The Otherlife

by Julia Gray

  ‘It was only a halloumi wrap. It would’ve gone to waste otherwise. I was just trying to—’

  ‘Enough!’

  I hate it when she gets properly cross. It must be because we’re not in London. She must be bored or something.

  She chucked the remains of the wrap – the frayed bits of tortilla I hadn’t had time to hoover up – into the bin. Then she went over to the sink and started flinging potatoes into a colander. (Peeling potatoes = she definitely didn’t have enough to do with her sodding time.)

  ‘I emailed Mr Voss this morning, Hobie …’

  My heart did a little du-dumm of surprise.

  ‘To say you won’t be doing Rugby for the rest of the term.’

  I felt like my stomach was going to involuntarily erupt like Vesuvius and engulf the kitchen table and the whole sorry household in an ash-cloud of chewed-up halloumi.

  ‘What the f— What the …? Why, Mum, why?’

  Very slowly, she turned round. She was drawing on these floral oven gloves that looked like massive gauntlets, smoothing down her matching pink apron.

  ‘I spoke to the physio. She said it wouldn’t be wise after your arm injury.’

  ‘But my arm is fine!’ I said, flailing it madly to prove it. She winced.

  Tears. There were tears at the back of my nose. Traitors.

  ‘Off you go now. Time to crack on.’

  Like probation officers, Jason and Rebecca were waiting to usher me and Ben back to the dining room, where two hours of War Poetry awaited.

  ‘But, Mum—’

  ‘Stop showing off in front of other people, Hobie.’

  And she turned back to the sink.

  ‘Why’s she doing it, Ben? Why?’

  We were perched at the top of Yggdrasil again. It was almost raining, but not quite. Sort of misty, with water suspended in the air, a pinkish greyish sky. Tutoring was over for the day. If we’d been in London, you’d have been able to smell that firework smell that always hangs about for a few days either side of bonfire night. The mushrooms were still there, jostling at the foot of the tree like a bunch of disgruntled football fans.

  Ben lowered his left leg into the hollow trunk and waved his foot from side to side.

  ‘Your mother likes power. Mine does too.’

  I reached above my head for a branch, considered letting it take the whole of my weight, thought better of it.

  ‘Why do they have to have more power than us? They’re women.’

  ‘Frigg and Freyja are women.’

  I thought about the Norse Goddesses. There aren’t that many, obviously. Other than a lot of blonde hair, they had zero in common with Mum, as far as I was concerned.

  ‘At least our mothers aren’t immortal,’ Ben went on. He shivered. He was looking really pale.

  ‘D’you think we’ll pass the exams next week?’

  ‘Dunno.’

  ‘I think I’ll die without Rugby.’

  We sat in the arms of the tree while the light faded.

  Saturday 8th November

  Today is the last day in the countryside. We are driving back to London tomorrow. Ben will leave with his mother in the morning. I want to go in their car but I can’t apparently because it ‘doesn’t make sense’. On Monday we have exams. I know that if I fail them, they’ll move me down. I’m trying not to think about this.

  I will miss:

  Going to Yggdrasil and talking about the Otherlife

  Doing stuff with Ben

  Being on holiday, no matter how crap and arduous and work-orientated it’s been

  Rebecca

  I will not miss:

  The sunflower-seed snack regimen unfairly imposed by my mother

  The tutoring

  Being with my family

  Jason

  OK, maybe that’s a bit unfair, because Jason’s all right really. He just doesn’t let us run around every ten minutes like Rebecca does. And he’s too bloody serious about everything.

  Tonight we’re having people over for drinks before dinner and they’re bringing some other people who are staying with them, which is what people do in the country. Personally I hate it when someone that I don’t know comes to one of my parties, say like when Matteo’s cousin is visiting from Geneva, or one of Frodo’s lame orchestra buddies accompanies us to Byron Burger. But for Mum and Dad it’s a chance to mingle/connect/show off how nice the house is. And they sit and talk blah blah mingle crunch sip guffaw and the kids and Clothilde pass around the canapé nibbles that’ve been knocked up earlier, and then at exactly eight fifteen they all roll back into their cars and drive six minutes back to their houses.

  Mum has relented on the boring food front as it’s our last night and, let’s face it, I’ve sat there with Jason and Rebecca for FOUR HOURS every day, working my socks off. She asked what I wanted for dinner and I said boeuf bour-guignon, which is one of my favourite-ever suppers, with potato dauphinoise and then hot chocolate and raspberry soufflés and she must know she’s been a real bitch to me for the last few days because she said yes to all of that.

  I went into the kitchen to find Anna browning the meat. She was salting and peppering the cubes of beef, dabbing them in a bowl of flour and then sliding them into this massive casserole dish where they sizzled in butter. When they were brown on all sides she lifted them out with a slotted spoon, leaking juices, and put them aside. My hand shot out immediately and she smacked it lightly away.

  ‘Hobie, absolutely not.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because it’s not cooked yet, only browned.’

  ‘Raw beef can’t kill me!’

  ‘Perhaps, but I’d still prefer not to take the chance. Would you like to chop up those onions?’

  ‘That’s not my job,’ I told her and ran out again, seizing a couple of Frusli bars from the counter on my way.

  Ben and I finished the last of the French papers, the last of the Maths papers, the last of the History Source questions. It was all done. I didn’t know about Ben, but I felt drained. Some bloody holiday. One by one the textbooks went back into our rucksacks, the revision notes and index cards were filed and put away, our files stacked in the hall with labels on.

  Jason, quite lamely, but I suppose with some inner core of decency, high-fived us both and gave us these handmade certificates that he’d drawn on cartridge paper.

  ‘I, Hobart Duvalle, have survived a week of intensive study,’ said mine. He’d done it quite well, to his credit, with a frame of vines and roses and thorns. Ben’s was the same but with his name, obviously. Benjamin Holloway. Both of the certificates had a wolf on the back, so beautifully done with a calligraphy pen that I stared at old Jase briefly with new respect.

  ‘That’s going to be my tattoo,’ I whispered to Ben in an undertone. ‘And it’s much better than yours!’

  ‘Hobart,’ Rebecca was saying. ‘What a name! Where’s it from?’

  ‘It’s an old version of Hubert, isn’t it?’ said Jason.

  I explained that it was my grandfather’s name and his grandfather before that, making me the Third.

  ‘Hobart Duvalle the Third,’ Rebecca said dramatically, giving me a salute. ‘That’s a name to do serious mischief behind. And I suppose your grandson, Hobie, will be the Fourth. Imagine that!’

  And she hugged me.

  ‘You boys have been so focused, and you’ve worked so well together.’

  She wrapped her arms around Ben and kissed him on the cheek and I was inwardly furious because she only hugged me and what was all that about? Especially since it’s my house. Then she frowned, and reached out to touch his forehead with the back of her hand.

  ‘Ben, you’re awfully hot. I think you’re coming down with something, my love.’

  The guests crunch-crunched onto the gravel through the massive gates that have stone pineapples on either side. From the kitchen we heard the muffled slam of car doors, wellies scuffling towards the door. Drinks were being served in the drawing room, which is a bit li
ke the sitting room but fancier and with more oil paintings in it and no TV. Dad was opening champagne.

  Outside, the gardeners were lighting the bonfire while some men from the village strode to and fro on the big lawn, setting up fireworks. Ben and I watched from the window on the landing.

  ‘It’s a funeral pyre,’ Ben murmured. ‘Remember Baldr.’

  ‘Tell me,’ I said.

  Ben drew a deep breath and closed his eyes.

  ‘Everyone came to Baldr’s funeral. Odin was there, with his ravens and Valkyries. Freyr came in a chariot drawn by a boar; Heimdallr on his horse. Freyja’s chariot was drawn by cats. The frost giants came too, for they all had loved Baldr deeply.

  ‘Baldr’s body was carried down to the sea, where his ship, Hringhorni, waited on the shore. The Gods found, however, that it was too heavy for them to launch. So they sent for a giantess, whose name was Hyrrokkin, who came on a wolf, with vipers for reins. She went to Hringhorni and pushed it into the sea with a shove so powerful that the world shook.

  ‘The Gods placed Baldr’s body on the funeral pyre that they had built onboard the ship, with Baldr’s wife, Nanna, beside him.’

  ‘Oh, did they burn her alive?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘She died of grief.’

  ‘Huh. I’d rather be burnt alive than die of feelings.’

  Ben went on: ‘Slowly the great ship rolled down to the sea, blazing with the flames that Thor had consecrated with his hammer, Mjllnir, and to which Odin had added his gold ring, Draupnir. As they watched, the Gods wept for the departed Baldr until the ship was no more than the faintest glow on the horizon.’

  ‘Awesome!’ I said. I stared out at the growing flames. Funerals in England are so dull and drab. Lame-arsed singing and silly flowers and eulogies that are so bland and unfunny they might as well have been downloaded off the Internet. I wouldn’t want that, if I died. I’d want what they had in the Otherlife.

  The bonfire hissed and crackled as the dry leaves and branches caught fire in the gathering dusk. We stared at it, willing the body of Baldr to appear above it, as a sign that the Otherlife really did exist.

  From the drawing room came the sounds of hooting laughter, glasses clinking together and the fwah-fwah noise that grown-ups make when they’re interacting.

  Ben’s mother came out from her room. She smelt of some super-strong perfume and her hair was completely straight and shiny.

  ‘Hello, darling. Hello, Hobie. Are you boys coming down?’

  It wasn’t a question, so we trotted down the stairs after her, Ben first, me following.

  ‘Ben,’ she was saying, ‘you must make sure you answer clearly when people speak to you, all right? Don’t just mumble like you would at home. Are you feeling OK? You look terrible.’

  As I watched them go in, side by side, I was assailed by this terrible wave of sickness and sadness. I shook it off immediately. Just for a moment, though, I felt, as he passed through the door, like I would never see Ben again.

  BEN

  ‘I thought I was never going to see you again,’ he says, fingers pressing into my arm, breath hot on my cheek. ‘But you’ve arrived at totally the right time. Come with me.’

  He leads me to a swing seat and throws himself onto it, gesturing for me join him. It’s a white, curlicued, wrought-iron contraption that I remember from the garden outside Ike’s study. But what is it doing here, on the roof? And why is the roof so large, and flat? The swing seat faces out, across the sculpted gardens; you can see the lake and the woods, and an arena of pulsating sky. I hang back for a while; then, slowly, I go to sit down beside him.

  ‘This is it,’ says Hobie. ‘It’s starting.’

  ‘What is?’ I say, wanting to hear him say it.

  ‘Ragnarok!’ says Hobie, and in his voice is the full-force ecstasy of someone who’s waited a long, long time for this moment.

  A ship appears, blue-white, its edges swarming like insects, on the edge of the clouds. Naglfar, made of the nails of dead men. A flicker of fire-red on the ship’s prow.

  ‘Remember when you saw the ship on Westbourne Grove?’ says Hobie. He is eating a chocolate brownie, devouring it in greedy bites, as though it’s the first solid food he’s had in months. ‘I was so jealous. I so wanted to be able to do that. And now I can. It’s awesome.’

  ‘What are you doing, Hobie?’ I say.

  ‘Chilling out, enjoying the spectacle. I have to say I’ve been mostly bored out of my mind here. They kept me tied up, you know. Dripped with poison. No rugby! No snacks! I’ve only just managed to get out. I mean, Ben, it was practically a straitjacket they put me in! Not cool.’

  He shivers. Without looking directly at him, I let the sides of my vision go soft – it’s easy to do; I’ve had plenty of practice – and study him. He looks so changed. I remember when I saw Zara outside the Underworld, and thought that she was like a plant starved of light. That is almost how Hobie seems, under the myriad bursts and glimmers of the Otherlife. Taller, yes. But not as tall as I am. Not nearly. And thinner. Too thin. He looks as though he hasn’t taken any exercise for a long time. It’s hard to tell, in the darkness, but his skin seems papery and pale.

  ‘They had me in some kind of hole, or tent or something,’ he goes on. ‘All dark, like a cave. A prison cell. Couldn’t move a muscle. I’d have tried all my usual sweet-talking routines – you know, the kind of thing that generally works on Mum and Cloth-head – but I couldn’t even speak. I could hear them, moving about. Staring down at me. Talking in Norse. Lucky you taught me a bit, though mostly I couldn’t make out what they were saying. Machines making noises. Bloody irritating. I don’t know how long it went on for. It felt like months. Years.’

  ‘The punishment of Loki,’ I murmur.

  ‘What?’

  ‘What you’re describing,’ I say. ‘It’s like … It’s the punishment of Loki, for killing Baldr.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Ben. I didn’t kill anyone.’

  ‘What about Jason?’

  ‘Jason?! You can’t pretend that was my fault!’

  ‘Why not? It was your fault. I know it was.’

  He turns to me, smiling widely. Smears of chocolate give him the appearance of missing teeth.

  ‘You’ve got no proof. Admit it.’

  Another ship glides across the sky, huge and luminous with rising flames. Hringhorni, bearing Baldr away.

  ‘I think I know what you did,’ I say. ‘I just don’t know why you did it.’

  We watch as Hringhorni disappears into the clouds. It’s eerily silent. Bifrost, the rainbow bridge, suddenly dawns across the sky. I walked over that, I think. I was there.

  ‘You never came to see me,’ says Hobie.

  ‘I did. I came twice.’

  ‘Twice!’

  There’s a lot of pain in his voice. It’s disguised as anger, but I can hear it.

  ‘Sorry,’ I mutter. ‘I didn’t think you’d have noticed.’

  ‘Whatever,’ he replies.

  ‘Hobie. What did you do to Jason?’

  ‘Like I said. N-O-T-H-I-N-G. Jesus, Ben. You can’t show up and act like my mother.’

  Bifrost begins to shake under the weight of the fire giants who come marching, marching, marching. Then it shatters and splinters, and breaks up into shards of multicoloured phosphorescence. Over the roll of thunder, I hear Heimdallr’s horn again. It tingles in my blood.

  A supernova bursts as Garm, the hellhound, comes for Tyr. In the empty space of the sky they fight, soundless, almost formless.

  The horn sounds again. Now Jǫrmungandr, the World Serpent, many-coiled, hissing poison, rises up, a mass of scales over the woods. I watch as the dark blue Thor-shape dives for it, hesitantly at first, then gathering force. It’s deadening. Hypnotic. It feels as if I’m locked in a circular cinema, unable to look away from the screen.

  Hobie climbs off the swing seat and saunters over to the edge of the roof. I find myself following him, coming to stand not far away from him, right on the edg
e. Suddenly, Naglfar appears again before us, a shimmering mass of white and blue.

  ‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ says Hobie.

  His face glows in the reflected light of the unfolding end of the world. His arms hang loosely against his sides. Loki steers the ship so that it glides alongside the rooftop. I’ve never seen that fire-red light so close. I can almost feel the heat of him, the demonic blaze. Now I see Loki’s face, just for a moment – a wide grin of sharp teeth that reminds me a good deal of Hobie’s – as he raises an arm to salute us.

  ‘He’s waited so long for this,’ says Hobie exultantly, saluting back. ‘So have I. It’s all I’ve been able to think about. Like looking forward to the world’s most magnificent party. Like every heavy metal song in existence rolled into one. You know, Ben, I’d never have got here if it hadn’t been for you. I’d never have seen the Otherlife. It’s all down to you really.’

  I don’t know what to say. Is he thanking me, or blaming me?

  ‘You could stay here, you know, if you wanted to. With me,’ says Hobie.

  It must be the heat, or the explosions of light in the sky. The fibres of my thoughts are unravelling.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I say at last.

  ‘It would be quite easy, Ben. You could be here all the time, like I am.’

  ‘In the Otherlife, you mean?’

  ‘In the Otherlife. You’d see it all the time, all around you, not just sometimes, in some places. Just think: isn’t that what you always wanted? To live here?’

  ‘I … I suppose so.’

  Inside me a hole has opened up, a solid vault of wanting. It’s the feeling I felt as a child. The longing to be taken away. The longing for the Otherlife. Loki murmurs something harsh and rapid and begins to turn the ship. Heimdallr makes for him, burnt-orange, battle cry jagged in the air.

  ‘If you took maybe one or two tiny steps …’ Hobie whispers.

  Suddenly I am twelve again, and standing on a different roof, in another place. Hobie and I are watching the streets of west London, while the smoke from his cigarette rolls upwards into the clouds, and I tell him about the Otherlife. Our growing friendship is a suit of armour we both wear against the world. I have missed that friendship. I remember our wolf suits, and the night we stole the steak from the restaurant. I remember the taste of that steak: lemon and garlic and abandonment and delight. I’ve never tasted anything like it, before or since. I remember the night I helped him tattoo himself while I chanted in Norse. I remember the way we would sneak out to the squash courts at lunchtime, so Hobie could practise hitting the ball and we could talk more about the Otherlife while he played. Always, always, he wanted to hear about the Otherlife.