by C. Gockel
Amy laughs. She hadn’t expected that question. “I have no idea.”
“But he knows you!” says Larson.
Amy shrugs. “Maybe he’s an elf?”
“Could be someone we bumped into in Asgard,” Bohdi says.
Larson raises a finger in Amy’s direction.
Amy huffs and glares at him. “I don’t know who he is! Don’t blame this one on me!”
Larson takes a step forward, his mouth opens, but Steve cuts him off. “She’s telling the truth, Lieutenant.”
“He’s a powerful, unknown magic user, and he knows our position!” Larson says, spinning to Steve. “Don’t tell me this doesn’t bother you.”
Gaze trained on Amy, Steve says, “It concerns me, but she doesn’t know who he is.”
Sigyn huffs. “Odin himself knows our position. He probably has since we reached the Keep.”
“Even among the Frost Giants, he has his spies,” Nari says.
Sigyn tilts her head. “I’m less worried about this Daevas than the wrath of the Allfather.” Her eyes narrow. “A siege in winter is unlikely. But come spring …”
“We had better be on the move,” Nari finishes.
Steve stands with his arms crossed, just staring at Amy. She swallows. Maybe he is just going to let the topic of Brett, Bryant and Dale being magical drop and confront her later, when there won’t be witnesses. She’s not sure if that is good or bad.
Tilting her head, Sigyn says, “I’m more interested in how Brett, Bryant, and Dale are magical. Do you know how that could have happened, Doctor?”
Amy sees Steve scowl. Sigyn continues, “It’s contagious, obviously, but how?”
Steve’s voice is low. “You took plenty of samples of my blood. You said it wasn’t contagious, Doctor.”
Amy’s heart races. She could play it up as an accident. But then Larson mutters something about scientists and incompetence and Amy doesn’t want to lie. She’s a poor diplomat, a poorer warrior. Her medical training and her mind are the only things she has. Now would be an excellent time to play dumb, to feign the innocent, fumbling, woman. But she won’t, because she can’t. “No, Steve, I don’t think I ever said that—I never knew who might be listening—I said it won’t show up on HIV tests.”
Taking a step forward, Steve whispers, “Why did you do that, Doctor?”
Amy raises her eyes to Steve’s. “Because I didn’t want it to become a weapon of the U.S. government or Odin. Because I knew that it would be used to create supermen! I didn’t want to be creating new gods—I wanted magic to be for everyone.” Her voice is stronger than she expects, but the words make her feel a little hollow. She turns to Larson. “No offense, I like you guys a lot more than I thought I would.”
Larson’s nostrils flare.
Steve’s voice snaps through the room. “You turned the entire human race into guinea pigs.”
Amy’s shoulders slump. No matter what her motivations were, that’s the truth.
“And stole from the United States government to do it!” says Larson, the veins on his neck and forehead popping.
Amy rounds on the man. She means to speak quietly and rationally. Instead she screams, “I did not steal! I took back what was mine!”
She hears the sound of Bohdi’s lighter clicking. Steve rocks back on his feet, as though he’s been struck. But Larson doesn’t seem to have heard. “In times of war, acts of treason are punishable by immediate execution,” says Larson.
Bohdi laughs. “You’ll have to execute me first.”
“Steady, Lieutenant,” Steve says, but Larson steps toward Bohdi. “I don’t have a problem with that!”
“I might,” says Valli.
The eyes of everyone in the room snap to Loki’s volatile son. He’s standing with his head cocked to the side. Despite his warmer skin tones, and his blonder hair, he looks so much like his father it makes Amy’s heart hurt.
“Do I understand correctly?” Valli says, chin dipped low. “She made it so that all of the human race may become magical?”
“Yes,” Nari says, voice hushed.
Valli smiles. “You are the greatest revolutionary of our time!” He bows to Amy. “My sword is yours.”
Sigyn tilts her head. “I knew you were extraordinary, Dr. Lewis.” She slides closer to Amy, gaze on Larson. Her hands casually slide to her hips and the Beretta she’s carrying.
Nari looks between his mother and Valli, and says, “And you have my scabbard, too.”
“This is ridiculous,” says Larson, his hand going to the earpiece he wears. He can flick it on and call all of his team … Amy’s fists tighten at her sides.
“Stop,” Steve says. “We need them.”
“They need us more,” snaps Larson.
“No, they don’t,” says Steve. “Lieutenant ...”
Larson’s head whips in Steve’s direction. “It’s fine what has happened to us and you, and it’s fine what has happened to Fenrir … she’s a dog … but it isn’t right for everyone, it won’t be right for everyone! She’s given no one a choice in this experiment!”
Amy’s eyes flick between the two men. The thing is, she agrees with Larson.
“Actually,” Bohdi says, “it was your higher ups who injected your team with the virus without your knowledge or consent. And technically, it was your team who released the virus in the population during R and R.”
That doesn’t make Amy feel better. She thinks of waking up in the hospital after her miscarriage. It’s not just Fenriresque transformations they have to worry about. The risk to developing fetuses is a horrible, weighty unknown. And to children … Claire’s definitely been more affected than the other team members. Is it because of her age or her unique physiology? Amy doesn’t know. She bows her head. The room has fallen silent.
“Ohhhhhh…” Bohdi says, sounding completely wicked. “You gave it to someone, didn’t you, Larson. Now you’re feeling guilty so you’re taking it out on Amy.”
Before Amy can draw her next breath, Larson lunges toward Bohdi.
“Robert, no!” Gerðr shouts.
Amy feels heat against her side and back, and branches whip from the ceiling at Bohdi and Valli. Bohdi’s in the air, zipping up into the rafters on some vines, and before she can think, he’s swinging his boot at Larson’s head—but just misses as Larson is yanked backward by Gerðr.
Larson bends down, and Gerðr goes hurtling over his back onto the floor a moment later. His eyes immediately widen, like he doesn’t expect to see her there … He stumbles backward, jaw sagging, and Amy realizes he probably threw her on instinct. The heat on her back and side make Amy turn—the wood in and beside the fireplace is on fire. She grabs a spare Kevlar vest and throws it over the loose flame, stomping out sparks that are edging toward the gear and the walls.
When she turns around a few seconds later, Larson is still staring speechlessly down at Gerðr, whose cap has fallen off. Valli, Nari, Steve and Bohdi are staring at her, too. Bohdi drops down from the vines, takes a step toward the Frost Giantess, and then spins around so he’s facing Amy. His eyes are wide, his skin is flushed, and he ducks his head like he’s ashamed. Covering his eyes, Steve turns to the wall. Sigyn grabs Nari and Valli by their collars. “Mother!” they shout in unison, but don’t fight too much when she hauls them around. Beatrice scampers down to the floor and retrieves Gerðr’s cap. Handing it to the Frost Giantess, Amy’s grandmother says, “Here you go, dear.”
Taking the cap, Gerðr sits up. In her own language she says, “This is exactly what Odin wants, Robert! He wants you to fight among yourselves. It’s what he’s been doing to my people for over a thousand years!”
Bohdi lifts his head and mouths the words, Is it safe yet?
Amy nods, stamping out some more sparks. Bohdi turns slowly around. Steve has already turned around. His chin is dipped, and he’s glaring at Amy.
Gerðr tries to stand and then winces. Larson falls to his knees beside her. “You’re hurt. I’m sorry. I didn’t … I
just reacted ...”
“I will be fine,” Gerðr says. Larson reaches toward her and she flinches. He draws back, like he’s been struck, his face so pained that Amy feels sorry for him.
Rubbing her leg, Gerðr looks up at Amy. “Tell them, Dr. Lewis, tell them about the fire … the fire that happened here.”
Amy looks at the floor, realizing what she means. “Loki wasn’t here during the fire. He went home and told Odin how Gullveig was getting human tech … he lied a little bit. He told Odin that Gullveig had mastered the gift of sight, not that she had a magic mirror. Odin told Loki he was right, that Gullveig had done no wrong, and in fact she had shown quite a bit of ingenuity and cleverness. He sent messengers to the Iron Wood to invite her to come live in Asgard, and partake in Idunn’s apples, to become immortal … of course she refused ...”
x x x x
“Odin is lying!” Sigyn says, pacing Hoenir’s living room. “I don’t trust him. Gullveig shouldn’t either.” Stopping in front of Loki, she raises her chin. “And neither should you.”
She is so pretty when she’s mad. “You’re getting hysterical,” Loki says. He reaches out to take her chin in his hands.
Sigyn smacks his hand away. “No, I’m not.”
She wipes her eyes and spins on her heels. “Where are Nari and Valli?” she strides from the room through a new door. Loki follows and finds himself in a long hallway he’s never seen before. It has twelve doors, all shut. Rolling his eyes, he leaves Hoenir’s home.
A few days later, he is in the council chambers of the Diar, Odin’s council, when a messenger delivers a scroll to Odin. Odin scowls down at it and then passes it to one of the council members. The man reads the scroll aloud. “During the feast of Midwinter, one of the tribes, a supposed ally and a guest at Gullveig’s Keep, set the place ablaze. It has been burned to the ground.”
“What?” says Loki. Until that point he had been slouching in his chair, fiddling beneath the table with a device Thor had picked up in Midgard’s Pacific Islands—a yo-yo. “What of Gullveig?”
The Diar member blinks at the scroll. “She is dead.”
Odin sighs. “She should have accepted my offer of immortality and come here. The Iron Wood is a savage place of violent people; they can’t be trusted.”
“Burnt to the ground?” Loki says, still in shock.
The council member hands him the scroll. On it is an illustration drawn in multicolored inks. It depicts a smoldering, treeless plain, a blue ocean barely visible in the background. As Loki’s eyes run over it, the Diar member says, “If the trees were still there, the artist never would have been able to sketch such an accurate picture.” Loki doesn’t say that humans of Midgard are capable of such illustrations without magic; he just stands up from the table and strides from the room.
He doesn’t go to the main World Gate—he goes to the same lesser known one he had taken with Thor. He arrives at the shores of Lake Balstead in the depths of winter, in snow so deep it reaches beyond his head. He almost cannot walk through, but he does. And then he closes his eyes and envisions the smokey plain—he pushes through the snow, and into the In Between, the space beyond the space and time, the nothing.
x x x x
“Why couldn’t he just walk directly from Asgard to Gullveig’s Keep through the In Between?” Bohdi says.
He feels all eyes on him. He shrugs. “It would have been faster.” Steve glares, Larson rolls his eyes.
Tapping her lips with a finger, Amy looks to the side. “Walking the In Between is only an intra-realm thing. If I remember Loki’s readings on the subject correctly, there is some disagreement about why that is. One school of thought is that the In Between is just sort of like a temporary World Gate, but more fragile ... and gravity is a female dragon in heat that pins you with a jagged fore claw to the ground … err … planet … you’re on.”
Bohdi tilts his head. “Well, gravity does do a number on light and time. You have time dilation … and the effect gravitons have on photons ...”
Amy looks toward the rafters. “There is another theory though—”
“Please make them stop,” whispers Valli.
“The fire, Dr. Lewis,” growls Steve.
Amy gulps. “Oh, right.”
Bohdi scowls, frustrated by what is obviously the more important mystery.
x x x x
Cold more bitter than the snow overtakes Loki, but he walks out of the In Between a moment later and on to the remains of Gullveig’s Keep. The ground groans as he walks, and snake-like roots whip up from the ground and wrap around his boots. Gasping, he stumbles ahead; the roots weaken almost at once. The trip from Asgard to Jotunheim, and then to the Keep, has left him magically drained and uninteresting. But roots continue to snap and writhe in the space he just emerged from.
Wrapping his thin cloak around him, Loki stumbles over the snow-swept plain. It’s dark; the only remnant of the lamps are blackened metal posts with shattered glass globes. The cathedral has been burnt to the foundations, as have all the other structures. The din of blacksmiths is gone, replaced by the sound of the wind and of the raucous rawking of hundreds of ravens. He stumbles over to a place where the snow is black with the birds and red with the bodies of Frost Giants. The bodies have been hacked by beaks or weapons to the point where they are unrecognizable, but he can see there are men, women, and children among them.
x x x x
Amy’s breath catches. She can’t tell the people around her that when Loki had looked at the charred bodies in the snow how his mind had been flooded with images of Gullveig, beneath him in her bed, her face lit by the soft glow of the lamps looking so much like his Aggie, his skin thrumming everywhere their bodies touched.
Amy’s mind swims with memories. She feels Loki’s gut constrict as he stood there swaying in the wind, gazing at the dead, thinking of how hard he’d had to work to seduce Gullveig—harder than if she’d been a blushing virgin. The Frost Giantess had been so sure that he could not possibly be attracted to her, with her gray hair and wrinkles; she had been certain he was playing some game instead.
And maybe it was a game—one he played with himself to make believe he wasn’t still in love with Sigyn. Amy swallows. Or to make believe he could still have a bit of Aggie.
… or maybe Loki was a little in love with Gullveig. Not for her beauty, or even her magic, but everything she’d done for the Iron Wood. She had tenacity that he did not. Amy thinks on some level he knew it; he almost felt if he could be with her, some of her strength would be his. In the myths Loki swallowed Gullveig’s heart. But maybe that was a metaphor for love?
“Dr. Lewis?” Steve says.
Amy lifts her head. Bohdi and Beatrice are looking at her with concern. Larson’s eyes are boring into her own. She can see his the muscles in his jaw clench and unclench.
“Go on,” Gerðr says. “Tell the story. What Loki found.”
At Gerðr’s words, Larson’s frame relaxes, and he looks away from Amy.
Amy clears her throat. “So he’s standing there. He’s really tired … and he needs food … and he wants to go home. But then he sees two ravens battling a slender root for something.”
x x x x
Loki staggers over to the pair of birds. One is attacking the root with its beak. The other bird is yanking on the prize. Loki’s eyes go wide at the sight of what it is they are fighting for. It is an apple core. And if the roots want it, there can be only one reason. Loki staggers over fast and yanks the apple from the root’s grasp. He doesn’t have to taste it to feel that it is one of Idunn’s. He stares at the fruit, its pearly crisp flesh now brown and frozen solid.
Odin said Gullveig had rejected Idunn’s apples and Asgard … then who has eaten it? Not the birds—there are a few pecks, but the teeth marks are obviously hominid. Not the messengers who bore it; they would have returned the precious fruit to Odin to use as a bribe for someone else. No, they delivered their bribe to someone here, and after receiving the bribe, that pers
on set the city on fire. He looks out across the plain of blackened trees, blood, and trampled snow. His breathing becomes ragged.
His hand tightens on the fruit. He bows his head and screams. Ravens shriek, roots whip around his ankles and wrists. It’s only when he lifts his head that he realizes he has set the birds on fire.
x x x x
Amy sits on the floor, her back to the now-stoked hearth. She stares at the white boots she wears. “Loki went back to Asgard and confronted Odin, and asked if he’d bribed one of the ‘friendly’ tribes to attack from within the Keep.” She swallows. “At that time, this place was impenetrable from without.”
She looks up at Gerðr. “You were there.” The Frost Giantess had been in a full veil, petitioning the Allfather for annulment of her marriage when Loki burst in. He’d been so angry, he hadn’t used the opportunity to flirt with her.
Gerðr nods.
Amy sighs. “Loki can sense lies. Odin couldn’t say outright that he’d bribed a rival—Loki would have sensed it.”
Gerðr’s lip turns up. “Instead, the Allfather made wild hypotheses that even I could sense were off. And defamed Gullveig’s character …”
Amy swallows, remembering Odin’s words to Loki. Why does this mean so much to you? Don’t tell me you fucked the old hag …
Amy looks to the fire in the hearth, the words stinging. She’s not sure if she feels pain for Loki or Gullveig, or both.
“Odin will use the same ploy on us,” says Gerðr softly in her own language, bringing Amy back to the present. “He will try to make us fight among ourselves.”
Larson shakes his head. “That may be so … but what Dr. Lewis did was wrong. I don’t know if I can trust her.”
Gerðr turns toward him and winces slightly as she does. Larson ducks his eyes. “Robert,” the Frost Giantess says in her own language, “I have suffered as much as anyone for my magical gift. Except for the time I resided in my father’s house, when I served for King Utgard, and when I resided at the FBI’s headquarters in Chicago, I have been a prisoner of my magic. I … even among your kind … it is used as an excuse …”
There is an uncomfortable silence in the room, and Amy wants to rush over and hug Gerðr.