Woden. His face darkened.

  ‘Not exactly a shrine,’ explained Freya. ‘He’s a celebrity. He’s selling underwear.’

  ‘Cele-bri-ty,’ said Woden, as if he were tasting the word. ‘Cel-e-brity. So that is a new cult in Midgard … the cult of celebrity. Humans worshipping other humans … instead of worshipping us.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ said the Goddess. She turned to Woden. ‘After his next battle, we must send the Valkyries for him. I’d like to have him in Valhalla.’ She smirked.

  As the bus headed down Regent Street, Freya saw a huge queue waiting outside the massive arches of the Apple store. Despite the cold, several customers had set out chairs and laid out sleeping bags. Woden stiffened. Thor craned his neck as the bus went slowly past the packed shop, staring at the people crowding around the laptops inside, heads bent over the screens like devotees bowing before altars.

  ‘What is that temple?’ asked Thor.

  ‘What God are those people waiting to honour?’ asked Woden.

  ‘That’s the Apple store,’ said Freya. ‘They’re queuing to be first to get a new computer.’

  ‘That’s no market place,’ said Woden. ‘That temple houses the God of the Bitten Apple.’ He pointed to the white Apple logo. ‘Don’t lie. We can see the crowds flocking to his ice temple, bowing low and worshipping before his shining altars.’

  ‘Apples are the symbol of OUR immortality,’ said Thor. ‘How dare another God presume in this way.’

  ‘The bitten apple insults us,’ said Woden fiercely. Snot clenched his axe.

  ‘They’re not altars, they’re computers,’ said Freya. ‘People are working, not worshipping.’