by James Comins
It was a hole in the world. Below them lay the sky. Floating in it were sheaves of glass clouds and the delicate crystalline spiral of the rising sun. Far beneath was the Earth.
“Try not to fall in,” said Talvi.
Binnan Darnan gave him a dubious sideways look. “Why don’t we see Asgard from the ground?” she asked Baldur.
The god leaned down to the hole and pinched the gritty dirt beside it. Pulling hard, he tore the ground away, ripping it like paper to reveal more of the blue sky below. There was no underside to the landscape, just blue. The fractured land slipped back into place like a jigsaw puzzle piece when he let go.
“It’s a way of looking,” he said, and kept walking.
They walked and walked and walked. The cold in Lenna’s legs thawed into a weary ache. She could feel the resonance of Baldur’s plodding footsteps through her boots. Distant ruins and fallen towers wreathed in overgrown vines stood at the far half-circle of the horizon. From the crest of a hill came a piercing glint of reflected light. Baldur pointed at it.
“That’s Gimli,” he said with satisfaction. “It’s been a century since I visited last. Hurry. I want to see my brother again.”
Lenna saw that Gimli was a flat log longhouse. A draping metal pavilion was built above it on stilts. The pavilion was real silver, dented like tin in a few places, but polished, more polished than any of the buildings of Nupsstaður. The roof was swoopily curved like a pagoda and stood on segmented golden pillars. The whole thing looked like a four-poster bed: log sheets, gold bedposts and a silver canopy.
On the turf in front of the longhouse, dimmed by the canopy’s shadow, was a long line of carved and colorfully-painted wooden posts hammered into the ground. The posts had faces. Baldur loped over to them, pumping his four arms excitedly. He waved the girls over to come and see.
“Here’s the face of my father, Odin the Wise,” he announced as they sprinted the field-length over toward him. He pointed to a post sticking nearly vertical out of the topsoil. The tree-trunk-thick post had been carved with the solemn, age-darkened face of a sinister old man. He had one clever, knowing eye and one pinched squinting flat socket, as if he were winking extra hard. Crowsfeet and age lines gave him a veneer of hidden wisdom. The chin was rutted, and a set of folded scars like rumpled blankets were ripped down the oak cheeks. A hat, a real felt traveling hat, had been placed on top of the post. Its top was pointed like a witch’s hat. It was faded blue and bent over at the peak. The face was mournful without being miserable. Beneath the woodgrain, Lenna saw a sly, clever man full of cares. He reminded Lenna of the strange man who had visited her and Momma Joukka Pelata at the big house, that time when Kaldi had served puffin. But that man had been much younger, and he’d had both his eyes.
“At the end of every battle,” Baldur explained, “Odin would send down the Falcuries, his squad of flying warrior women. They’d take the bravest dead warriors up to the great Vall Hall, which used to be ...” Baldur squinted. “Over there, in the big empty spot. See the outline of the foundation? There. And here’s Thor--”
“Thor!” Lenna exclaimed. Thor was famous and cool. She hopped to the next post with the last of her energy and peering at the dopey-looking smile at the bottom of a wide, broad-bearded face. Thor’s wooden face was carved with straight black hair, cut badly, hanging over beady eyes and laugh lines.
“His hammer is holy,” said Baldur. “It’s still around, kept safe in Idavold. It can’t be broken. It’s also a boomerang, but to throw it you have to be as strong as Thor. In the good old days, he’d put on the Corset of Strength--”
“A corset?” laughed Binnan Darnan. “A boy who wore a corset?”
Baldur frowned down at her. “We had to use all the enchanted resources we could find, if we wanted to win the war against the frost giants. Only elves and dwarves know how to infuse magic into inanimate objects, and they hate sharing their handiwork. So if they made us a magic corset, we found someone to wear it.”
“Why not get a girl to wear it?” Binnan Darnan shrugged her arms.
Baldur had a funny look. “I think Thor actually volunteered to wear the corset. Hm. Anyway, you’ll meet his sons Magni and Modi soon enough. They still guard his hammer. Here’s Bragi the poet,” he said, moving down the line of posts with the girls hurrying after.
Bragi’s face was young and frowny and flighty-looking, like a young male schoolteacher’s face.
“Fri, god of summer, and his sister Fria,” said Baldur.
Fri was blonde and handsome like Prince Charming. His sister Fria looked like she belonged at a fancy dress ball.
“Fria was the most beautiful goddess,” Baldur went on. “Don’t tell my wife I said so. All the frost giants wanted to marry Fria. And here’s Tue, the one-armed swordsman.”
Tue was fierce, growling with his teeth.
“Aegir, the stormkeeper.”
He had fish in his green hair.
“Ah, look! This is the face of Heimdall the watchman. His eyes could spot a sparrow at a hundred miles, and he could hear a call for assistance on the other side of the planet.” Baldur smiled and sighed at the memory. “He and I were best friends.”
“And they’re all--”
“All dead,” Baldur told Lenna, his mouth still smiling. “It does me good to see their faces again.”
Talvi wore an uncertain look. “Loki?” he said in his quiet way.
Baldur’s eyes flicked and flashed. “Better not to mention him. We try not to.”
“Mwhy?” said Binnan Darnan.
Baldur shrugged his four great arms. “He killed everyone.”
“Oh.” Her brown eyes got enormous.
“No matter. Come inside. My brother will be here. He’s a good one to know.”
The longhouse was built like the earliest houses in Iceland, stacked tree trunks daubed with pitch. As they approached, the door mutated, stretching taller and taller, bulging at the top until it was tall enough to let Baldur in without trouble. He swept his arms, and the door flew open.
Chapter Two
Gimli
or, We Ignore the World Enough Already
Inside, a firepit roared with fire. Cooked fish smells and smoke and stifling heat poured out. “Hello, hello! Who is it?” a voice burst nasally from inside.
“It’s me, Unc. I have news,” said Baldur.
“Baldur!” came cheerfully.
Baldur led his guests inside. Lenna sighed as the fire warmed her from head to foot, then flapped her arms as it got too hot. The floor was scratchy packed dirt laid with cave bear rugs. The room was dark and hot and windowless, blooming with long crooked fireflung shadows and eyewatering smoke. The crackling firepit was sunk into a raised dirt platform. The fire burned redly without fuel. It smelled like magic. Six chairs fit for giants were arranged in a half-circle around the fire. Two of the chairs were occupied by strange-looking gods, and a third god stood awkwardly on the dirt floor below them.
As she came around the side and saw the three gods from the front, Lenna gulped. They were really weird.
In the center of the ring was the largest of the three gods. A seated pair of hairy legs like Ionic columns hung down from a throne. Atop the massive legs was a tiny beardy god wearing kingly furs. His body was horribly out of proportion, as if some peculiar disease had shrunk his head and body while swelling up his legs. Lenna felt bad thinking he was gross, but she couldn’t stop herself. She couldn’t help staring at the huge misshapen figure in the big chair, wondering what was wrong with him.
Her eyes shifted.
Standing on the ground beside the long-legged god was a pair of empty black eyesockets attached to a sickly-looking god. He was blind. He wore an autumn-orange doublet and tights like Robin Hood, and a cape of dried leaves. Old yet immature, his face commanded Lenna’s attention: he had a hurt mouth, sallow yellow cheeks, sad fallen posture, and empty empty empty eyes. Impossibly empty. Sockets like shrivelled pinched scoops. He was so sad. Being blind must be mak
ing him the saddest creature in the world. Lenna worried about him.
On a chair to the other side of the leggy god was an elderly disembodied head. The head was girthed in a snowy beard and balanced on an evergreen wreath. Its eyes were open, wise and discerning. It twisted its sliced-off piece of neck to get a better look at the newcomers.
“Um,” said Lenna.
“Are we going to flirt with mortal affairs today, Baldur?” boomed the long-legged god in his hoarse nasal voice.
“Yes, I suppose we are, Honnur,” Baldur replied. He led everyone up the one dirt step to the chairs surrounding the hot breath of the fire. Lenna stood on tiptoes beneath an empty chair and stretched up her fingertips, but couldn’t reach. She couldn’t even touch the sagging chair seat. So she stood awkwardly beneath it, across from the blind god, in the periphery of the circle. Binnan Darnan stood beside her.
“Hail, Honnur Liege-god. I have official news,” Baldur announced. “May I introduce some important mortals to you: This is Llenowyn the Allnorn and her retinue. She has confirmed to me that the World Tree is destroyed and the Nidhagg dragon slain. Fimbulsummer is here.”
The leggy god burped.
“Um?” asked Lenna.
The troubling face of the eyeless god stirred. He tipped his thin head. His eyesockets had crinkled red rims on the bottom, as if he were always weeping. She saw that his hand rested on the handle of an iron spit propped over the fire, slowly turning a large salmon that was impaled whole on a shishkebab stick.
“Will you name her retinue for me and speak of their array?” the blind god murmured, turning the salmon.
“I will, brother,” said Baldur impatiently. Antsily he stood beside the sparking smoking fire.
Lenna looked at him. He seemed nervous, uncontained, as though he were holding something back. It seemed like he wanted to run up and hug his relatives, but wasn’t allowed to, somehow. As if there were complicated rules.
“Llenowyn the Allnorn is as tall as a ten-year spruce, with palomino hair,” Baldur said formally.
The eyeless god inclined his thin head toward her.
Wait. Wait, what? Llenowyn? Lehn uh winn. Lenna stuck a finger in her ear. Had she heard it right? It was a ... different name. Different. It wasn’t her name. It couldn’t be her name. Was it? I mean, they were gods. Maybe they knew something about her that she didn’t.
“Binnan Darnan the Giftsmith is tall as a nanny-goat, with panther hair,” Baldur went on.
“Hey!” she exclaimed. “Who’s a nanny goat?”
The blind god nodded to her.
“Talvi the Illusionist shows himself as a man like any. Thin, with hair and beard as winter embers.”
Again the blind figure inclined his head. Lenna wondered what he meant by “shows himself.” And “illusionist,” too. Llenowyn? Giftsmith? Allnorn? There were a million secrets hiding in this hall.
“Aitta Lovegod is a head lower than her man, swarthy-haired and fair-faced.”
The blind god nodded a fourth time.
“Here then is all of the Allnorn’s retinue.”
Lenna didn’t have a retinue. She had friends.
The gaunt god bowed. His cape of leaves slid around his shoulders with a shrunkle sound. “Thank you, brother. May I ask you again for your forgiveness?”
Baldur sagged. “Oh, for the love of Odin, Hodur. I forgave you the day you killed me.”
Blind Hodur killed his brother?
“I know.” The god called Hodur dug the toe of his orange troubadour’s shoe into the turf floor. “You keep forgiving me. I still can’t believe myself worthy of it.”
Baldur went forward in the firelight and gripped his brother Hodur twice on each shoulder, squeezing mannishly. The leaf cape crinkled. “You have my love, brother. Won’t you sit?”
“Not until I atone for my failures,” Hodur answered.
Baldur clapped his brother on the back and then stepped away. He took the wooden arm of a chair and eased into it. He sighed at his sad stubborn brother and turned to the long-legged god in the tall chair across from him. “Honnur Liege-god?”
“Yes, yes, finish your announcements quickly. The salmon is good this season,” said Honnur, his stubby fingers wiggling at the thought.
The two girls stood close to Talvi and Aitta. Lenna’s legs ached. She wished Annie Morgan was here. It would be nice to have someone tall enough to boost her into a chair.
“So,” said Honnur. “What did you come to tell me, again?”
“Fimbulsummer has begun, Honnur,” Baldur repeated. “The end of the world is on its way. The human race will perish in a flood of magic. Doesn’t that move you at all? Can’t you feel the coming descent into fire and madness already? Do you have nothing to say about the matter?”
“I dunno,” said Honnur, swinging his giant hairy legs beneath his chair like a boy on a swing. “If Fimbulsummer had started, I’d think I’d know about it. I mean, I’m not stupid. I don’t feel any different. Do you feel different, Mimir?”
The disembodied head sighed wreathily. “Legend suggests that Fimbulsummer begins slowly, Honnur.” Mimir’s voice was a breathless croak. “So no. We won’t feel any different. We just have to watch how often the world Changes. If it Changes rapidly, then we’ll know Fimbulsummer has begun.”
“Huh,” said Honnur, wrapping his furs around himself. “But that isn’t what I believe. And I’d like to think my beliefs count. I’d like to think I know something about Fimbulsummer.”
“We must always defer to legend, Honnur,” grunted the head. “Legend knows best.”
“Call Council, Honnur,” Baldur interrupted. “Call for the All Thing and summon the rest of the gods. Bring everyone before you. Fimbulsummer is here, now. The flood of magic is already threatening to consume the world below us, bringing Change upon Change to the innocent humans of Earth.”
“Oh yeah? What do you think about that, Mimir?” Honnur said. But he wasn’t listening. He was staring greedily at the hissing pink fish turning over the fire.
“Legend suggests,” said Mimir in a tone that suggested he’d had to say this many times before, “legend suggests that failure to call the All Thing would lead to the world’s destruction.”
“Would it. Would it,” mumbled Honnur. “No more fish,” he added to himself. “So. So what should we do? I mean, we could ignore it, couldn’t we? We ignore the world enough already. Let it go away. No more world. I’ll still find fish somewhere. I always do.”
“Honnur!” barked Mimir the head as loud as he could, gasping like a harpy. “Failure to prevent the world’s destruction would be ...” Mimir twisted his neck as far as he could and frowned at the liege-god’s distracted expression. “It would be a bad thing, dammit!”
“Huh. Keep your temper, Mimir. I’d rather not have you break the rules of politeness and decorum that govern this house. So. So should we call for the All Thing? Is that what you’re saying?” chattered Honnur aimlessly, rubbing his hands together. “I guess we could if we really had to.”
Baldur and Mimir looked at each other across the fire knowingly and rolled their eyes. Lenna stood between the two, feeling caught in the middle. She took a step back, bumping into Binnan Darnan. They held hands.
“Yes, Honnur, we should summon the All Thing,” grumbled Mimir. “That’s the right thing to do.”
“Is that according to legend?” asked Honnur, squinting stupidly at Mimir’s head.
“Yes, Honnur,” sighed Mimir. “Legend says we should call Council.”
“Ahhh. Well then. As long as it doesn’t ruin my fishing. That’s decided. Any other announcements?” The burly beard twitched and Honnur surreptitiously got his thumbnail into his nose and slid something out, then wiped it on his pants.
“I’ll discuss everything else when the All Thing is met,” said Baldur. He crossed his four arms sullenly and flicked his eyes behind him at the door.
“Great!” said Honnur. “Let’s eat!” He stood up. The turf-packed wood beam ceili
ng bent upwards to accommodate him.
Baldur turned to leave.
“Stop,” said Mimir.
“Huh?” Baldur replied.
“Honnur, introduce us to the mortals,” said Mimir firmly.
But they had already named themselves. There must be another reason Mimir was doing this.
“Yes! Uncle Honnur, won’t you introduce the mortals to us first, before you eat?” whined Baldur’s brother Hodur. His voice was full of reedy nuisance tones.
The liege-god squeezed his potbelly through his fur suit with an undersized hand. “Fish. Fish fish.” He licked his wispy mustache and glared at Mimir, then at Hodur. “Fine, you two, that’s just fine. I’ll delay my meal anytime you like. I bet it’ll still be just as hot and juicy twenty minutes from now. I bet it won’t be dry and burnt at all, and it better not be dry and burnt, spit-turner, it better be just the way I want it or you’re in for worlds of trouble. Worlds.” Honnur made a squashy angry face at Hodur. “I still blame you for Baldur’s death, y’know.”
Lenna and Binnan Darnan looked at each other. There was something strange about standing around listening to gods, real gods, world-changing forces of super power, creators of the universe, and hearing them misbehaving and quibbling about stupid stuff. It felt small and lonely in the hall of Gimli. It felt like eavesdropping and separateness and speckness. The gods were bulky elephantine giants filling their giant chairs in the dark room, swathed in furs and pelts, lit red by the bonfire and wreathed in smoke. Lenna was probably a bug, to them. An ant in the house of a shouting family. But their voices were small and human.
What bothered Lenna the most, she decided, was how few gods there were. There were only seven whole gods in all of Asgard to watch over all of humanity--or at least, however much of humanity the Norse gods looked after. And Honnur and Mimir and Hodur just sat around in here all day, probably. They didnt help people at all. She could tell.
Then there were Thor’s sons, and Baldur’s wife Nanna, whoever she was. Baldur. And that was it. This wasn’t very many gods. And they all looked freaky and acted weird and didn’t seem to do much of anything.