The Woken Gods

by Gwenda Bond

I do my best to take it all in. Which is impossible, of course. This collection is far too big to be understood in a glance.

  First are a few tables of dark wood carved with scenes of people dancing in clearings or temples, with stiff-backed, mismatched chairs around them. Muted portraits hang along the far wall, in no order I can figure out. Card-catalogue cabinets stretch in a line below those strangers’ faces. Oversized books lie open on tables and stands, displaying yellowed pages with tiny type and detailed illustrations of bizarre creatures and objects and places.

  I approach one for a closer look and take in a chimera, or at least a chimera’s skeleton, on brittle paper. A glass-encased shelf appears to hold nothing but small leather journals, dates marked on the spines. A shelf ladder is propped in front of a full bookcase. A typewriter sits on a stand, a telescope aims at the ceiling, a thing like a coat rack has various sinister-looking antique weapons hanging from it. And dominating the entire left wall is the stretching sprawl of a hand-painted map on what might be some sort of animal hide.

  The further in we go, the more relics are set apart – some on pillows atop stands, others in fancy glass cases.

  “Tell me what they are?” I ask, stopping in front of a case with four distinct levels. It’s rimmed in gold that shines pure enough that it has to be real (and worth a small fortune) and there’s only one artifact per shelf. They must be important.

  Bronson squints, taking in the items. “Nice eye. These are all significant relics. The top one is Vidarr’s shoe.”

  The shoe is recognizably a shoe, but the riot of colors in the multi-hued leather makes no sense. Some parts are creased or have scuff marks, but there’s no stitching. Yet the thick sole and pieces bigger and smaller that curve to form the top of it appear solid despite that.

  “Shoe, singular – he couldn’t afford two?” I ask. “What’s the story?”

  “Vidarr is a Norse god of secrets, stealth, and silence. Also known as the god with the thick shoe. One of your Locke ancestors recovered this. It’s made of all the discarded pieces of leather from people’s shoes, from up to the time this was created. It confers invisibility on the wearer and anyone they’re touching. No one can see or hear them. And let’s see…” He ticks the glass in front of the next shelf. There’s a wooden bow on it that looks relatively plain. “This is Celtic. Brighid of the Forge’s. Any arrow it shoots becomes a fiery one. The aim is always true.”

  “That is a weapon I want to learn how to use. Because I’m betting my aim is terrible, given that I’ve never shot a bow before.” When I see how he’s looking at me, skeptical, I add, “In my life. City girl. No Society training.”

  “Right. Of course.”

  “What about this?” I tap the glass like he did, getting into this.

  He grumbles a little. “That’s a stone pipe belonging to Red Horn.”

  I don’t see what’s so offensive about a clay pipe with some faded paint on it. “Who was?”

  “A god of the Winnebago peoples, among others. He was also known as He Who Wears Human Faces on His Ears.”

  “No. Way.” This is fascinating. “Real ones? Of actual people?”

  “Oh, no, he made them. They were small human heads that spoke. In some stories they were more like living earrings.”

  I realize I’m touching my ears unconsciously.

  “Don’t worry. Someone else collected those. Troublesome things.” He sighs. “You’d probably want to know this, so I’ll tell you. Your dad collected the pipe and gave it as a gift to your mother. It gives pure visions, unclouded and pleasant only, to the user. Of course, as her father, I did not appreciate finding her lighting up with it.”

  “But that’s nice? To want to give her happy visions. Being an oracle seems…” I shudder.

  “It’s not for you. Don’t worry,” he says. “It shouldn’t have been for Hannah either. Everything went wrong.”

  He’s quiet, clearly snagged by the past, but there’s still one shelf left. So I pull him back by asking, “And the last one?”

  The cap is small and not that impressive looking. The fabric is half white and half black, the seamless change of color in the middle.

  “Eshu’s cap,” Bronson says. “Very famous relic tied to Legba.”

  Ice travels up my spine at the name. “It belonged to him?”

  Bronson nods. “He wore it to prove to two friends that they shouldn’t honor their relationships with each other above him. They got into a terrible fight, arguing over whether someone they’d seen ride by while they were working was wearing a black hat or a white one. It can be used to sow discord and confusion. The wearer needs only to be in the room to create the effect.”

  “Does it do anything good?”

  “Sometimes confusion is necessary. It’s not always bad. You know the trickster lore – even in public school they teach it, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “In stories they give us gifts, show us things, but also sometimes trick us. Or other gods. Hence their reputation. But there’s always a purpose to what they do. That’s why they are friends to us in a way the rest of the gods can never be. Even some of the Skeptics believe that.” He pauses, and it’s an ominous one. “Are you involved with that boy? I can’t approve.”

  Tam. He’s talking about Tam.

  I bristle. “I didn’t ask for your approval.”

  He stares at me, eyebrows raised, for a long moment.

  I remember my intention is to play nice. “Sorry. We broke up. It’s a touchy subject.”

  A grin splits his face. “It would never have worked out. You’re a Society girl now.”

  Having a nosy grandfather is going to be a serious pain – for as long as it lasts.

  “Let’s never discuss this topic again.” My cheeks are burning. So I wander away from him, over to the long map on the far wall. The edges are irregular, and it does seem to be made of hide, but there’s no way any single animal was big enough. It must be an effect, some material made to look this way. I decide not to ask, because if there are giant monster animals that someone in my family killed to make this, I would seriously rather not find out.

  “That,” Bronson says, not agreeing or disagreeing that we will never again talk boys, “is the story of the Locke family. Your hunter’s map.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The map is the kind of thing both Tam and Bree would geek out over. I find I do too – though not because of the secret knowledge reasons that would appeal to Tam or the artistic ones that would entice Bree. It’s because Bronson says this is the story of Dad’s family.

  Of my family. A story I wonder about daily, but never ever thought to learn.

  The paths between slanting peaks and snaking valleys and strange forests are drawn in heavy black lines. There are renderings of creatures and objects, dates scrawled in irregular intervals. Long ago ones, for the most part, but I spot one twenty years ago. Another only ten. Five. Still, the meaning isn’t fully clear to me. I touch what appears to be a unicorn horn, twisting and dangerous, sketched beside a thick stand of trees.

  “Do all of you have one of these maps?” I glance over my shoulder. Bronson’s clearly enjoying my interest in it.

  “All of us,” he emphasizes the word, gesturing to himself and to me. “Every family has a hunter’s map, and each is unique. There are journals that correspond, tell the history more fully. The Bronson map is more traditional, more map-like, you could say. The matriarch is usually responsible for keeping it up to date, if there is one. If not, whoever the senior member is.”

  Over Bronson’s shoulder is a portrait of a woman with deep, tanned skin and a pale green dress. I count and the number of women depicted are roughly equal to the men. He follows my gaze. “Yes,” he says, “those are your hunters. Minus your father and mother, whose portraits haven’t been done yet.”

  “And probably never will,” I say. He frowns, troubled, and so I rush on, “Why that word – hunter instead of operative?”

  “Relic h
unter. It’s what we used to call active members of the Society instead of operatives. When the gods were asleep our primary job was collecting relics, discovering what they did, keeping them safe. If we hadn’t, humanity wouldn’t have survived the Awakening.”

  Which you caused. “Scary.”

  “It is. But it could have been far worse. We were prepared, at least, because of this work. Your father’s family goes way back – to the organization’s beginning, the first relics found, Sumerian and Egyptian ones. You’ve had a long time to hunt. The Lockes are famous for their affinity at teasing out the secrets of where relics are hidden. There were rumors that the gods whispered locations in your ears, but, of course, that’s because we thought the gods had gone somewhere else. Not that they were just resting.” He pauses. “The map doesn’t record everything, only particularly important times and places.”

  I trace one of the lines on the map with a finger, pacing along it. A half-jaguar, half-man in mid-leap and roar is drawn inside a rough outline of a star. The image segues into symbols and sigils and gods’ inhuman faces. There are monsters drawn in seas with tails that remind me of the sages. Here and there, names appear as well as dates. I stop when I come to an image that’s easy to decode.

  A winged lion with an ornate key caught between its teeth, drawn in red and outlined in black. I recognize the date too. My parents’ anniversary.

  “This is when Mom and Dad got married.”

  “Yes.”

  “You didn’t approve, did you? Don’t lie. It’s pretty obvious.”

  I watch him as he responds. “Hannah was too young. She had only been an oracle for a few years. They stay at Society headquarters – here, in London, in Beijing – wherever they’re most needed. They’re kept safe.”

  Examining the map more closely, I backtrack. Before their marriage, there’s a line extending from the main one, a river of black that widens as it runs down and down and down. As if traveling to the abzu. I bend to follow it. A long green stroke is painted a foot from the bottom of the wall. And below it are only names. The bottom of the map represents the underworld, the Afterlife. The skeletal bones sketched there make that clear.

  The name at the bottom of the black line is Gabrielle Bronson. Even in the thick brushwork I can pick out Mom’s neat handwriting. “Mom told me you guys ‘lost’ her mother when she was young. Was she sick? Did she leave? She wouldn’t ever say.”

  He comes closer, looks down to where my hand rests beside Gabrielle’s name. The sadness that takes him over makes him seem older. He didn’t know Mom had added her death here. That much is obvious from his reaction.

  “She wasn’t sick. And she didn’t exactly leave. Do you want to know what happened to her?”

  I’m almost afraid to say yes. Here he is volunteering to tell me the most painful story of his life. At least, I’m assuming it is. Given that my own parents have never told me much of anything, the offer means more than I want it to.

  I stand up so he can see my nod. “Please.”

  “We were in the field together, Gabrielle and I, in the Iraqi desert. She’d have been willing to go out solo, but I never wanted her to. I always wanted to be there to protect her.” He shakes his head, self-deprecating. “No, that’s not true. I just wanted to be near her. Always. She was so alive. Like your mother, even now. Like you. Her training was as good as mine. Better. She didn’t need me to protect her.”

  He scans the map, though I have the impression he sees something else entirely. Her, maybe. “We were there to recover an artifact long thought destroyed. Gabrielle was as good in the library as in the field, and she’d researched until she was sure she knew where it was. She’d been working with a young scholar – your father, actually – and his mother, who’d agreed to give her access to some Sumerian records here in the Locke reliquary. The only difficulty we would face was with the locals.”

  “Dad’s Mom?”

  “Sorry,” he says. “Both of Henry’s parents are dead, for a long while now. Cancer for him, an accident for her. Their loss was hard on your dad. He went a little wild, after. No one to stop him. I think it’s part of what Hannah liked about him.”

  “Losing people is hard. It changes you,” I say. “What was the relic you were after?”

  “Oh, right.” He rolls his eyes at himself. “It was a… I guess mirror is the word for it, though it wasn’t like we think of them now. It was part of a sacred divination pool in the abzu, at Enki’s famed ancient ziggurat. Not the one he’s in now, obviously.”

  “Obviously.” Although if he’d told me it was the same, I’d believe that too.

  “Part of it had been captured inside a glass oval. It’s known as the Ocean in the Glass. It could supposedly be used to see the future, even to change it. If only we’d had it, we might have used it… I would have used it. I’d have done anything.” He stares past me.

  “There were oracles then, too? Did you consult them?”

  “The Society still had oracles, yes. But they were different then. Consulted only on the most important of matters, not simple field recovery. Gabrielle was convinced that the glass had been buried near a lake said to be in the remote desert. There were rumors among the nomadic tribes that you could see the future in it. I didn’t even believe we’d find water, but her theory was that the relic being buried nearby actually did allow people to sometimes look into the water and see the future. And that Enki’s power seeping into the ground was what allowed the lake in such an arid place.”

  “Makes sense.” Since sense is relative where magic is concerned.

  “Back then, travel was easy. We could just take a plane from here to another country.” He skims his hand through the air.

  I’ve been on planes twice, once for a trip to DisneyWorld when I was a kid and another time to visit the Grand Canyon, but now ships and trains are more common for long distance travel. They don’t fall out of the sky and it’s less of a big deal if they mysteriously stop running.

  “The journey once we got there wasn’t so easy, but Gabrielle was always good with locals, no matter where we went. By the time we’d made it to the interior, we’d traded them all sorts of baubles and they were giving us a royal escort with a full parade of camels. They had invited her to sit with them at night, despite their not believing it was proper for a woman to be doing what she was. They really disapproved of me for ‘letting’ her – as if I had a choice. She had a relic called the Babel Stone, a fragment of the famous tower. It was a small chunk of rock, nothing special to look at. She’d dunk it in her tea cup or water glass, drink the liquid, and then be able to understand – and speak – any language. The locals were so impressed that she understood them, they told her their stories, including about the lake where time moved differently. That was how they described it. The lake was sacred to them. It had shown them how to save lives of people they loved, when they might be attacked by rivals. It had saved them, time and again. She changed her mind about recovering the glass.”

  “Really? You guys worry about that kind of thing?”

  “Most of us, no. For better, or for worse,” he admits, somewhat sheepish about it. “Gabrielle was special. She’d begun to believe that we shouldn’t necessarily have these treasures, that some of them belonged in the world and we didn’t have the right to take them. The argument against it was that they could have unintended effects, and that we would need them if the gods ever returned. Little did we know.”

  There’s something in his tone, in the way he studies the map. I can’t quite read it. But then I understand. Oh, how I understand. I think of me and Dad facing off against each other a million times before that last morning, and again in the abzu.

  “You said the argument,” I say. “But it was your argument, wasn’t it? With her?”

  He scrubs a hand over his cheek. “Smart girl, just like Gaby. Yes. I fought with her. And she burned her notes in the fire, so I wouldn’t be able to find them. But it was too late… I still don’t know what made her d
o it, but in the middle of the night she left our tent and she swam out into the lake. I slept through the whole thing. So did our guides. I woke up to the mourning screams of the women who found her. They’d pulled her up onto the shore, but she was blue. Her lips were like ice. Her hair was still damp when I touched it. There was no bringing her back.”

  It could have been suicide. It could have been an accident. He seems so gone in that moment, still grieving, that I am certain he doesn’t know which. I want to tell him it doesn’t matter. The two of them, Bronson and my mom, they lost her. That’s the reason Mom describes it that way.

  “I’m so sorry.” I mean it.

  One of his shoulders rolls. “It was a long time ago. The worst day of my life. After that, everything changed.”

  I understand why he’s so hungry to connect with me, to make things right – even if it’s a really effed version of right. “You said you made Mom become an oracle to protect her.”

  “That was the idea. Oracles are too valuable to risk in the field. She was the youngest in our history. As you can tell, it didn’t really work. She didn’t want that. She wanted Henry Locke.”

  I step closer to him. My grandfather.

  “Yes,” I agree. “But still… I’m sorry.”

  “I had to do something afterward. Make my life still mean something. It’s why I climbed to these heights,” Bronson says.

  What he means is he did it all to get to the place where he can bring her back. Where he can find out what happened that night, and convince her to stay instead. Stay forever. I realize, looking at my grandfather, just what a dangerous man he is.

  Because part of me wants him to succeed. Or, at least, part of me is confused, like I put on Legba’s cap. Discord, I feel it. All I can do is hang on to the knowledge that my dad is locked up somewhere in this building, and that the man in front of me is willing to throw him away to get what he wants.

  “You should be proud,” I say to him. “She would be.”

  “I hope you’re right,” he says.

  Oh, I bet you do.