by Mur Lafferty
Izanagi was another god - Japanese - whose beloved wife had died and who couldn’t go on without her. Izanagi and his goddess wife, Izanami, had created the world, and then she died in childbirth. That seemed odd; she could create islands and gods, but a baby’s birth is deadly?
Oh. More knowledge came through; her baby had been a god of fire. Ow. That made more sense.
Like Orpheus, Izanagi went to the land of the dead to coax Izanami’s return. Like Orpheus, he fucked up - his dead wife was well along the way of decomposition and begged him not to look at her. He did. She got pissed and chased him out of the underworld.
Izanagi was so heartbroken because of his loss that he killed his newborn son in retribution. I wondered what happened to that baby and what afterlife it could be residing in. Odin didn’t know that part.
Lost in thought, I stumbled when the skiff finally hit the beginning of the “road” to Ragnarök. Kate and I jumped off and she headed for the sandy area of the roundabout.
“Lunch break?” she asked.
I nodded and accepted the sandwich she handed me. We ate in silence as I stared into the many paths ahead of me. I closed my eyes, trying not to think of gods, lost loves, and dead children.
“Daniel,” Kate said, rousing me. I opened my eyes and she pointed.
Two old men dressed in shabby clothing and carrying walking sticks wandered down the road, waving to us. They grinned, their eyes wide in either madness or excitement. They seemed familiar, but I couldn’t place them.
“Ho!” one shouted.
“Daniel! Kate! Liberators! So good to see you again!” One of them, the one with the long beard, grabbed my hand and shook it. The other tried to wring Kate’s hand off at the wrist, he was so excited to meet her.
Kate looked at me, bemused.
“I don’t think we’ve met,” she said hesitantly.
“Might you have something to drink? We’re terribly thirsty,” the one holding Kate’s hand said, eyeing her backpack. She pulled out a canteen and handed it to him.
“You don’t remember us!” the bearded one said.
“Of course they don’t,” said the other. “No one remembers us. It was in the rules.”
“Oh. But I thought they would… Ah well. Never mind. I am Isaac. That is my companion, Gigantus, also known as Mr. Big. We hoped we would find you before the end.”
Isaac slurped at my canteen, water dribbling down his beard. “Heavenly. So wonderful.”
It sounded familiar, but still I couldn’t grasp the names. “Were you looking for us?” I asked as Isaac passed the canteen to Mr. Big.
“We have a message for you,” Isaac said, wiping his mouth with his dirty sleeve. “We knew of your coming; it was foretold. Only a handful of prophets knew about you, but we have known of you since your birth.”
“You’re prophets?” I asked.
Mr. Big drank deeply without spilling anything. When he was done, he said, “You don’t live as long as we did without learning a thing or two about the way the world works. We are prophets now, yes, but only became so after some years of wandering.”
Isaac laughed. “Oh, but we had fun! And now we get to rest too. Just one more thing to do; one more message to deliver.”
He lowered his voice, then, and leaned forward. “The big guy? He’s using you, you know.” He waved his fingers and hummed and then I realized he was acting like he had a puppet hanging from his fingers. “You dance for Him like little puppets.”
“That’s the secret?” I asked, laughing. “I knew that. He sent us on the mission.”
“But do you know why? Do you know what’s happening now, at the time all the worlds end?”
“He’s losing souls,” Kate said.
Isaac scoffed. “And?”
Kate and I looked at each other and I shrugged. “Uh, and He’s mad about it? Too busy to look for them Himself? Got too many meetings?”
“He’s throwing down the gauntlet,” Mr. Big said. “Armageddon, Ragnarök; all of the end battles force Him to sort things out. But He can’t do everything.”
I blinked at them. “I thought gods were all-powerful.”
They both laughed. “There are still rules by which they must abide,” Mr. Big said. “The worst part about YHWH is that He encompasses all gods. The Greeks have their harvest goddess and their trickster god and their goddess of the moon and the god of war and so on. YHWH must be all of these. So He’s invoked during war and when people want peace, rain, sun, whatever, but He is also the trickster, the storm god, the fire god, the god of anger, and the god of death. He strikes a careful balance. He must have others help Him do His work. Others such as you, the heralds for the end times. Others such as us: well-punished yes, these two thousand or so years, but we chronicled human life past the birth of his son.”
I smacked my forehead. “Of course, you’re the wandering Jew and the Roman who struck Christ!”
They both bowed.
“But if you’re here, then that means…” Kate trailed off.
“That the end times have come to Earth, yes,” Isaac said, his eyes still sparkling. “Our penance is over. We have been forgiven.”
“Excellent—that means we’re done!” I cried, springing to my feet.
“Oh, thank goodness,” Kate said, sighing.
Mr. Big grabbed my sleeve with a tight grip, his face stone serious. “Don’t be a fool. Your job is more important now than ever.”
“Think, boy,” Isaac said. “Why do you think He chose you? He is missing souls here.”
Missing souls. In particular, one missing soul.
Shit.
“If you are here, then the world is coming to an end, right?” Kate asked.
They nodded.
“So traffic is going to start getting pretty busy around here,” she said.
“It’s going to take some sorting out. He’s going to lose more before it’s over with,” Isaac said, snagging my canteen from where I had dropped it.
“How is He losing them?” I asked.
“YHWH is a god of order. A god of careful balance. Agents of Chaos are the ones disrupting things,” Isaac said.
“Chaos? Like the devil?” Kate asked.
Mr. Big snorted. “Lucifer desires order as much as YHWH does. He has to process and punish according to the cosmic rules too. No, Chaos is a rogue force, it leaks into the world when there is a weakness or void. As we got closer to the final war, the foundations weakened. Chaos woke up. It started seeping through.”
“It’s your job to fix things,” Mr. Big said.
I swore then, blasphemed, and caused even those who had beaten up Jesus to raise their eyebrows.
“Where do we go now, then?” Kate asked me.
I thought for a moment. Izanagi’s story still gnawed at me, and I didn’t know why. “Shinto Heaven,” I said finally.
“It is as good a place as any. You’ll go where you’re meant to,” Isaac said, shrugging.
“Then let’s go,” Kate said, then, to the men who had wandered for millennia, “I hope you get some real sleep soon.”
Mr. Big saluted us. “We plan to. Good luck with your mission.”
Isaac slurped from the canteen. How thirsty was he, anyway? He waved at us, soaking the front of his robe.
Now that we had some idea of where we wanted to go, Kate and I had no problem locating the dirt road to the Japanese afterlife.
“Isn’t it weird that Isaac said He was using us? Do you feel like you’re being used?” Kate asked.
“Not really,” I said. “I feel like He needed a job done and He asked me to do it. I don’t think He’s got Megan locked up somewhere as a hostage or anything. Just that He knew I’d be… very motivated.”
“Right,” she said. “Well, at least we’re not alone, right?”
I thought of the yellow strip of cloth she’d knitted, and what the Fates would say if they could have read those stitches.
I smiled back at her and said, “No, we’re not alone.”<
br />
CHAPTER TWELVE
“Something has been bothering me,” Kate said as we walked through the bamboo forest.
“Just one thing?”
“Well, every religion has its ‘how the world got here’ stories. We’re discovering that all the gods seem to be real - but how can all those myths be true? You’ve got all that god knowledge now; do you know?”
I laughed. “Yeah, when you were a kid in church, you’d ask your minister all those question: about God and floods, or why your neighbor died of cancer, or why people who were mean got to be so rich while your dad, who was nice most of the time, couldn’t pay all the bills every month, and they’d answer some shit about ‘mysterious ways.’”
She rolled her eyes. “Tell me about it.”
“Well, now I’m just realizing, as I go through Odin’s knowledge, they were right. How could all of these gods create the world, each bleeding or shitting or birthing out land and sea? Well. They just did.”
She stared at me.
Her look was so incredulous that I laughed. “Man, I’d make a lousy dad. Okay, look. Here’s how I am seeing it: you and me, we’re walking and talking and meeting gods and witnessing battles and the end of the world and all this crazy shit, and we’re dead. Since that’s sunk in to me, I’m pretty much accepting anything.”
“You’re right,” she said, shrugging. “I am still trying to deal with it all, I guess. Daniel, we saw Ragnarök.”
“Of course, that does mean the world is ending,” I said, shivering. I wondered how it was going down back on Earth. My backpack shifted a bit. I hadn’t been as comfortable opening it lately since Loki had jumped out of it, but I peeked inside anyway.
A newspaper. Thanks, God.
THE END OF THE WORLD? screamed the headline. Photographs of mushroom clouds dominated the front page. It seems that North Korea, India, Pakistan, Iran, Russia, the US, and China had all launched missiles at each other. There were no notes on the rapture, of people being lifted bodily into the air by the Almighty – He was too busy supplying me with scissors and newspapers, I guessed – and no notes on who the Antichrist had ended up being. Or who Christ had returned as.
I wondered if He had returned as a Jew or if he had converted to His own religion. The thought made my head spin. I decided I’d ask Him if I ever met Him.
With nuclear war reducing the world to rubble, the newspaper hadn’t bothered to include a Lifestyle or comics section, so I stuffed the newspaper back where I’d found it.
“I seem to remember something about the Shinto afterlife,” Kate said, flipping through a book she’d pulled from her backpack. Mist hung within the trees and an acrid smell entered my nose. I blinked and coughed; it was more than acrid, it overwhelmed me.
“Oh fuck, that’s right. This isn’t mist, it’s wayward souls,” she said, pulling her robe over her mouth and nose. “Don’t breathe in.”
I was about to make a sarcastic retort of how she could have told me that before I’d sniffed the stale air, but I was too busy coughing. I dropped to my knees, scrabbling for my backpack. I pulled out a scarf and wrapped it around my mouth and nose a number of times. Kate followed suit, holding her robe firmly to her face as she searched.
“Uh, what kind of souls?” I became aware of a presence in my mind. This wasn’t Odin, because I hadn’t absorbed his personality, just his knowledge. This was a definite other person; a quiet, pure mind.
Free her.
“What?”
“I didn’t say anything,” Kate said, then she turned white. “Oh, shit.”
The end cannot come without her. She must be freed.
I wanted to ask, “Who?” but I knew already.
“We gotta free her,” I said quietly. “Do you hear him?”
“Wait, what?” Kate asked. “Hear who?”
I looked around. Through the mist I could make out a sheer cliff face stretching up to an indefinite height. A young man sat perched serenely on top of a boulder at the foot of the cliff. He, too, had his nose and mouth covered, and he lifted his hand and waved when he saw us.
“Susanoo,” I said, recognizing him with Odin’s knowledge. “After Izanagi lost his wife, he just started making children out of his bodily fluids. Susanoo was birthed from his nose.”
Kate made a disgusted noise. “He doesn’t look like a god of snot.” She was right; Susanoo was thin and strong, with shrewd eyes and a black beard and ponytail.
He leapt lightly off the boulder as we approached. He was taller than he’d appeared, and now I could see the katana that hung at his side. My heart rate quickened, but instead of fear, I just felt annoyed.
“Harbingers,” he said. “Your coming was-“
“Foretold. Yeah. We get that a lot,” I interrupted. He pursed his lips and slid his katana silently from its sheath.
Runes danced up and down its blade, which glinted silver or black, depending on the angle. Unlike Odin’s shape-shifting scissors, this was truly a sword for a god.
“Then you won’t mind if I dispense with the pleasantries,” he said, and assumed a stance I recognized from countless video games.
“Hell,” Kate said. “People don’t seem to like seeing us anymore, do they?”
“If he says this is pleasant, I’d hate to see him rude,” I said. “I guess it was foretold that you are going to gut us wide open?” I asked him.
He grinned with black teeth. “Most likely. We are to fight. The prophecies are unclear beyond that. I cannot let you move the boulder to free her.”
Kate let out a breath. “Ohhh… Izanami. You’re guarding the door to the underworld. I guess we’re here to open it?”
The voice in my head, soft and high, spoke again. Free her.
“That’s what the voice in my head is telling me,” I said.
“How many people do you have up there?” Kate asked.
“So not the time to start talking about that,” I said.
“This was the sword of the woman you seek to free,” Susanoo said. “It can cut through anything. Wood. Metal. Water. The earth itself. Your very soul.”
“Seriously, water isn’t very hard to cut,” I said lightly, dropping my backpack onto the forest floor. Kate did the same. “You should find another way to describe it that’s more impressive.”
He snorted and spat. “Arm yourself.”
Through the wisdom of Odin I knew how to handle many weapons, in theory. I knew that there was more to fighting than swordplay; there was muscle memory and strength. I did not have muscle memory or strength. I peeked into the backpack; I also had no sword.
I looked at Kate, who sifted through her own backpack. She pulled out a small shield and made a face. “Not too helpful either.”
“How the hell am I supposed to do Your work if You won’t do Your part?” I hissed at the god who wasn’t there.
Free her.
“Give it a rest,” I said, then, to Susanoo, “Our sponsor doesn’t seem to think we need weapons. Either that or He’s playing a little joke on us. Are you going to cut down unarmed enemies?”
He answered me by raising his weapon above his head and shuffling forward, his weight centered low.
“Oh, shit.” I backpedaled. Kate split left and I went right; Susanoo came after me. The first swing came for my neck, but I tripped backward over a bamboo shoot and went sprawling, the blade passing inches from my nose. It sliced through the bamboo like they were imaginary, and the thick trunks fell on top of me.
“Get up, or die with no dignity,” he said, assuming his stance again.
“When did I say dignity was my goal here?” I asked. I lay there for a moment panting, as he was clearly patient enough to wait. The forested area got thicker behind me, where I’d be much safer. In front of me, past the mad god with the sword, was the clearing at the foot of the cliff, and the boulder that held back death, the goddess Izanami.
“Up!” Susanoo repeated.
I wrapped my hand around a slice of bamboo as I got up. I’d just
seen him cut through multiple trees without effort, but it was more of a security blanket; I just felt better with something in my hands. The moment I regained my feet, Susanoo shuffled for me again. If I’d had a moment to think, I probably would have laughed. As powerful as he was, the shuffle step was hardly dignified.
Much like my actions in Elysium, I moved without thinking. I ran to meet him. Muscle memory wasn’t there to fight him, but I knew enough about the katana to know where he would strike, and therefore how and when to react. His attack came low, this time, going for my legs. I leaped over the blade and couldn’t resist whapping the god on the back of the head with my makeshift club.
It barely fazed him. I ran toward the foot of the cliff without looking back. Susanoo laughed, an ugly sound, and followed me. Kate also ran - I had no idea what she had planned, but I could use all the help I could get. He was faster than I was, and I nearly lost my head but I heard the sword whisper through the air and ducked in time. The blade nicked me, however, scraping across the top of my head. Hair fell into my face, followed closely by a thin stream of blood.
I was almost there. I reached the base of the cliff with the massive boulder that blocked the entrance to the Underworld. I put my back against it and faced Susanoo for the last time.
“First blood,” he said, barely panting. “The next time I will not miss.”
I panted much harder, the scarf around my mouth moist and hot from my breath. “I doubt you will,” I agreed.
Kate stood in my peripheral vision, behind Susanoo. She held her small shield like a discus and winged it at the god.
I saw the sword come for me then, judged its arc and its power. It came at an angle, looking to shear both my head and arm from my body. The shield hit the god in the back just as he would have separated my head from my shoulders and as he stumbled forward, the blade buried itself in the boulder behind me, cleaving it in two. Gravel and dust rained down on me as it exploded and terror rushed out.