Hardship does that to a person.
Maureen and her husband Everett owned the Cox Lake Resort. I’d met Everett only once, when I’d first rolled into this neck of the woods and applied for the job. I’d barely been working for them for a month when Everett was diagnosed with liver cancer.
Despite my usual intentions to avoid genuine friendships, I flashed one of my best smiles at Maureen as I hurried through the doorway from the store and into the rental office. It seemed wrong to be deliberately cool to a woman who was dealing with so much.
“Morning, Maureen.” I cut directly toward the rental counter. I had a fair idea why Maureen was here. Although I hadn’t expected her, I felt vaguely guilty about not having the reports printed already.
“There you are.” Maureen stopped halfway across the rental office. She studied me for half a second before glancing through the doorway behind me.
“Pretty quiet this morning.” I rounded the corner and stepped behind the rental counter. “I rang up some coffee for Mr. Davis while Claire was in the storeroom.”
Not a lie. Just a skimming of the full truth. I shot a quick look at Maureen and noted that the tight lines around her eyes and mouth seemed deeper than ever.
She doesn’t need more to worry about.
Behind my eyes, a threatening headache tweaked.
And I really, really just want to go back to my cabin now.
The cabin wasn’t home, not really. But it was quiet and secluded, which was the next best thing.
I flipped open the laptop we used for record-keeping and brought up the spreadsheet showing the previous week’s rentals.
“I’ll have your report in a second.” I pressed the printer’s power button.
Maureen stayed where she’d stopped, in the middle of the rental office, but she frowned toward the store. I assumed that meant Claire had yet to put in an appearance.
I’ve been here too long. Knowing what report my boss wanted before she asked, getting caught up in my co-worker’s troubles… I hadn’t been here quite a year yet, but it was apparently long enough to start getting comfortable. Long enough to start being tempted to become a part of lives that weren’t mine.
Technically, that meant it was time to move on. But six years of moving around—and moving the hard way, no magic to cover distances… The thought of starting all over again, one more time, left me exhausted.
The printer whirred. The paper felt hot to my touch when I pulled it from the print tray.
Maureen’s eyes narrowed—she was still looking into the store. I carried the papers around the counter and used them as an excuse to move to Maureen’s side.
On the general store side of the building, Claire approached the register, head down and smoothing imaginary wrinkles from her blouse as she came. When she finally lifted her head and darted a quick smile at Maureen, her face was bereft of most of its usual makeup—raccoon eyes included.
It’s a start.
Claire reached the register, and the three of us stood there for a moment, Maureen with her tired eyes, Claire with her too-bright eyes, and me with my report clutched in one hand. I felt trapped, like an insect caught in the amber of a life that had been forced on me.
Worse, I felt worried—about Claire and whatever she’d gotten herself into. About Maureen and what I knew she was dealing with.
Then Maureen turned toward me. Her frown eased into a weary smile. With one hand she took the report. With the other, she patted my arm.
“Thank you, dear. Actually, I’d like the full set of reports from last month, as well.” Maureen’s smile faltered. “Could you drop them by the house on your way home this evening? I need to get back to Everett.”
My throat tightened. Setting foot inside the Cox house was not high on the list of things I was in the mood to do. Ever.
But I couldn’t look Maureen Cox in the eye and refuse. So I forced a smile and nodded. “Of course. Sure.”
4
* * *
Six years past and worlds away
Asgard was a cold world. Beyond the ice-like magical enclosures which protected its cities, winter ruled. But while blizzards raged nonstop outside, the land within the enclosures existed in an odd wintry summer, filled with blue-green firs and a dense carpet of sturdy emerald grass. Icy as the light was, it filled the air with warmth. Enough warmth that the native Asgardians walked about in shirt sleeves, as tall and hardy as the stone and wood and sharp angles of their architecture.
I did not go about in shirt sleeves. I lacked the sterner stuff of which the Asgardians were made. A constant chill clung to me, so I wore a heavy cloak wrapped about my shoulders and fur-lined slippers, even indoors.
More than one city under more than one enclosure thrived on Asgard, but only one held a bridge stone, so one city was all I’d ever seen. The Asgardians themselves showed no predilection for referring to their individual cities as anything other than “outside” or “to the east.” So when my people spoke of Asgard, they as frequently referred to the capital city as to the world itself. We had only one city, so we were used to thinking of world and city as one interchangeable entity.
For me, both Asgard the city and Asgard the world became my refuge.
I remembered a few things about the first days following the fire—the explosion—which destroyed Alfheim. I remembered Heimdal’s frequent presence, a silent ray of warmth in my newly-cold world. He didn’t disturb me as I lay wrapped in blankets and refusing to get out of bed, never touched me or spoke, as if he sensed that upending the delicate balance of my emotions would be disastrous. But he would come in and stand silently a while before departing again—off to do his work as Watcher, I assumed.
Although Heimdal didn’t speak to me, I did hear his voice, in the corridor outside my room and in conversation with the older voice I came to associate with Odin, the Allfather, leader of the Aesir who ruled Asgard, city and world alike.
“…too soon. You can’t ask it of her.” Heimdal’s voice, reined-in and carefully respectful.
“I need to see Alfheim.” This was Odin. Brusque, but not unkind. “I must see for myself. She is the only bridge remaining.”
When I realized what they were discussing, nausea rolled through me. Beneath my blankets, I huddled into a fetal position, curling in on myself. Tears stung my eyes.
“She is in no condition—”
“She has no choice. Powerful as Frigg’s scrying is, she cannot see everything. We need to go in person.”
Heimdal’s response was slow in coming. It held a note of resigned obedience. “Then let me be the one to ask her.”
What Odin replied to that, I didn’t hear. But Heimdal’s footsteps entered my room, and I sensed him standing over me. I stayed where I was, squeezed my eyes shut and didn’t move and willfully waited for him to go away.
“Iris.” The murmur of Heimdal’s voice was like a sunbeam soft against my face. “I know you’re awake. I know you heard us. I’m sorry.”
He knew—of course he knew. He was Heimdal the Watcher. He could hear my heart beating faster, hear my ragged breathing. Maybe he could even hear the tears sliding down my cheeks.
“If I could take this away, I would.” I didn’t need Watcher senses like his to hear the empathy in his so-gentle voice.
Hearing it should maybe have broken me. Should have sparked the sob building inside me and reduced me to helpless tears. Instead, it washed through me like morning sun driving away the night’s cold. I felt comforted.
More, I felt stronger. Beneath the gentleness in Heimdal’s voice, there also lurked a strength. That strength tugged at me. Urged me to step outside myself and the despair in which I’d been drowning. It gave me a strength of my own, to take a deep breath and still the quaking in my bones.
My family was dead. My best friend. Everyone. And we still didn’t know what had caused the fire.
The least I could do was help Odin find out.
A servant brought a wash basin and a change of clothe
s. The silk robes I’d been wearing, the midnight and royal purple of a bridge, were beyond ruined. Still, as I dropped them to the floor, it was all I could do not to crawl back into bed and resume weeping.
When I stepped into the corridor, now wearing simple broadcloth robes of dark and unadorned blue, only one man waited for me. This man was lean, with ropy muscles along his neck and a steel gray beard. Odin, I assumed.
Whoever he was, he was not Heimdal.
My pulse quickened, this time in panic. I looked around, but the corridor was empty of everyone save Odin and me and the servant now carrying away the dirtied wash basin.
“Heimdal has a job to do.”
Odin regarded me with one good eye. A ruin of puckered scars covered where his second eye should have been. He wore a simple tunic and trousers, as if he were only a man and not a god. A grayed braid hung from beneath a simple circlet of beaten gold.
It sank in, finally, that I was in the presence of the Allfather. As Asgard’s Aesir were leaders of the Nine Worlds, Odin was leader of the Aesir. Fresh panic tightened my throat.
“We also have a job to do.” Odin spoke simply. Carefully. “We will stay no longer than necessary. You have my word.”
Perhaps his careful demeanor was intended as kindness. But I had never heard the Allfather and kindness mentioned in the same breath. And now, finally, another thing finally started to sink in.
“She is the only bridge remaining.”
And so of course Odin was treating me with great care. Of course Heimdal was. I was the last Alfar. The last bridge. The last living being capable of opening the ways between the worlds which Asgard ruled.
They needed me.
The “we” who went to Alfheim turned out to include not just Odin but also his sons, Thor and Baldur. They didn’t look much like brothers—Thor was tall and broad, rugged and ruddy, his hair a deep gold nearly the shade of the bronze-worked great hammer he carried on his back. Baldur was equally tall, but slighter in build and more slender of feature, although his hair was equally golden. Both wore heavily decorated mail shirts.
As Rose had predicted in what seemed now the long-distant past, Thor took his time looking me up and down. Sickened by his audacity under the circumstances and dulled by grief into not caring what anyone thought, I had little trouble staring him down. Possibly he picked up on the disgust in my expression, because when he eventually got around to looking again at my face, he turned aside.
Baldur bowed, the picture of courteousness, proving that looks were not the only difference between the brothers. Of the three men—gods—who accompanied me to Alfheim, Baldur was the one who gently laid his hand atop mine for the journey. Odin and Thor each took hold of Baldur’s shoulders to complete the connection between the four of us.
I took them to Alfheim. I stood in the charred remains of the bridge stone clearing. I thought the ground should still seem overly warm beneath my feet, but it felt no different than it ever had.
That was the only thing that was no different. I did my best to look at nothing save the cracked and half-melted bridge stone, its formerly gleaming white surface blackened with soot.
Odin waited with me while Baldur and Thor went down into the city. If I’d chosen to look, I could have seen clearly where the city had been—the trees that had once stood between the hillside and the city were gone. The ashes and cinder coating the ruined bridge stone and clinging to the magical dome protecting the now-dead world were all that remained of anything.
I chose not to look. I stood beside Odin, allowing his greater mass to block my view and breathing air that stank of smoke and burned my lungs and nose.
“The air exchange is still working,” Odin remarked, seemingly to himself. “The atmosphere will eventually clear.”
Maybe it would. No one remained inside Alfheim’s dome to whom that would matter. I kept my insight to myself, though. Despite my determination to find out what had caused this, my insides shook. I was afraid that speaking might unleash a complete lack of control, probably in the form of fresh screaming and weeping.
In the end, through a combination of Thor’s and Baldur’s physical examinations and the scrying talents of Odin’s wife, Frigg, Odin concluded that it was as he’d surmised. One of the dome mechanisms outside the city, perched high in a triangulation of magical energy, had briefly failed. Radiation had streamed into the dome and struck in exactly the wrong place—by all estimations, the explosion had originated in the painter’s guild. I thought of the storage shed outside the guild’s great central studio, filled with tubs of binder and sacks of pigments.
And turpentine. Vats of turpentine.
Willow would have been working there that day. My little brother had probably been among the first to die.
My brother was dead. My father was dead. Everyone I had ever known—dead.
The realization finally, truly sank in. It should have undone me, but instead an ice worthy of Asgard filled me. I listened, numb, as Odin made his final analysis.
“The mechanisms were designed to self-repair. It fixed itself. Then it re-sealed the dome and trapped the fire inside.”
Which was, I thought to myself, no worse than what would have happened if the entire dome had failed instead. But I didn’t say that aloud, either, because it didn’t matter.
Nothing at all mattered.
5
* * *
The city Asgard contained a multitude of palatial halls, constructions of sweeping rune-carved stone arches and soaring rafters. Deep carpets covered the floors. Heavy tapestries woven in dark, rich jewel tones covered the walls. The halls stood in a great circle around a central clearing, where the age-darkened branches of the Yggdrasil reached gnarled fingers toward the icy sky-dome.
The largest of those halls was Valhalla, which, of course, belonged to Odin. Inside Valhalla’s great dining hall, rushes covered the floor instead of carpets, but the tapestries were finer than any others. The carved wood High Seat belonging to Odin sat a man’s height taller than the benches and tables lining the main floor.
A handful of days after I’d taken him to Alfheim’s ruins, the Allfather sat in his High Seat and stared down at me.
He was still the most intimidating being I had ever faced. There was a weight to Odin—to all the residents of Asgard—that I had yet to become accustomed. The people of this world were truly physically taller and broader, that was part of it. But everyone in Asgard seemed more substantial when compared to the Alfar.
Because we are creatures of light.
Had been. We had been creatures of light. The others were all dead.
The thought brought pain, but it was a dull pain, as if the cutting of grief had left my emotions protected by callouses. The icy calm which had reached into me when I finally understood that my family was dead had remained.
From Valhalla’s sparring grounds outside, a clash of weapons and ferocious cries drifted in. Inside the shield-lined walls, a hush currently resided.
Wooden benches lined the hall, but the Aesir in the room stood instead of sitting. Most of them, like Odin, wore day-to-day clothing. Colors ranged from sapphire to emerald to ruby, but none of them filled my eyes as fully as the colors of Alfheim. These colors did not dazzle. They resonated, but not as deeply as the colors of the Alfar did.
Had.
Golden hair and ruddy cheeks further marked the Aesir as different from my people. The Alfar were wisps of people, with creamy complexions and white-gold hair.
Had been. Had been pale, had been wisps, had been people.
Frigg sat beside Odin, regal even though her dress was a plain dove gray that seemed faded in comparison to the other hues in the room. Unlike Odin and his steel-hued braid, Frigg’s tresses had gone a gleaming white. Her eyes, as blue as any other Asgardian’s, were bright and sharp in an age-rounded variation of Asgard-strong features.
Despite Frigg’s hardy Asgardian features, there was an ethereal nature to her, a fey look in her eyes. With her magic, she c
ould look into any of the Nine Worlds. Sometimes, she even caught glimpses of the future.
Frigg didn’t look at me, standing alone in front of Odin, but I felt her attention.
I felt the attention of everyone in the room.
Baldur stood alongside the High Seat, on his mother’s side. Frigg leaned slightly forward and murmured something down at him. The smile with which he returned her remark seemed to me to be filled with respectful adoration for his mother. Obviously, Baldur was the good son.
Thor stood on the opposite side, with a brittle, golden beauty of a woman alongside him—that would be his wife, Sif. I hadn’t expected her to be so attractive. That Thor would even think to wander struck me as absurd.
Even in this non-martial setting, both of Odin’s sons wore mail shirts and warhammers, although given the amount of decorative bronze and even gold that adorned both, they were more ceremonial than practical.
I stood alone in the very center of the hall, too far from Odin to feel anchored by him even if he hadn’t been too intimidating to offer any comfort. I wore a simple broadcloth robe of deep blue, with no waist and no skirts to make it seem fuller. The scratchy fabric hung straight from my shoulders and felt ten times heavier than the silk I’d have worn at home. Fur-lined slippers protected my feet from the chill floor.
All those gods arrayed around the room stared. At me. Surrounded by their glorious stature, I felt small and insubstantial, a timid peek of moonlight at full noon.
Near Thor, on Sif’s far side, stood Heimdal. I hadn’t seen Heimdal since he’d asked me to take Odin to see the ruins of Alfheim. Not since Odin had sent him off to handle his regular duties, whatever those were. Now, Heimdal stood there like a beam of winter sunlight. His hair, tousled as if he’d come in from outside only moments before, was a little lighter than Thor’s. Heimdal’s resembled the color of straw in the field.
Bridge Burned: A Norse Myths & Legends Fantasy Romance (Bridge of the Gods Book 1) Page 3