Freya

by Matthew Laurence

  As I scan the cafeteria, looking for a place to sit, an odd feeling settles into my stomach. I can’t say I’ve experienced this before, but from everything I’ve seen on TV, it’s a high school classic: social anxiety. Every table is packed with cliques. I see research specialists and doctors chatting away, trying not to stain their lab coats. There are off-duty guards at one table, men in business suits at another. A few Greek gods laugh and shout greetings as Dionysus walks over, scooting chairs around and clearing room for him. He’s grinning like an idiot as they clap him on the back and scramble to catch up on old times, treating him like he’s some returning prom king at their ten-year reunion.

  Is this really happening? Have I been kidnapped and placed in some deviant Saved by the Bell remake starring gods and mercenaries? This is incredibly strange and off-putting. These gods are born troublemakers, prone to displays of arrogance and egotism that would take your breath away, and now they’re acting like frat boys at a cookout? Something’s not right. I crane my neck around, looking for other places to sit. Most of the deities seem to keep to themselves, organized by pantheon, and I don’t see anyone from mine. There are a few Egyptian gods—I recognize Bast—in one corner, and I think that pack of rough customers a few tables away are from the Tuatha Dé Danann, of Ireland. Native American nature spirits chat amiably next to Slavic deities, and—oh wait, is that a group of Incan or Mayan gods? I’ve never been very good at keeping up with my kin south of the Tropic of Cancer.

  Finally, I spot someone sitting alone in a far corner. I dash over, trying not to look too desperate. “Excuse me,” I say, feeling surprisingly apprehensive. “Do you mind if I join you?”

  The woman, another researcher if her lab coat is any indication, looks up. Her green eyes widen with recognition, and her mouth drops open; it’s Samantha Drass, the bespectacled girl who oversaw my admission. “Well, um…” she murmurs, looking perplexed. “Freya, right? Hi.”

  “Hi, Samantha,” I say cheerfully, nodding. “You can call me Sara, if you like. Is it okay if I eat with you?” I hold up my tray and give it a wiggle.

  She frowns. “I’m sorry, but you do know I’m not a god, right?”

  Now it’s my turn to frown. “Yeah,” I say after a moment. “So?”

  Her frown vanishes, and she looks pleasantly surprised. “Oh, I thought—um, I mean, certainly. Company is always appreciated,” she says at once.

  I grin, set down my tray, and sit across from her. For a minute, I busy myself with my meal, cutting apart the lamb and popping a few tender morsels into my mouth. Then I catch Samantha watching with a vaguely envious expression and pause. “Would you like some?” I ask, gesturing at my plate. “It’s delicious.”

  “Oh, no, I couldn’t,” she says, reddening. I notice her own plate is occupied by salad and a baked potato.

  I sigh. “Yes, you can. I don’t care about the whole gods-are-better-than-you thing they’ve got going on here. Now, try some lamb. Or maybe the gnocchi?”

  She hesitates but doesn’t say anything one way or another, so I push the tray a little closer. “Go on, take something, already,” I say, starting to feel exasperated.

  Her eyes dart around as if she’s about to do something very naughty, then she shrugs and reaches over to spear a lump of gnocchi with her fork. “Oh,” she says after popping it into her mouth. “That’s perfect.”

  “Not so bad?” I ask, returning to my meal.

  “Not in the least,” she says. “But we’re not supposed to share, you know.”

  “Yeah, I figured. It’s fun to do something we’re not supposed to do every now and then, isn’t it?” I ask with a smirk.

  She says nothing, but the little smile on her lips tells me she’s not completely hopeless. We pass the next few minutes in silence, enjoying our respective meals. I’m aware of little glances being shot my way from other tables, gods and mortals alike apparently very interested in the two of us. This attention can’t honestly be just for me, can it? I might be a god, but something tells me that doesn’t quite have the same pull around here. Humbling as it may be to admit, I think this interest probably has more to do with the lady I’ve decided to join than my own unique nature. On that note, I think I ought to learn a little more about my lonely companion.

  “Why don’t you eat with anyone else?” I ask. Okay, so subtlety isn’t my strong suit.

  Samantha sighs and looks away, setting down her fork. She’s silent for so long I’m worried I’ve offended her, but then she speaks at last, a tone of resignation in her voice. “It’s my father.”

  “Why would—”

  “They’re all afraid of him, so they’re afraid of me,” she says, still looking away.

  “Okay. Who is he?” She stops again, and I can tell exactly why she doesn’t want to say. “I’m not going to scamper off when I find out you’re related to the Big Bad Wolf, Samantha,” I say, rolling my eyes.

  “Sorry,” she says with a halfhearted laugh. “But when it happens every time, you get a little discouraged.”

  “Spill.”

  “Okay, okay.” She draws herself back and looks at me with those pale green eyes of hers, and in that moment, before she even opens her mouth to say it, I know exactly who her father is. “He’s Gideon Drass, chief executive and head of Finemdi Corporation,” she mumbles sadly.

  “Oh, him,” I say nonchalantly. The man in the corridor, giving Garen marching orders—they have the same eyes. Well, well. Now I know who I’ve dedicated myself to murdering. “We’ve met.”

  Her eyes bulge. “What?”

  “So that’s it?” I say, ignoring the question. “That’s why you have to play sad, little loner in the corner? I mean, my dad’s the wind and the sea, but I still get to eat dinner with friends.”

  She cracks a genuine smile at that, and I give myself a mental pat on the back. “He’s very protective of me,” she says in a small voice. “He doesn’t trust people, especially gods. So when he finds out I’m spending time with someone, well, he never says anything to me, but all of a sudden they’ll just … stop wanting to be friends.”

  “Not right, Samantha,” I say. “Well, I’m not going anywhere.”

  She gives me one of those “whatever you say” looks in response, so I decide to let the subject drop. “Want to try some caviar?” I ask after a moment, now determined to become this girl’s friend, if only to rub her dad’s face in it. For a brief moment, I wonder how many of my decisions are motivated purely by spite. I decide not to pursue the thought any further.

  She makes a face. “Ugh, too salty.”

  “Suit yourself,” I say, scooping some onto a round of bread and munching happily.

  After another minute or two, there’s a bit of movement nearby and a dark-skinned woman detaches herself from her group and walks over. She’s a little heavier than me, but those extra pounds are in all the right places, making her attractively curvaceous. Her face is broad, with wide features that strike me as both beautiful and motherly. Her glorious black hair falls to her waist, twinkling like blown glass, and her eyes blaze like the surface of the sun, glowing orbs of radiant inner fire.

  “Hello,” she says to me in deep, accented English. I can’t help noticing she ignores Samantha entirely. “You are a new god, aren’t you?”

  “That, or I’m trying to make these fashionable for everyone,” I say, gesturing at my scrubs.

  “Uh, yes. Well, I’d like to welcome you to Impulse,” she says, spreading her arms. “I am Pele, goddess of fire, volcanoes, and dance.”

  I nod at her. Normally, I’d stand, maybe offer a hand, but I don’t like how she’s giving my new friend the cold shoulder. “Freya. Love, beauty, and war.” I turn to wink at Samantha. “You can still call me Sara, though,” I say to her.

  She smiles while Pele frowns. “It’s nice to meet you, Freya,” the Hawaiian goddess says. The way she responds makes me feel like she may have already known who I am, and her next words confirm it. “You’re the first Norse god we�
��ve seen here, and I wanted to let you know you’re welcome to sit at our table, if you’d like.”

  She turns, holding out her hand to indicate a pair of goddesses looking at us from about twenty feet away. The two are both dark-skinned and majestic. One of them, a young girl who looks very similar to Pele but with cooler, more natural features, waves. Her hair twists around her arm as she raises it, seeming caught in a perpetual breeze. All three of them are dressed in loose, brightly colored, billowy dresses.

  “Well, that’s great!” I say, glancing at Samantha, who looks miserable. “We’ll be right over—I mean, my friend can come, too, right?” I already know the answer, but I’d like to make this uncomfortable.

  “Oh,” Pele says, her scorching gaze leaving me to glance at Samantha. “Um, it’s just—we’d like to be able to, but…”

  “It’s okay, Freya,” Samantha says softly. “You go ahead.”

  “Oh, this is ridiculous,” I say. “What could her father possibly have done to make you all so afraid of her?”

  “Please, I don’t—” Samantha begins to say.

  Pele grimaces, then leans down and lowers her voice to a whisper. “We all liked Samantha, my sisters and I, but when Mr. Drass found out, he—he sent one of us to another facility.”

  “Kapo,” Samantha says, nodding.

  “We miss her terribly, and he’ll find some way to hurt you, too, so I just wanted to … you know,” she says, a pleading look in her eyes.

  I bite my lip, looking between Pele and Samantha until the latter seems to make some internal decision, snatches up her tray, and begins moving to the drop-off area by the exits. “It’s okay,” she says as she goes. “I’m finished anyway.”

  She marches away, head down, and I look back at Pele, who shrugs. “Fathers, eh?” she says softly.

  We both turn to watch Samantha practically throw her tray—still mostly full—onto the drop-off shelf and then dart out of the room. I can feel the hurt and rejection spiraling out of her. “Yeah. Fathers,” I mutter, picking up my own tray and going to join Pele and her sisters.

  Finemdi: dedicated to perverting the very nature of divinity, to kidnapping the gods of the world, and to commanding us like trained attack dogs, all on the orders of a man who’s made a recluse of his own daughter.

  I am going to burn this place to the ground.

  9

  THICK AS THIEVES

  Pele and her sisters aren’t bad people. They’re just terrified. As I eat dinner and chat with them, I find they don’t particularly like Finemdi or their overseers any more than I do—they just have a lot more to lose.

  “Most of our family is spread across their bases,” Hi‘iaka (the girl with the eternally windblown hair) says, gesturing with a piece of asparagus on her fork. “We don’t know how many facilities exist, but they have at least four in the United States, and several overseas.”

  “We cooperate because, well, what choice do we have?” Nāmaka, the third sister, says, pushing her food around. Her skin shimmers faintly when I’m not looking directly at it, as if she were part liquid, and her eyes are aquamarine spheres of rippling ocean water. “It’s not like we’re actually happy here—we want to go back to our islands, to feel the sun through green leaves and wet sand between our toes.”

  “I miss the sea breeze on my face,” Hi‘iaka says, closing her eyes.

  “Warm lava pools, the flash of lightning over a caldera…” Pele murmurs, lost in memory alongside her siblings.

  “What about the other gods?” I ask, trying to snap them out of their shared reverie. They’re nice enough but also quite erratic and elemental. I’m vaguely reminded of conversations with my father. Like him, these gods are much closer to nature than I am, and easily distracted because of it. Of course, that’s just how it seems to me—I suppose one could also say they’re not swept up in the worries of the modern world, that they find the important things in life to be in the grass and skies, the waves and sand. For the briefest moment, I stop to consider if I should perhaps take a lesson from these ladies and halt my destructive course. Finemdi doesn’t have to be my responsibility. I’ll still be around long after its leaders’ bones have turned to dust, after all.

  Then the battle-maiden in my soul snaps her head up, eyes flashing, and I feel the heat of her disgust as she reminds me what they’re trying to do to me and my kin. Sure, I don’t have to lift a finger. But deep down in the pits of my mind, past the homes of love and beauty, the sanctuaries of fertility and magic, there’s an old garrison where a brutal piece of me lies in wait. Decked out in armor and spattered with blood, teeth bared in a rictus, she sharpens her weapons and prepares for the day I need her to unleash the rage of the heavens.

  They must die.

  “Hmm?” Pele asks dreamily.

  “The other gods,” I repeat. “Do they hate Finemdi, too?”

  “Varies, really,” Nāmaka says, drawing absentmindedly on the table with lines of water. The stuff just seems to pool on the surface of her skin, though her bright blue dress is completely dry. “Some, like us, have every reason to detest them. We were never meant to be kept indoors, or, worse, away from our family. But take the Greeks,” she says, pointing at their table with one soggy digit.

  “Please!” Hi‘iaka barks, giggling.

  Nāmaka rolls her eyes. “They love it here. The staff fawns over them, their power swells, and they get to pretend this is their new Olympus.”

  “I hear the suits have Hephaestus making weapons and mystic baubles for them in New York,” Pele says, rejoining the conversation.

  Nāmaka nods. “They’re all over the place, doing all sorts of things for Finemdi.”

  “Who’s the one you came in with?” Pele asks. “The fancy guy.”

  “Ugh, him,” I say. “Dionysus. Scumbag.”

  “Ooh, tell,” Hi‘iaka says, scooting her chair closer and leaning in.

  I see the gleam in her stormy, typhoon eyes, and recognize the primal need for gossip clawing its way to the surface. Nature deity or not, sometimes you just want to hear some good dirt. “You’ll love this,” I say in a conspiratorial tone. I tell them all about Dionysus, and it’s great. It makes me realize how much I missed having girlfriends to talk to. They gasp at all the right moments, grin as I describe tricking Dionysus to go after Garen, become deadly serious as I talk about the attack in Disney’s tunnels, and clap and laugh as I tell them about Nathan’s intervention.

  “And he looks so cute, too,” Hi‘iaka says, giving him a baleful stare. She turns back to me. “Well, we’ll make certain all the other goddesses know he’s a pig, too.”

  “If only Kapo were here,” Pele says wistfully. “She’d have really given him a surprise.”

  “Oooh, can you imagine?” Hi‘iaka says, a naughty look on her face.

  Nāmaka sighs. “I really do miss her,” she mumbles.

  That seems to sober things up, so even though I’m immensely curious about what they’re referring to with Kapo, I decide to change the subject and look it up on my Mim later. “So what do they have you do here?” I ask.

  They exchange looks. Pele turns to me first and says, “Most of the time, it’s nothing. Every now and then, they’ll have an odd job for us, but they’re always little things, you know? Like they don’t want us getting bored or thinking they’ve forgotten about us.”

  “Why? I mean, you control volcanoes, right? That sounds pretty powerful.”

  Pele shrugs. “Try to think of how often you come across a problem and say to yourself, ‘I’ve got the perfect solution! A volcano!’”

  I pause. “All right, you have me there. Still, though—I’m sure that’s not your only trick. And your sisters … winds and waves, right?” The other two women nod. “So why are they ignoring you?”

  Nāmaka shakes her head, sending water droplets flying. “They’re not really ignoring us, Freya. They’re just trying to keep us in check. Most of what we do is already covered by other gods they trust more. That, and there’s
Ka.”

  “Ka?”

  “As in ‘boom,’” Hi‘iaka says with a wan smile.

  “His full name is Ka-poho-i-kahi-ola,” Nāmaka says. “He’s the god of explosions.”

  “Explosions?” I repeat. Then it hits me. “Wait, just explosions?”

  Pele nods. “He’s our brother. Was never incredibly powerful—not like us, at least—but that was before Finemdi.”

  “They focused a lot of belief into him, made him incredibly strong and incredibly good at the one thing he’s supposed to oversee,” Nāmaka says. “Which basically means he’s a walking arsenal now.”

  “Want something destroyed in a big pillar of fire?” Pele asks, balling her hands into fists and then shooting out her fingers. “Maybe a mountain blasted in half? Makes demolition a snap.”

  “Call our brother,” Hi‘iaka says. “He’s their living weapon, so we sit around just in case he snaps and decides to blast a facility off the map.”

  Pele nods. “That’s why our whole family is scattered across the world. So he can’t blow us out all at once.”

  “Eesh,” I murmur, understanding completely. When gods have many concepts in their portfolios, it tends to indicate that they’re more powerful; such diversity is usually a sign they have more worshippers who look to them for help with more things. Every now and then, you’ll get a god who’s focused on something very specific, yet still wields a lot of power (think Helios, the Grecian god of the sun, for example). More often, though, these specialized deities are weaker. One with a specialization as obscure as, say, explosions would probably be very weak. In yet another fine example of deific meddling, however, Finemdi has turned the tables with this Hawaiian god, granting him immense power within a very specific area. I can only guess at the results, but I’m sure they’re terrifying. So bad, in fact, that Finemdi’s gone to the trouble of capturing an entire pantheon of gods just to keep him in line. It worries me for an entirely different reason as well, because it’s probably just the tip of the iceberg. Who knows what other celestial atrocities they’ve committed?