by James Comins
Baldur rubbed his face wearily with a couple of hands. “Loki. Always Loki. He was mad at me, mad at all the gods because ... Mimir only knows why. Envy, I’m told. People liked me, and they didn’t like him. People enjoyed visiting my home in Breidablik. They didn’t like his caves. I never needed to fish for compliments. So he was envious.
“And there Loki was, with his three giant children and the army of Yotun, about to attack Asgard. My dad had visited a soothsayer and had found out about the upcoming invasion. The battle of Guðir Dag-Setr had been prophesied to him. My parents, who were very overprotective of me, were scared that I’d get killed in the battle. They heard that I’d be slain like everyone else. Momma Frigg went out into the wide world looking for a way to make me immortal like Mimir was, which was nice of her. She cast a divination to find a path to immortality, and she found one.
“She spoke to the soul of every plant and metal and chemical in the world. She had them all promise that I would be blessed against their death-strikes. The soul of every material promised never to hurt or kill me, out of love for me.”
Baldur sighed and looked down. He snapped a twig off a tiny sycamore and snapped it and snapped it in his big hands. “Everyone loved me. You see, I used to be the sun.”
“You used to be?” said Aitta, blinking. “Why did you stop being the sun? How--”
“I’ll tell you that story another time,” said Baldur heavily. “It’s too much for me today.”
“Go on,” said Lenna. “You were talking about Loki and the battle.”
“Right. Nothing could hurt me. Iron, steel, oak, water, fire, poison ... Momma Frigg only missed one thing. To this day, there’s nothing on Earth that can harm me except mistletoe.”
Binnan Darnan grinned. “You must be very careful at Christmas,” she said. “You might get kissed to death.”
Baldur chuckled and shook his bald head slowly. He wore a rueful memoryful smile. “Just before the battle was set to begin, I found out that Momma had made me immortal. Like a fool, I told everybody. The whole of Asgard gathered together to celebrate. Loki had disguised himself--he can Change himself into anything--and he crept into Asgard to see what the celebrations were all about. He saw that everyone was having fun throwing weapons at me and watching them bounce off.”
Aitta rolled her eyes. “Boys,” she said.
“No, really,” said Baldur. “Everyone was so excited that we were going to win the big battle because I was invincible. I could fight in the ocean. I could fight in the sky. I could climb into Fenris’ mouth without fear of his teeth. I could fight Lady Hell herself without being afraid of her freezing breath or deadly diseases. Everyone was so happy to know that they had finally found a perfect weapon: me. They were throwing everything they could find--spears, pikes, hammers--Thor even threw the Sacred Hammer at me, and I could headbutt it back to him. It was fun. Hodur was blind, so he couldn’t try it. But Loki, that rotten Loki, snuck into Asgard and put a mistletoe spear into Hodur’s blind hand, to let him show off his strength. He threw the spear through my heart, and I died, there in front of everyone in Asgard.”
He dragged his hand down the sycamore branch, pulling all the leaves off. They stood.
“What does it feel like? Dying?” asked Talvi quietly. Aitta took his hand in hers.
“You become thin,” said Baldur, “and you forget, and you fly.”
Talvi nodded.
“Would you finish the story, please, Mr. Baldur?” said Binnan Darnan. “What happened after?”
“I died,” said Baldur. “I flew to Hell’s House. Everyone was heartbroken. My wife Nanna couldn’t find a way to bring me back, and neither could Momma. Nanna cried herself to death, and we went down to Hell’s House together. My brother Hodur felt ... well, about the same way he feels now. Guilty. Desperate to redeem himself. He climbed down the Yotun’s icicle ladder to rescue me and Nanna, just as the Guðir Dag-Setr started. By the time we defeated Madgood and climbed out through the Pit of Old Magic, everyone was dead.”
Baldur fought down a lump in his throat and sucked in a shaky breath.
“You didn’t go to heaven when you died?” asked Aitta determinedly.
“This is heaven,” replied Baldur.
“No. It isn’t,” she said firmly, crossing her arms.
Baldur shrugged. “In the Northlands, dead gods go to Hell’s House. She has a whole wing of her castle ready for us.”
“But isn’t Lady Hell dead, too? From battling?” asked Binnan Darnan.
“Of course,” said Baldur. “And then she went back to her home in Niflheim, like all dead gods. “Strengthened by the Old Magic, the barrier of the World Tree has held her back. While it lasted there was no way for her to climb out. Now that Fimbulsummer has begun, I don’t know where she is. She may be walking the Earth, and that’s a terrible thought.”
Chapter Four
A Rescue
or, Now I Won’t Have to Yell at the Icebox
“Hm. So is that the whole story?” asked Lenna.
“No, but it’s enough for now,” said Baldur. “Are you ready to begin the journey to recover the magic?”
He looked from person to person, puzzled at their weary expressions.
“I’m hungry. And sleepy,” moaned Binnan Darnan. “And I want to weave crystals.”
“Weave crystals?” asked Talvi behind her.
Lenna turned to look at him. He had the same dumbstruck expression he had worn after the big Change in the forest outside the big house. He acted as if he didn’t understand what the words meant.
“Yes!” said Binnan Darnan. “To fix Wicklow!”
“Then wouldn’t you carve fire?” He was petulant and insistent. It was a peculiar expression to see under his thin red beard.
Lenna’s eyebrows flew. “There’s been a Change! But nothing’s different.”
“Asgard doesn’t change,” said Baldur, “and neither will you, while you’re here.”
Binnan Darnan took Lenna’s hand, and they dashed back to the blue spot by the hill.
It was red, now.
Peering down, shielding their eyes from a plume of ash that swirled up from Earth, they saw that the sun was a floating anvil. All the light in the land and sky below them was red. It was a glaring, billowing red, glowing from bonfires and wildfires and forest fires. Surrounding the visible blackened map-outlines of Norway, Britain, Denmark and Germany was a red ocean. The ocean was on fire, or maybe it was an ocean made of fire, a red sea sending pumped-out spews of black smoke. The fire lapped at burnt shores, cracking the rocks of the coast into spattering rock grenades. Forests struggled against the consuming blaze. Lenna wondered how any trees still survived. Every inch of green below her was threatened by the encroaching forest fires. The wide patchwork of Europe was a mess of whirling, licking red surrounding pointy green. All of it was smothered by black clouds.
“Look!” Binnan Darnan pointed. Lenna looked.
In an ashy burned-away spot where the forest had been razed away, green shoots were transforming the black crater into greenery. In the blink of an eye, the burned-away spot was a forest again, and the forest caught on fire.
“Mister Baldur! Mister Baldur! Does time go faster up here?” Lenna shouted to him.
Baldur blinked. “No, time goes pretty much the same speed on Asgard and on Earth.”
“Then,” and Lenna inhaled inhaled, “something is weird.”
The four-armed god hustled over and stood over them beside the circle. He scraped a bit of dandruff from his huge, bald head as he peered down. “Do you see the two magics battling?” he asked.
“Trees and fire?” said Lenna.
“Mm. Do you remember--”
“That no one wins a battle?” said Binnan Darnan. “We were listening for certain.”
Baldur nodded. They watched forests grow from seeds to towering sequoia-tall stands and collapse again into ash heaps.
“At least the trees won’t all be burnt up. Right?” added Lenna ne
rvously, peering.
“That’s right,” Talvi said behind them. “The Verdance of Verdandi keeps Surtur’s Eternal Flame back.”
Binnan Darnan swung her black hair to look at him. “I believe Talvi has at last lost his mind,” she announced. Lenna nodded primly. Talvi frowned.
“You remember that we came here from my father’s water mine in Ireland, don’t you?” he asked.
“Um?”
“Water mine?”
Aitta kept silent and stood very close to her husband, looking up at his confused face.
“And Lenna and Andy dove into the heart of the flame geyser to free the Fomor?”
Binnan Darnan smirked.
“Wow!” said Lenna, grinning and then pretendo-frowning at Binnan Darnan. “Of course I did this. I’m very brave, Binnan Darnan. You should know about me and how brave I am.”
“No one remembers?” said Talvi, looking from one to another. The girls smiled up at him, but Aitta had a wan look of mourning and doubt. She squeezed his fingers, one two three four.
“The way of the world,” she whispered, her arm along his shoulder.
“Oh. Right.” Talvi looked crushed. He collapsed backward onto the sandy turf and leaned back on his arms like an M, breathing hard and sick. Aitta sat and stretched out beside him, shielding her eyes from the wisp of ash and wind, and brushed his shaggy hair with her small fingers.
“No no,” said Lenna. “Talvi Talvi it’s good to have a new world. Now I won’t have to yell at the icebox.”
“Icebox,” he gasped. “What’s an--”
Aitta pressed his fingers gently.
“Icebox. What a strange word,” he murmured.
Baldur stared down at the flickering world below. “A second Change in a week. That’s never happened before, not in all the millenia of the world below us. We need to share this news with Honnur. Maybe this will get into his slow, fish-loving head.”
* * *
Beside the firepit, beneath the long vapid shadow cast across the pitched log wall, Honnur was sucking the last of the salmon fat from a grid of stringy white bones. His flimsy beard was filthy and sticky. A mat of fish slime and grease stuck to his pudge-cheeks. He flung the sharp gooey carcass at Hodur, who unstuck it from himself and took it out to a trash heap through a back door, stopping and tapping a shoe now and then for the echoes.
“Honnur Liege-god?” said Baldur importantly from the threshold of the door.
“Oh, is the Council here for the All Thing?” mumbled Honnur through a last slurpy mouthful.
Mimir sighed through his fluffy wreath. “Legend suggests that it’s only been twenty minutes, Honnur, and you haven’t sent fool-birds to carry the summonses to any of the other gods yet.”
“Oh.”
“There’s been another Change, Honnur,” said Baldur, stepping back into the longhouse and crossing quickly to the firepit. The mortals crept in after him. “The second this week. We have less and less time. Send the fool-birds today, Honnur. Send them now. Call the All Thing as soon as possible. Give them three days to arrive and set up the Thing.”
“Do it yourself,” Honnur said, crossing his mutant legs. “Get Hodur to do it. I’m tired.”
“You have responsibilities, Honnur,” Baldur snapped.
“Uh-uh.” Honnur’s eyes went piggy and he belched as he ran his little hands through his stringy beard. “Don’t you tell me what to do. I’m the boss, and if I say that Fimbulsummer’s going to wait for me to take a nap, then it is. Cause I’m the boss. I decide. Me.” He poked a thumb into his pendulous midsection.
Baldur got angry. His four arms spread like a pink starfish. The enchanted red flames of the firepit sank and turned electro-blue. With a white blinding glash the blue fire became a waterspout and drenched Honnur with a slopping geyser of water.
“Spbbbpbl! This is a peace-stead! You’re forbidden from fighting under this roof!” Honnur shrieked, trying to slap the water away.
“I’m not fighting,” growled Baldur, directing the geyser. “I’m waking you up.”
Hodur, returning from garbage duty, listened carefully, cocking his head like a dog. He fluttered his fingers and a torrent of falling leaves foofed out and settled over the soggy god. They piled up as high as his enormous knees, sticking to his fur cloak.
“And that was a reminder of the change of seasons,” said Hodur quietly.
“Out, all of you,” squeaked Honnur with wet leaf piles in each hand. “And take that blind good-for-trash with you!”
Baldur took his brother’s thin arm and drew him out the open door of the longhouse into the shadow of the silver roof. Lenna followed.
“I rename this house Unclesheim,” shrieked Honnur behind them, sweeping leaves away from his chair was wild punches and kicks. “This house is for me and Mimir now, and none of you are welcome!”
“I’m sorry, Uncle,” Baldur said, leaning in from the threshold.
“You aren’t forgiven!” screamed Honnur through his fuzzy beard.
“Wasn’t talking to you.” Baldur took a last sympathetic look at Mimir, then swept his arms, and the door to the longhouse slammed shut. Lenna, Binnan Darnan, Talvi and Aitta once again stood together out on the plain. Blind Hodur stood beside them, a vague childish smile on his lined face. Baldur had a beautific smile to match his brother’s. “Perfect,” he said. Hodur nodded.
“What’s perfect?” Lenna asked.
“A perfect rescue. Satisfaction, too. Tonight we sleep in Breidablik, and tomorrow we save the world,” said Baldur. He led them out to the smoky hole in the world. At the edge of the circle, Baldur took Hodur’s hand and placed it on his own double shoulder. He leaned down to pick up Lenna and her retinues in his palms like hamsters, and took a giant step.
For a second, they all simply fell through space. Lenna felt her guts rise up toward her throat. Then something happened.
A new sensation ran through Lenna. It was the same feeling you get when you’re a piece of paper being turned into a paper airplane. Being folded and unfolded and bent and folded and then thrown though space much faster than you’ve ever traveled before. She got pulled out of the palm of Baldur’s hand, stretched across a sparkling silver void, and into a new place. The worst part was when she had to let go of the flying feeling and slammed to a stop in a new location, like a roller coaster hitting a brick wall. Her lungs unfolded back into reality without any of the air they had left behind, and she felt them pop closed, winded. She bent over her knees, sucking air slowly back into her lungs. It was an intense new sensation that hurt. A lot.
And the new place she had appeared in was flames flames flames.
Below Lenna’s feet was ash, puffing up into her eyes in the new roaring oven-heat. The orange light was stifling and the heat was engulfing and her eyes were blustered with scratchy smoke and her dress was suddenly thick and heavy and she was sweating it soggy from every pore. She was wearing a giant beige teacozy and oven mitts, big floppy ones. So was Binnan Darnan. They were roasting in an empty bubble inside an ocean of hateful fire. Baldur’s presence created an orange-red dome around them, a bubble that hurt with heat, suffocating her. Snackering and popping and fierce lashing tongues of blistering thick flame reached inward to grab them. The air had more smoke than oxygen, and they had arrived without breath.
“In here! Run!”
Ignoring the pain in their lungs, they ran.
Chapter Five
Breidablik
or, Gold or Nothing! Gold or Nothing!
Clustered around Baldur and the magic bubble that surrounded him, Lenna ran. Blinded, deafened, her eyebrows filled with blinding salt-sweat, hot drops streaking down her hair and neck. Her feet sank ankle-deep into white flaking ash that slipped and slid, making her feet skid as she ran. Then blissfully, through the blasting wall of flame, a gust of fresh air came. Shielding her eyes, she looked out through a gap in the clouds of smoke. A terracotta palace like a plant pot rose up from the wall of flying flame, broad and orange and
solid. The joyfully cool gust had come from an arch of clay in the palace, gaping eerily like a ghoul’s open mouth in the featureless adobe. With a gasp of relief, they crossed the threshold into the palace.
Lenna’s feet tracked teacozy-slipper-shaped ash tracks over the clay floor. The heat hardly slowed down, but her eyes weren’t forced to squint by the thick risen black dust anymore. The fire was held back by the hallway. Ahead of her, Talvi and Aitta hadn’t stopped running. Baldur led them through a second arch of clay, a house inside the house. Here there was less heat; the voluminous noise was far behind them. They could at last hear their own slapping footsteps as they scurried through the vast empty archways of the orange-brown palace. Through a third arch of clay, this one narrower and shorter than the ones before, but still twice the height of Baldur. The clapping sound of feet rang down long, empty burnt-brown hallways on all sides. The temperature had gotten bearable. A fourth arch opened into a living room, a central hollow in the palace. The ceiling spread away, up toward infinity, the size of darkened-cornered worlds, a ceiling hidden by height, illuminated low and shadowy by clay lanterns. In Baldur’s living room, there was enough space to run in a straight line for fifteen minutes without reaching the far wall. The room was no hotter and no cooler than summer. They came to a happy stop and looked around.
Chairs as tall as draft horses. A kitchen with counters so tall Lenna couldn’t see what was on them. Tall narrow clay cupboards that began at the height of a normal house’s ceiling. Lenna felt like she was little again, looking up at a grown-up sized world. She felt the same as she had when she was too young to reach into the rain basin without a stepstool.
“Waiting outside like that. Pah. You’d catch a death,” scolded a slim, white-blonde seventeen-foot-tall goddess. She wore a blue dress with two big silver buttons on the front. “You’d think that none of you knew what is what.” Lenna wouldn’t have been able to reach her knee with a stepstool. Her head tilted way back to look at the goddess. She could see straight up the goddess’ nose.