by C. Gockel
Squeezing her tight, Beatrice said, “Nope, not yet! Come on, I have someone who wants to meet you.”
Amy let her grandmother pull her through the door. She found herself in a workshop that reminded her a little bit of wood shop, drama class, and every biology lab she’d ever been in. There were boxes of nails and needles, huge spindles of thread, bones of all sorts, antlers, various pickled organs and cadavers in jars, and a stuffed jack-a-lope. There was a rolled-up old carpet, a few swords, books, and even a suit of armor. And there was a man she recognized. “Hoenir,” she whispered.
“Oh,” Beatrice said, “you know him?”
Walking over to her, Hoenir tilted his head. “You recognize me?”
“From Loki’s dreams of his past lives,” Amy said.
Hoenir’s eyes widened a fraction, but then dropped to her stomach, bleeding from cuts left from an explosion of glass. “May I fix that for you?”
Amy swallowed. “Please.”
Hoenir let his hands drift over her stomach. There was the briefest flash of warmth, and then all of Amy’s pain was gone.
“I’m going to remove the morphine from your system,” he said softly. “I need your head to be clear.”
Amy nodded, and he touched her back. Amy took a few breaths. Each time her lungs filled, the itchy sensation caused by the drug diminished—and then it was gone.
“Hey? Can you help out a squirrel, too? I got some broken ribs here,” Ratatoskr chirped.
Without a word, Hoenir took Ratatoskr from Amy’s hands. Stroking the little guy’s sides, he kept his eyes on Amy. “I don’t have time for pleasantries,” Hoenir said. “I need to hide Creation from Odin. Odin and I had an agreement: he’d keep his hands off of Earth and in return I’d never tell Loki he is—was—the Destroyer. That agreement is over now. Odin is going to try and take over your world.”
“What do you want from me?” Amy asked.
Hoenir opened his mouth as though about to speak; but then his eyes dropped to Ratatoskr. The squirrel’s nose twitched furiously. “I’m not even here,” he said, putting his tiny paw hands over his eyes.
Lifting an eyebrow, Hoenir gave Ratatoskr’s ears a scratch. “Ratatoskr, you gossip, you need to leave. Even your mistresses can’t know my scheme.”
Clasping his tiny squirrel hands together, Ratatoskr batted his eyelashes at Hoenir. “Oh, come on. You know the ladies are your friends. You’re always welcome to come visit.”
Hoenir handed the squirrel to Beatrice. “Beatrice, take Ratatoskr back to Earth. He’ll find his way home.”
“Oh, rotten nuts and fuckity fuck!” Ratatoskr squeaked, polite demeanor disappearing.
Wrapping the angry squirrel in a handkerchief so he couldn’t scratch or bite her, Beatrice picked up her pink umbrella, tucked it under her arm, and stepped to the door.
“Remember what I told you,” Hoenir said.
“Amy can’t die—and don’t let go of this umbrella,” Beatrice responded over the furious chittering of Ratatoskr. With a nod, she went through the door and was gone.
“What do you want from me?” Amy asked. She was dressed only in a hospital gown, but she wasn’t uncomfortable around Hoenir. Nor was she suspicious; she just couldn’t imagine what she could do for the Creator.
Hoenir’s green eyes had searched her own. “I need to hide Creation, Miss Lewis, some place where Odin will never look, and if he did look, he wouldn’t see it.”
Rush’s voice shatters the memory. “Can someone please explain to me what’s going on?” Amy blinks. She’s not in the hospital gown, she’s in her military gear. She’s surrounded by Rush, an adze, Fenrir, Bjorna, and Gem.
“I’m the Creator,” Amy says. Hoenir made a human the Creator for the same reason Chaos reincarnated as a human—because without magic Odin couldn’t find them. She blinks and remembers the Norns asking her if she’d ever want to be a boy. Her eyes widen and her jaw sags … was that a proposition? And could she do that? She shakes her head quickly to clear that thought. “But you’re not dead?” Amy says to Hoenir in the present.
Hoenir shrugs. “The Creator cannot kill and cannot die. If I had to kill myself to pass off the mantle of Creation … well, it would never work.”
Amy nods mutely.
Hoenir stands up from the chair. His voice drops to almost a whisper. “When I did it you weren’t…”
He doesn’t finish, but Amy understands. She wasn’t pregnant when he handed off the baton of Creation. She shrugs. “Sperm are sneaky bastards,” she whispers.
On the floor, Rush hisses in pain. Amy turns to him in alarm—she’d forgotten about him. Striding over to him, she kneels beside him, and holds out a hand.
“Don’t touch me!” says Rush.
Amy’s hand pauses in midair. Bjorna, standing quietly next to Gem, snarls at the SEAL, “Do you want to bleed to death?”
Beatrice harrumphs. “Good riddance.”
Amy bites her lip. “I can’t kill,” she says, staring at the SEAL.
Rush snorts, and Hoenir says, “No, you cannot.”
Amy looks down at her hands. “But I don’t have to fix everyone either.”
“No,” Hoenir says, “that is up to you.”
Amy looks down at Rush. He’s not meeting her eyes. He doesn’t like her; not because of anything she’s done, just for what she is. He hates women. But he is loyal to the SEALs. He broke off a crossbow arrow at the shaft so he could slither on his belly through the snow to warn them of Tucker’s betrayal.
“I know you don’t like or trust me,” she says quietly.
For the first time he looks up at her.
“But I can fix you,” she says, “and take you to the team, so you can fight with them. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
Rush’s lips part. He lets out a breath. “Yeah,” he whispers.
Beatrice huffs. “While you’re fixing his stitches, why don’t you fix his penis. Turn the damn thing off.”
“Grandma!” Amy says.
Scooting back on his butt, Rush screams, “No!” He looks to Daevas and Hoenir. “Can she do that?”
“I imagine so,” says Daevas.
Hoenir shrugs. “If she thinks it will help you in some way.”
“Would it help him not pretend to graze our rears accidentally?” asks Gem.
“He did that to you, too?” says Amy, her nostrils flaring.
“You touched Amy’s rear?” Beatrice cries, whacking Rush over the head with her umbrella.
“Argh!” he screams.
“Grandma!” shouts Amy.
Beatrice hits him again.
“Stop, Grandma! I need to fix him!” Amy says.
“Not my dick,” says Rush, tightening his legs at the knees, and curling over on himself. “Please, I’d rather be gay!”
“Really?” says Hoenir, sounding curious.
“Yeah,” says Rush. “Just don’t neuter me.”
Amy puts her hands on her hips. “I will not make you gay. You’d be an evil woman-hating gay, not treat women as fellow humans gay!”
Hoenir sniffs. “Oh, no, one of those.” He crosses his arms and glares at Rush.
Rush groans and looks up at Daevas. The adze’s face is completely inscrutable. “Don’t expect sympathy from me.”
Rush falls over on his side. There is sweat on his brow, and he’s still clutching his body in a ball.
Feeling pity, Amy reaches toward him, but he wriggles away like a worm. She sighs. “Rush, I’m not going to fix your penis.”
He actually whimpers.
“Promise,” Amy says.
He doesn’t uncoil but lifts his hands. With Beatrice’s help, Amy unfastens his blood-soaked parka. When she tries to lift his shirt, he hisses in pain. Amy opens her mouth, about to say she has no painkillers, but then catches herself. She slips her hand up beneath his shirt, willing his nerves to be calm as she does. Rush blinks as though confused. She lifts the fabric away entirely, cleans it with a soft damp cloth Hoenir gives her,
and then lays her hand on his stomach again. She can feel the tear in the muscle, fascia, ligaments, and dermis—it’s beyond her power to mend on her own.
“Daevas,” she says, “I need a bullet.”
“No!” shouts Rush.
Barely controlling the urge to roll her eyes, Amy says in her slowest, calmest clinical voice, “I need the bullet as a magical battery.”
Rush is quiet.
Taking the bullet Daevas proffered, Amy feels power thrum through her. Mind clear, feeling like she could run miles, she instead goes to work. Putting her free hand on his stomach, she imagines the battered tissues at the cellular level: mending, whole and free of scars. The world goes silent, time stands still, and she feels a rush of euphoria—like she’s reached a mountain peak, or the end of a marathon. It’s done, she can feel beneath her fingers the blood pumping through formerly-severed capillaries and the gentle hum of life at its most essential level. She sits back on her heels and puts a hand through her hair. She is a little awed at how easy it was. But maybe she shouldn’t be. After four years of undergrad, four years of being at veterinary school, and all the years she spent as a vet tech, she’s actually been practicing for quite some time.
“It looks like you shaved me,” Rush says.
Amy blinks. She had shaved a strip around the arrow wound before the first operation.
Beatrice whacks him in the back of the head with the umbrella. “Say thank you!”
Fenrir whines.
“Grandma!” Amy says. “Hitting him doesn’t help his misogyny!” Climbing to her feet, slipping the bullet into her pocket, Amy says, “I’m sorry, Rush, I’m not wasting magic regrowing your belly fur.”
Rubbing the back of his neck, Rush glares at his navel. “Women are so irrational.”
Gem snorts. “If you want to see irrational, we’ll tell Dr. Lewis’s fiancé that you touched her rear.”
“You’re engaged?” say Hoenir and Mimir.
Rush’s eyes go wide.
Beatrice starts to cackle. “You thought you could get away with accidentally-on-purpose being a lecher, didn’t you?” Gem and Bjorna snort, Cannonball shrieks, and Mimir says, “Oh, my.”
Dropping his head into his hands, Rush mutters, “I’m in hell.”
“No, Bohdi and the team are,” Amy says. “We have to go rescue them!”
Rush scrambles to his feet. “Do you think they’ve made it there yet?”
Amy taps her chin, counting down the hours. “Yes, and they may have already moved on to the next phase.”
“Next phase?” says Hoenir, sounding alarmed.
Amy’s jaw gets tight. “But don’t worry, we’ll catch up with them. Even if we have to go to Asgard!”
“You can’t go to Asgard!” Beatrice says, putting her hand to her mouth.
“Why not?’ says Amy.
Hoenir responds, his voice soft, “Because you can’t die.”
Chapter 32
Bohdi stands on a rocky beach next to their boat and abandoned winter gear. Staring out at the mist-covered water, he puts a hand through his bangs. “We should go back for Thor,” he says.
“We almost died of hypothermia,” Larson snaps. “If it weren’t for magic, we all would be snuggled nose to groin right now trying not to die.”
Bohdi bows his head. It’s true. Their gear isn’t made for the kind of soaking they got.
Larson sighs. “We can’t go back. Gerðr is wiped from opening the gate, and if Sigyn opens it, she’ll be wiped.”
Bohdi swallows. “But Thor is still fighting Jörmungandr.”
“And we can’t help him, and I hate it too. We all hate it,” Larson says.
Bohdi blinks and looks at the SEALs. They nod one by one. There is no lie in Larson’s words, or their expressions, and the honesty makes Bohdi hoist his pack on his back. Something still nags at him, and he can’t put his finger on what it is. Maybe it’s just guilt. He looks to Sigyn, but she won’t meet his gaze.
Doubled over beneath the Harpy wings, Gerðr looks up at Larson. “We have to leave. The iron wood saplings were poisoned by the sea water. Their lives are seeping away quickly. We have no protection from Heimdall’s eyes but the mist.”
Adjusting her pack a few steps away, Sigyn says, “And he knows where to look, so even that isn’t worth much.”
“Alright,” says Larson. “Valli, you know the way?”
“Aye,” says Loki’s son, smiling too wide. “I’ll take point.” With that, he practically skips around the other men. They fall into line behind him, with Larson and Bohdi at the end.
They leave the rocky beach and pass onto muddy ground pocked with waist high grasses. The mist persists. Bohdi can only see a few meters in any direction. The air is not cold, or warm, and there is no wind, but it is humid and it makes their clothing damp and sticky. The muddy ground sucks at their boots, and silence is impossible.
Someone mutters, “I wish this place was filled with fire.”
The tops of the grasses on either side of the team flicker into tiny flames.
“Patel, is that you?” Larson asks.
Bohdi’s jaw sags. Had he? From the front of the line, Valli says, “I’m sorry, that’s me. I’m just so excited.” He bounces on his feet and spins around and begins trudging through the grasses.
Bohdi blinks. Even when he doesn’t cause the fire, he brings it.
“Patel,” Larson says, “Is it just me … or has something about Valli changed?”
Bohdi looks to the man currently on point.
“When I squint, he shimmers like pavement on a hot day.” The lieutenant tilts his head.
Bohdi looks over the shoulders of the team. Valli is definitely shimmering. Bohdi goes cold. “We should have brought Nari,” he says. Amy had said so.
Larson shakes his head and looks like he is about to say something but Berry says, “Shhhh ….” Putting his hand into the air, the stocky warrant officer motions for the team to stop and crouch down in the grass.
Redman lifts his nose to the air. “Is it just me or does anyone else smell meat?”
From the mist comes the sound of mud sucking at boot heels.
“Uh-oh,” Park says.
Valli shouts, “I sense a party.” He grins with all his teeth.
Before anyone can hush him, a deep voice rumbles in heavily accented English, “I for one smell meat.”
“Something fresher than the troll we’re roasting, I’d wager,” says another voice.
A chorus of chuckles echoes around them.
“Show yourselves!” Valli roars, and around the team the grasses leap into flames.
The first voice roars, “You threaten Fire Giants with fire, Asgardian?”
From the mists a hominid figure emerges. Black skinned, with blonde hair, yellow eyes, and a heavy build, he is over seven feet tall and is dressed from head to toe in grayish leather armor. He sweeps through the scattered flames. In one hand he carries a spear. Bohdi gulps. A Fire Giant is coming out of the trees. He and Amy had heard that they’d come to Hel after Thor “revealed” that the “new Loki” was here … but the Fire Giants that Odin’s forces had encountered had firearms, and this man only appears to have a sword and spear. He exhales. Of course, they had been trading with the Dark Elves for military tech. If Freyja has shut down the trade route from Chicago, they would have run out of ammunition fast.
“I am not Asgardian!” Valli shouts, “Odin is my enemy.”
“Don’t come any closer!” says Larson, “or we’ll shoot.”
The Fire Giant thumps his spear on the ground. “There are many more of us, more than you can slay even with your weapons of fire.”
At his words, more Fire Giants emerge from the mist. Bohdi scans them nervously. There are too many of them.
Valli shouts, “Back off, Fire Giants! We are on our way to—”
“Valli!” Sigyn says.
Bohdi’s jaw sags. Valli was just about to say they were going to Asgard.
“On your wa
y to what?” asks the Fire Giant, tilting his head.
Bohdi clears his throat. “Worship at the grave of Loki’s daughter, Helen, who we, human folk, regard as the Goddess of Truth.”
The giant narrows his eyes at Bohdi. “Loki’s daughter … I never met her.”
Bohdi puts his hand to his chest. “Yes, well—”
“But I did meet Loki, once.” The Fire Giant shifts on his feet, his hand going to the sword at his hip. As his hand falls to the pommel, the sword shifts in its scabbard. For the briefest of moments, a light shines from the blade, like a mirror catching sunlight. Bohdi feels the fizzle of magic in the air.
“Sutr,” Sigyn says. “What are you doing here?”
Bohdi blinks. He thinks he remembers Sutr as being the king of the Fire Giants.
Sutr tilts his chin. “Only regrouping.”
Bohdi finds himself pressing a hand beneath his nose to fight the urge to sneeze.
“Awaiting the return of the Destroyer,” says another giant. “He will lead us to victory!”
For a heart-stopping moment, Bohdi is afraid that someone will reveal him. But none of the SEALs, the Asgardians, or Gerðr so much as spits.
“As you can see, besides my son, myself, and Gerðr, there are only humans here,” says Sigyn. “Let us pass, Sutr.”
The Fire Giant’s eyes narrow, he scans the team, and for a moment, Bohdi swears Sutr’s gaze lingers on him.
Beyond the Giant, there is the sound of clanking weapons, people shouting, and a fire crackling. “Very well,” Sutr rumbles, at last. Turning to the other Giants, he barks some orders. They fall back into the mists without a word.
Redman lets out a long breath, but Berry whispers, “That was too easy.”
The sound of a hunting horn rips through the mist in the direction the Fire Giants have gone.
Sigyn’s eyes go wide, and Gerðr says, “That isn’t the sound of a Fire Giant’s horn.”
“Odin has sent his Einherjar,” Sigyn says.
Valli smiles sharkishly, making Bohdi’s skin prickle. “He has sent them through the Main Gate!” Loki’s son snorts. “That is where he expects us to go.” He giggles maniacally. “Come comrades! We must hurry!”