Liesmith

by Alis Franklin

  Baldr made a tsch sound, raising his arms to show his empty hands. “Peace, boy. I bring no weapons, only words.”

  Sigmund shifted his grip on the poker. “Not very convincing from a guy who can shoot sunbeams out his ass.” He wondered if iron worked on gods the same way it (allegedly) did on fairies. Probably not.

  One single golden eye flicked down to Sigmund’s hands, then back up to his face. “Truly has your cuckolding skin thief poisoned you against me. There was a time you did not look on me with such revulsion.”

  Oh Jesus, what? Christ. He couldn’t possibly mean…

  “That was probably a time before you tried to kill my dad, dickball.”

  “Sigmund!” David’s voice was a hiss from somewhere behind and to the left. “I really don’t think insults are going to get us—”

  But Baldr was bowing, just slightly, hand held over his heart. “A shameful act for which I will make repatriations. You must understand my mind was…not clear at that time.”

  “Yeah. Sure.” Sigmund felt his brow drawn down into a scowl. Baldr was being…nice? Why was Baldr being nice? There had to be some plot, or con, or game. Because no way was this the part when Sigmund found out that his past self had done the nasty with Baldr behind her husband’s back.

  Then, as if reading Sigmund’s mind—which, shit, he probably could—Baldr said: “Tell me. How much do you know about your…beast. Has it told you its name? Its true name?”

  “Loki.” There didn’t seem to be any point in obfuscation, what with the mind reading and all.

  Except Baldr’s reaction was odd. Closing his eyes and looking down, sighing. Sigmund didn’t get it. From past behavior he would’ve expected anger or contempt at a minimum. Not quixotic longing.

  “It deceives you, boy,” Baldr said, voice soft and raw and, worst of all, utterly honest. “Loki is gone, and this shadow you give his name…It has claimed you for its wife, yes?”

  “Dude,” said Sigmund, trying to ignore both the choking from behind him and the churning in his gut. “Not cool. My dad’s like right there. Jesus.” Somewhere, in the distance, Sigmund thought he heard a rumble.

  Baldr huffed and rolled his eye in an expression that could only be read as, Urgh, mortals, before saying, “You are tangled in fates you do not understand. Hate me if you must but know I loved you once and could do so again. All I ask is that—”

  “Whoa! Whoa whoa whoa whoa. Dude. No.” Sigmund took a step back, enough to nearly trip over David. “Time-out. Stop.”

  Baldr seemed to crumple at the words, eye squeezing shut and shoulders hunching. Face contorting as if in pain. “Sigyn—”

  “No!” And then the tip of the fire poker was under Baldr’s chin. Shaking, but there. “No,” Sigmund repeated. “Not that name and not whatever this love-triangle bullshit is. You hear me? One creepy, obsessive god is enough. More than enough. And I like him. You’re a violent psycho. So there is no asking, no love, and. No. Sigyn. Got it?”

  Baldr still hadn’t opened his eye, head hanging and lips curled back in agony. He muttered something in the scratching language. Then, in English, added, “Enough. If you will not listen to reas—”

  He never got to finish. Instead, the roar of an engine and the howl of a car horn echoed from the fog. Baldr had just enough time to turn his head in the direction of the sound before he was caught between the high beams.

  In the next instant, with the sound of snapping bone, he was gone. Rolling up over a shiny black hood with a series of loud thumps, launching a good few feet in the air from the impact.

  “Bloody hell!”

  Sigmund didn’t wait for Baldr to land. Just grabbed his dad’s arm and ran forward onto the road, to where the car was turning around. Heading their way.

  Dad was pulling back, trying to get out of the car’s path. “Look out! It’s coming!”

  “It’s okay, Dad. Trust me.”

  Because it was Lain’s car, all black and chrome and smears of creepy asshole god blood streaking up the windshield. Summoned by the key the car had given Sigmund, back before the sinkhole. The one he’d kept in his pocket, the one he’d pressed when Baldr had been distracted.

  The car screamed to a halt at Sigmund’s feet, popping open both doors on their side. Sigmund managed to push his dad into the front, before throwing himself into the back, feeling only slightly bad for squelching his gross wet jeans all over the upholstery. Before he could think to apologize, the doors slammed shut all by themselves, and the car was already moving.

  Ahead of them, Sigmund saw Baldr stumble to his feet.

  “Hold on!” yelled Dad, ducking down in the front seat. Sigmund did as instructed, grabbing on to the headrests from the back.

  Baldr saw them coming, eyes wide and anguished. Just before they hit him, again, Sigmund thought he heard Baldr scream a single word.

  Then he was just another set of loud thumps, rolling up the hood and over the roof. When Sigmund checked the back window, all he could see on the road was a body. It didn’t move.

  “Is…is he…?”

  Sigmund turned to his dad. “Nah. Gods are harder to kill than that.” He glanced back again, though the fog had swallowed Baldr’s shape.

  Sigmund tried not to think of the expression on the bastard’s face, right before the car hit him that second time. Because he’d looked an awful lot like someone betrayed, and that piece didn’t fit.

  A lot of what Baldr had said didn’t fit, in fact. About Sigyn, about Lain. About Loki.

  Loki, who wasn’t Lain, at least according to Baldr. Baldr, who hadn’t been lying.

  Except, neither had Lain.

  “We have to get somewhere safe,” Dad was saying. Sigmund blinked, tearing his eyes away from the retreating road.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, we’ve gotta…gotta get to the LB building. Can you, um. Can you take us there? Please?” This last addressed to the car. Sigmund thought it was a testament to their weird-ass day that his dad didn’t even comment.

  The car, meanwhile, revved its engine. Sigmund figured it was as good a yes as any.

  —

  Munin watched the boss get taken out by the kid and his old man, trying not to wince too hard from the impact. That had to hurt, god or no god. Which is why Munin waited until the scary “car” was well out of range, before flapping down from its hiding place.

  “Boss,” it said, hopping forward across the tar. “You want me to follow the kid?”

  The boss was moving. Except he wasn’t getting up. Just sort of dragging himself to his knees, arms wrapped around his waist, shoulders shaking.

  “Boss?”

  The boss threw back his head, and roared. Something deep, and dark, and twisted. Pain and anguish. A sound that Munin hadn’t known the boss’d had, maybe. That wasn’t hurt from the impact. That was soul hurt, heartbreak. Despair.

  “Boss?”

  “Leave me!” The boss gestured for emphasis and—

  Odin’s rotting eye! He was not kidding around, and Munin squawked and flapped backward as the ground in front of it exploded in a ball of molten sunlight. For a moment, Munin made eye contact. Just it and the boss’s single, golden orb. Just for a moment, just long enough to see the tears tracking down the boss’s cheek.

  Then he turned away. When the boss spoke again, his voice was barely a whisper.

  “Leave me. I am betrayed. By my heart, by my flesh. By myself. Why not by my memory also?”

  Munin hopped forward, just once. “Boss?” it said. “What’re you talking about?” The boss’d been acting weird for a while. Since he’d come back, maybe. Except they’d all put that down to being stuck in Helheimr for a thousand years. That was enough to mess anyone up, in Munin’s opinion.

  Even still, what the boss’d done to Hel, to the Lady of the Dishonored Dead herself…that was bad business, no two ways about it. And since then, the boss’d just been getting worse and worse. Really obsessed with killing He Who Must Not Be Named (in the Boss’s Presence), even
though maybe a couple of them had suggested he just leave it. Loki was a shifty, traitorous asshole who’d weaseled out of his own funeral by convincing his wife to go in his place, but he’d been pretty quiet on Miðgarðr since then. Just laying low, a different sort of exile. Maybe they should’ve been happy with how things were.

  The boss wouldn’t have it, though. First it’d been about executing the guy, about finishing what’d been started at the Ragnarøkkr. But then something had changed. Munin didn’t know what it was.

  And now the boss was curled up in the middle of a Hel-bled street, crying.

  Munin hopped forward again. “Boss,” it tried. “Tell me what I can do, boss. That’s what I’m for.”

  “I told you,” the boss said. “Leave me. You will not wish to stand by my side when this is over. Save yourself the anguish now, and join the others as they seek my end. When it comes, I will relish it. There is nothing left for me here. I had thought…” The boss’s hand came up to cover his face. He was silent for a while, shoulders shaking. Then, “It does not matter. Just go.”

  Except Munin couldn’t, could it? It belonged to the boss, just like it’d belonged to his dad before him. “You know I can’t do that. We swore to your father—”

  The boss hissed, spitting some word Munin didn’t catch. Then he straightened, and stared right at Munin with an eye that burned like the twilight sun. “I release you,” he said. “Whatever oaths you gave unto Odin are no more. His blood no longer holds you; you are freed. Do as you will across the Realms.”

  “Boss?”

  “No,” the bo— Baldr said. “I am this no longer. Now go.” He flung out his arm again in demonstration. This time with no explosions, thankfully.

  Munin would’ve grinned, if it’d had the lips to do so. Instead, all it said was, “Hah! ’Cept you ain’t the boss of me no more. Said so yourself. That means you don’t tell me what to do, whose side to pick. I do what I want. And what I want is we stick around and finish what you started. Deal?”

  It took Baldr a moment, staring at Munin as if he’d never seen a talking raven before in his whole freakin’ life. But, in the end, he dropped his eye. Then smiled, and gave a half bow.

  “Deal,” he said. “Now let’s finish this.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  It’s the sound that wakes me. Something like an angle grinder crossed with a dying pig. A hideous cacophony, intruding on the warm and silent darkness in my head.

  I want it gone. Now. I’m going to open my eyes, and get out of bed, and I’m going to hunt down whoever approved roadworks outside my fucking bedroom window and I am going to sue them down to the bone and salt the ground with their children’s bankrupt tears.

  Opening my eyes isn’t as easy as it should be. The noise is roaring and my eyelids stick, and when I manage to prize them apart—

  “Hurngh!”

  Light.

  Real light. From eyes. Not the strange narrative inference of the Wyrdsight, but actual photons, searing across functioning retinas with all the agony of cut onions, followed by a chili chaser.

  I sit up. The world tilts. I have a brief impression of wood and candles, then everything goes one-eighty and the next thing I hear is the crack of a skull (mine) against stone.

  It does nothing for the headache. Even less for the nausea.

  I manage not to hurl, but only just. Biting back pain and bile and the searing in my (working!) eyes and the stink of sweat and rotting rushes and spilt mead and, oh gods. I am gonna hurl.

  I do, beneath a table. Tasting the wrong side of meat and honey. It isn’t fun.

  I feel better when it’s over. Maybe just because it is.

  The noise continues, unabated. I stumble backward, getting to my feet by sliding up a wall. Carved wood, by the feel.

  Wood. Rushes. Mead. Suddenly, it’s not just nausea churning in my gut.

  I open my eyes.

  Light, again. Dim and weak, but after a thousand years of blindness it may as well be the heart of the fucking sun. I put my hand up to my face, groaning, blinking back agony and tears and another rising tide of bile.

  I want to die. I haven’t had a hangover since…for a very, very long time. The piss on Miðgarðr doesn’t do it for me. Not like this.

  Through my fingers, I see the shape of a table. Long, made of wood. There’s an empty, me-shaped space on top of it, in between the plates of bones and empty goblets. I guess that’s where I passed out. Where I just fell off.

  Next to the space is the source of the sound. It’s a guy. He’s asleep, snoring. There are quite a few like him scattered around the room, plus some women. It looks like the morning after a party, except every night is a party, here. Every night’s a party, and every day’s a battle. Because, yeah. I know where I am. I haven’t been here for a thousand fucking years, but I remember it. Remember it by the carvings in the walls and the decorative ax-and-shield motif and the fact that everyone’s clothing is giving off one hell of an SCA vibe. Except this isn’t Lochac, and the only anachronism here is me.

  This is Ásgarðr. Valhöll, to be precise: the great Hall of the Slain. The passed-out guys are einherjar, the virtuous dead, taken from battlefields by the valkyrjur and brought here, trapped in Odin’s gilded cage.

  Actually, scratch that. Most of the passed-out guys are einherjar. Most, but not all. Because that guy, over there? With his face half inside a boar carcass? Yeah, that’s Víðarr, one of Odin’s multitude of useless brats. He’s one of the gods, the æsir.

  And I am so, so fucked.

  —

  First things first, I do what I’m good at: I turn tail and fucking run.

  It’s been a while, and I get lost twice in Valhöll’s corridors, eventually making it out via a kitchen. Servants shriek in my wake, but out of surprise rather than in a holy-shit-kill-him sort of way. I think.

  When I burst through the door, the sunlight does nothing for my hangover. Does nothing, and my head is pounding and my eyes are burning and—

  Warm sun upon my skin, warm breeze carding though my hair. The smell of grass and pine. Of woodsmoke. The sound of ravens, of laughter. The taste of eternal spring upon my tongue. Endless blue and rolling green. A deer watches me across the grass, then leaps off into a copse. In the distance, men ready themselves for war.

  Fuck. It’s beautiful. I’d forgotten. Made myself forget, maybe. Because exiled, trapped in the endless gray of Miðgarðr…how else could I endure it? What can the dull, small world of mortals offer someone used to breathing the pure air of the home of gods themselves? Of drinking from its streams, eating of its fruits? Of resting upon its fragrant grasses, beneath its perfect sun?

  Fuck. Fuck I am so, so fucked and—

  “Uncle?”

  Oh. Fuck. No.

  I know that voice. The last time I heard it, it was deeper. Older. Angrier. This voice, today, this is the voice of someone innocent. Pure.

  Alive. Very, very definitely alive.

  I look…well, I look up. Because holy fuck am I short now or what? Baldr is barely out of childhood and the bastard still looms over me. Except less with the looming, maybe. Looming is aggressive, threatening, and there’s nothing of either of those things in Baldr. Not yet.

  His hair is neat and his beard is trimmed and his eyes are so, so achingly kind it’s like a knife. Right through the heart, the big one, and I slam my eyes shut against the anguish.

  “Uncle!”

  Hands against my shoulders, and I have to force myself not to react. Not to lash out, to strike in fear and pain and rage.

  “Uncle, are you…are you well?”

  “Yeah, I—” I start in English, because I’m a fucking idiot, before remembering to switch to the old language. “I will be.”

  I straighten and make myself stare right into the heart of Baldr’s gentle, golden eyes. When I smile, it feels like a bitter, gaping wound.

  Baldr returns the expression with a wry smirk like the first light of dawn. “Overindulging with the einherjar?
Really, Uncle. At this time? I would think you would be at home, tending to your wife.”

  Oh holy shitfuck. Oh shit. Oh fuck.

  “Yes!” I can do this. Shit. I can. I have no fucking clue what’s going on, or what Prince Goody Soon-Dead is fucking talking about re my wife…but I can bluff it. It’s what I’m good at.

  I clap my hands, take a few stumbling steps away from Baldr. “She expects me home,” I say. “So, um. I should…do that. Go make sure everything is, y’know. All good. With the time, and whatever.” Smooooooth. I can see why the mortals made me the god of this!

  Baldr smiles, bright and beautiful, and gives a little bow. “Send her my regards,” he says. “And wishes for a safe delivery. Our thoughts are with you both.”

  “Cool.” No, you idiot! That’s modern idiom! “Good. Thank you!” I turn to go. As I do, I catch the faint edge of a frown form on Baldr’s face.

  “Uncle?”

  I freeze. Half turn, and try to smile.

  Baldr is frowning, but there’s a smirk somewhere behind it. “Before you go, you, ah. You may wish to locate your trousers.”

  “Wha—” I look down.

  Oh.

  FML.

  —

  I find my pants. Some guy was using them as a pillow, and they’re covered in drool and other things I don’t want to think about, but I’m pretty sure they’re mine.

  So, the good news: Baldr is alive, and people don’t want to kill me. As much. The bad news, however, is that I’ve got no idea why I’m here.

  Also, I’m really, really fucking short.

  Also also, I’m pretty sure there was something else I was supposed to be doing.

  Gods have terrible memories. It’s sort of our Thing. Because mortals are bad at sticking to their canon, and when your entire life consists of a few hundred years of self-contradicting fanfic? Yeah. You get over being hung up on the details. It’s more about sticking to your archetype, living in the moment. Leaves adrift upon the Wyrd.

  In this moment, I’m trying to remember where my fucking house is. I do have one. Not a big fancy hall like the big fancy gods, just a house. For the wife, mostly. Yours truly when I’m home (which is never). And the boys, when they were younger.