by James Comins
“Nanna.” Baldur hugged her.
“My lady,” thinned Hodur leafily. Nanna reached down and touched the blind god’s cheek. He was underarm-height to her.
Baldur introduced his guests.
“Is there water?” Aitta asked breathily, scrubbing at her eyes.
“Oh dear, we’ve been out for a week. You’ll have to settle for a drop of cold fire, if you have the stomach for it.”
Aitta nodded warily.
Nanna turned on a tap and poured out cold fire for everyone into large tumblers made of wire-cut clay. Lenna took hers with two hands and poked at the chaotic twirling red flicker inside the bucket-sized cup. To her fingertip, it was as hot as hot cocoa. It smelled of cinnamon and pomegranate. She sipped it, then blew on the cold fire to cool it off.
“Are they all okay? They look a wreck. All frizzled.”
“Well, we traveled by giant step ... And we walked up Bifrost, so they haven’t eaten since yesterday,” mumbled Baldur sheepishly.
“Oo! Why didn’t you say? Leaving them standing around, hungry and what? Tired too. You can see it. Salamander sandwiches and bed. And that is that.”
Nanna went to a cupboard and pulled out what looked like a fallen-off lizard tail, bright orange with chunky purple stripes. She laid it on a cutting board and cut big slices to put on brown bread. She added tomato rounds, closed the sandwiches shut and handed them down.
Lenna bit into hers. The salamander was crunchy and rubbery at the same time, like squid.
Far across the gods’ living room was a hallway lined with rooms. Open archways, no doors. Nanna commanded everyone to follow her to bed, even Talvi and Aitta. It was a long walk across the room, and Nanna strode quickly, ignoring the two girls’ pleas for her to slow down. The bed that Nanna led Lenna to was soft mellow clay laid out in a lump on the floor. Lenna lay down. Lacking a door for privacy, she left her grimy teacozy on. The bed molded itself to her shape. Her eyelids closed and wouldn’t open again. It had been a very long day.
* * *
“Gold! Gold! Gold!”
Lenna had been dreaming about ... something. Important. A song? Tumpty pretty hum hum hum. Ugh. It was gone. Mmmm. All gone. She stretched.
“Gold! Gold! I want gold!”
Errm. Hm. Where was ... Lenna was sitting on the gradually sinking edge of a lump of squishy, dry clay in a room of bare orange terracotta walls. Her muscles were relaxed, jelly-like. She stood up and wiggled her calves with fingers that still had that not-strong-enough muscle-shrunk morning feeling. Binnan Darnan peered around the open doorway.
“ ’za bathroom down the hall,” she muttered sleepily.
“ ‘nks.”
No water. Climbing up like a baby onto the bathroom countertop, she found that the wagon wheel-sized steel faucet poured out more of the sweet-smelling cold fire into the sink, swizzling and swirling. There was a fire bathtub as well.
After having a very peculiar bath, Lenna put her teacozy back on over her slip and began the long walk down the hall to the main room. Despite the sudden awakening, she was pleasantly well-rested. The cavernous living room was mostly empty. A few loom-woven zigzag rugs with thread tassels lay on the floor. The circle of living room chairs stood near the kitchen area.
Someone unfamiliar was there, beneath the chairs. Someone very loud.
“Give me gold! Heaps and heaps of gold! Shiny shiny gold! Give it to me!”
The shrill smoky-voiced bellowing came from a little brown-faced woman squatting in the middle of the living room of ... Breidablik, Lenna supposed. The word meant broad and bright in Icelandic. Baldur’s home under the sea of fire.
“Madam,” Baldur said to the leathery woman, “we don’t have--”
“Give me piles of sparkles or I’ll tell you nothing!” Her voice sounded like an old seagull defending a biscuit.
“Miss, we are not collectors of fine things. It’s not as if we can go into the next room and hand you a bag of treasure.”
Baldur kept gesturing the woman up to a chair beside him. The chairs were shorter than the ones in Gimli, but they were still far above eye level. Talvi and Aitta looked tiny, funny, perched together in a giant-sized white Barcalounger. Binnan Darnan put a hand down and Lenna took it and walked up a chair leg like a mountain climber.
“Hello, Llenowyn,” Binnan Darnan hissed.
“Don’t be so weird,” Lenna replied. She eyed her, sideways.
Nanna was puttering around the kitchen making breakfast. Frequently the goddess peered with distaste at the brown woman in knit tasselled afghans crouching on the living room floor.
“Give me--” the woman shrieked.
“Madam,” interrupted Baldur.
“Gullvig,” she told him.
“Gullvig, then. If you know secrets of the enemies of peace, it’s so important that you--”
“Gold or nothing! Gold or nothing!” said Gullvig.
“What gold?” snapped Nanna finally.
“Find some!” the frogly woman replied.
Hodur came in, groggiling. He braced his hand before him. His toe tapped the ground every few steps. Baldur led him to a seat. The blind god stood beside it, his arms flat against his sides, his worn face upright.
“I--” Hodur began.
“Yes?” said Baldur encouragingly.
“Nothing.”
“You were about to say something, brother.”
“It wasn’t important,” said Hodur.
“Do you know where the gold is?” the little brown woman with the twisty umber hair asked Hodur.
“I have that knowledge,” Hodur said.
“Then give me the gold!”
Nanna came out of the open kitchen with a tray. It held clay tubs of red breakfast cereal, orange milk, baked red chips, cups of cold fire, salamander canapés and oranges.
Lenna dropped to the floor and tried a chip. It was sweet.
“Well, where’s all this gold you know about?” Baldur asked his brother. “If Gullvig won’t tell us her secrets, we’ll have to start on the journey blind. Uh, that’s not what I meant,” Baldur added.
“I take no offense,” Hodur moaned. “Indeed, I deserve everything cruel--”
“Hodur!” exclaimed Nanna.
“He still hasn’t forgiven himself.”
Lenna pushed a plate of food from the platter up onto the seat of her chair and scootched up the upholstery. Now closer to eyelevel, they watched Nanna walk straight to Hodur and grip his chin.
“Now listen to me, brother-in-law. Either you forgive yourself for a harmless accident--”
“I trusted Loki!” he moaned, his mouth muted by her tight grip.
“Or we send you out into the world,” she finished. “Alone.”
“Not before I get the gold!” said Gullvig.
“Hush, Gullvig,” Nanna added behind her.
Hodur tried to tip his head down, but Nanna held it firm.
“Very well,” he said. “I will depart. I never deserved your kindness anyway.”
“That’s not what we want,” Nanna said carvingly. She placed her other hand on the back of his neck, holding him very still.
“Mister Hodur?” said Lenna. “Everyone here wants you to stay. We don’t want you to have to go back to Honnur’s.”
“It’s true,” Binnan Darnan added from the floor far below. Lenna felt like she was sitting in a highchair.
Hodur’s empty eye sockets faced Nanna. “Milady,” he whispered, “I concede to your will. I shall earn my atonement. Direct me.”
“That’s better,” said Nanna. She let go and slapped his cheek.
Aitta suddenly reached over and took Lenna’s hand and squeezed it tight, but Lenna took her hand back. Hodur’s leaf cape rustled as he shivered in the heat of the goddess’ presence.
“Mister Hodur, what are you the god of?” asked Binnan Darnan.
“Loss.”
“Oh.”
He stepped back and seemed to fade into the scenery. Oddly, Lenna fou
nd it hard to concentrate on him. Her eyes and thoughts slid away, slid away, coming to rest at last on the tiny woman crouched on the floor.
She was not quite human, this Gullvig woman, Lenna decided. Hidden under folds of sunburnt gypsy-leather skin, her facial features were coarse, outsized, exaggerated. It was the face of a goblin or a troll. Her nose was flat, squashed, pitted, like an elderly tomato. Her eyes were a trice too big--and it may have been a trick of the lantern-light, but she didn’t seem to have a colored ring around her pinpoint pupils. Her lips were wizened and crusted by arid air. Ropy hair hung down around her, closing off most of her face in two black wavy curtains threaded with bone beads. Her afghans were knotted together from random bits of soiled cloth, muddy at the edges from being dragged over the ground by her shambling stride. Lenna wondered if she really was a troll.
“Gold! Gold! And more and more gold!” Gullvig clenched her hands in the air. “Where is it?”
Hodur sighed. “The great hoard is hidden to history and guarded by an ormalaster.”
“Why is it hidden?” asked Lenna. “Is it under the ormalaster?”
“Not exactly. It’s cursed,” said Hodur.
“Aaa! No more curses!” shouted Lenna.
“What does the curse do?” asked Binnan Darnan.
“Any man who owns the gold becomes the ormalaster,” said Hodur simply.
Gullvig hobbled forward, pulling herself across the scrapy clay floor with her hands and pushing with her bow-legged feet. She leered up at the god of loss. “Fetch it for me, Hodur. Fetch it for me, Baldur. And I will share secrets that will save the world.”
“Neither I nor my brother can take it without becoming the ormalaster,” said Baldur. “We’re men. Only women may evade such a curse. The words mean nothing but what they say: ‘Any man ...’ ”
“Nanna, will you bring it to her?” asked Hodur.
Her thin cold eyes took in the hunched form of Gullvig doubtfully.
“You are asking me to do it, Hodur?” she snapped.
“Your servant humbly wishes he could do it for you,” Hodur moaned.
Lenna found Aitta’s hand on her arm again and pushed the hand away.
“Must we really fetch gold for her?” Nanna asked her husband. Baldur nodded. “I suppose we’d best get it done quickly. Tell me where to go, Hodur.” She bent her ear to his mouth, bumping into him.
“I must apologize for my clumsiness,” said the blind man.
“Come along and tell me. Hippity hop.”
Hodur whispered in her ear. Nanna nodded.
“That’s fine. You, you, and you with me. Put a hand in mine. And you, Gullvig. Quickly now.”
“I’ll wait here,” the creaky woman quacked.
“Nope. Come on, or we’ll keep the gold for ourselves. That’s a girl.”
“Why do we have to come?” Lenna said.
“No questions. Take my hand. Clippity clop.”
Nanna took a giant step. Lenna, Binnan Darnan, Aitta and Gullvig were whisked away painfully like a paper airplane.
Chapter Six
The Tower of Fire
or, I’m a Silly Villain, or Whatever You Said
Wheeeeeze. Cough. Lenna opened her eyes.
A mud field was on fire in the anvil night. Men were shouting, big masculine barks in the flameridden darkness. Steam hissed from tanks as their caterpillar treads strove over the thick filth. Twilight confusion and the blasts of ignorant distant armies surrounded the five women. Lenna’s thick floppy fireproof slippers sank into a brown tank-tread rut. Across the broad muddy expanse, streams of soldiers marched, straggling struggling lines fading into the gunpowder fog.
“Well, this is no less than I expected,” Nanna said. “Look at all of them. One of them after another will become the ormalaster. And they’ll keep trying. So greedy for gold, men. I’ll bet the minute we find the gold--”
“Yes! Yes! The gold!” said Gullvig.
“... they’ll try to kill us and take it and someone will become the ormalaster again,” she finished.
“What’s a--”
“No questions. This is the way we go, tra-la.”
Nanna dragged her feet out of the mud suckily and marched steadfastly forward.
“Does she really think we have no questions to ask?” Binnan Darnan whispered to Aitta.
“I think she doesn’t care,” Aitta replied.
Lenna pushed her feet forward, toes first, and the teacozies slucked out of the sludge. She turned to look back and felt dizzy. The world was very much overwhelming and dreamy and unreal. They trudged under a wheel of smoky stars, surrounded by dark muddy smells and machine oil smells and falling military ash smells. Guns sounded, tak tak tak. She looked up at Aitta. The freckled woman also looked overwhelmed and dreamy beneath her frosted tawny hair, but her Icelandic eyes were angry, too.
“Are you okay?” Lenna whispered to her, very very quietly.
Aitta said nothing. Nothing. Their feet squished in unison for awhile, squish squish squish, back aways from the marching colossus form of Nanna.
“This means ‘no,’ doesn’t it? You’re not okay,” said Lenna, pressing close to Aitta and looking up at her.
Aitta’s eyes flashed darkly.
“You should talk about things,” said Lenna.
The towering blonde form of Nanna glanced down at them harshly. “No talking back there. The men will hear us.”
Aitta breathed in deeply, broiling.
A huge wrought-iron tank roared by, built like a bunch of old twisty black porch railings welded together and perched on tank treads. Binnan Darnan hopped aside to avoid a sprayed sheet of mud full of grass shoots.
“What is it? What are you so worried about, Aitta?” Lenna whispered. Aitta pursed her lips and shook her hair.
“You’re mad at someone. Is it me?”
Aitta rubbed Lenna’s back.
“Lenna, come take a look at this,” called Binnan Darnan, dashing off-course.
With a backward glance at Aitta, Lenna slogged through a pit of mud to Binnan Darnan’s side. The little girl’s finger pointed up up. Lenna’s eyes followed the finger.
A black tower on a hill was decorated with fire. The door was fire. The windows had panes of fire. A lava moat wreathed the tower, deep and seething. Heat radiated out, reaching Lenna a quarter mile away. From every direction, in lengthy human streams, men in uniforms and their war machines trooped toward the stone circle surrounding the moat beneath the ashy reddened sky.
A cannon fired at the tower, bram! and punched a neat hole through it, like Swiss cheese. The hole healed in a quick swirl.
“How did the hole disappear?” Binnan Darnan asked. “Are there little people who rebuild it?”
“And how are we going to get past all the soldiers?” added Lenna.
“I said no questions,” snapped Nanna.
That was it. That did it. “Why?” screamed Lenna with her whole lungs. “Why, why, why, why?”
Half a dozen soldiers turned their heads. They shouted to one another and ran out of formation to surround the women.
Nanna looked at Lenna with disgust.
“Mrs. Nanna, don’t give me orders!” Lenna screamed.
Men blocked them in, holding black powder-finish guns on straps. The head soldier was a gruff boy with peachfuzz hair and dark eyebrows under his turtle-shaped helmet. He slung his blocky rifle over his shoulder upright and gave some over-the-head hand signals to the other men in the winding column in the distance.
“Lieutenant Commander Thorstein,” the peachfuzz soldier told Aitta in bad Icelandic, somehow ignoring the looming pillar that was Nanna. “This is Romeo Squad. We’re still securing the area, ma’am, and we can’t have civilians wandering around. Why don’t you and your girls head back to ...” He pointed yonder. “Vee-camp and they’ll ship you out of here.”
Nanna swung her thin ivory arm. She let her long-nailed fingers dangle above Aitta’s head as if she were a marionette. A goddessy fingern
ail poked onto Aitta’s spiky dark bangs. Dazed, Aitta reacted. She stood straighter, stepping in front of Lenna robotically, following the finger.
“This is Juliet Squad,” Aitta said with fierce authority. “I recommend that you take your men back to the line.”
All the soldiers laughed at her. Aitta raised her head, shuddering. Her fingers clenched and clenched and clenched secretly at her sides, as if she was frustrated and screaming inside of herself. Her back went straight like a soldier again. She spoke through snarling jaws.
“Our squad is under the command of Admiral Thorvald of Oslo Command,” Aitta went on, wincing. “You have orders to conduct these civilians to the tower.”
The goddess’ fingernail turned, and a pinky finger as big as a legbone wibbled and bent in the air above Aitta.
Aitta tugged out a scrunched manila folder full of papers and handed it to Thorstein. He took the papers officiously and leafed through them.
“You’re not even in uniform,” he muttered, stopping now and again to examine the pages.
Aitta’s mouth quivered for a second.
“Our mission needs to stay hush-hush. Need to know,” her mouth said sharply.
Thorstein nodded as he flopped the pages from one side of the folder to the other. “Well, the orders are clear. Romeo Squad will escort you to the base of the tower. Keep your heads down. There are unfriendlies on the far side.”
Lenna saw that poor Aitta was vibrating head to toe now, rebelling against the goddess’ controlling force.
The Lieutenant Commander looked down at the girls. “Couldn’t you have gotten them sturdier shoes?”
“Just do your job, Lieutenant Commander,” Aitta’s mouth told him.
“Yes, ma’am.” Thorstein saluted.
Lenna wondered whether soldiers got first names, or whether their rank was their name. Aitta nearly collapsed or exploded or went funny as the finger lifted off of her. She stumbled, coughing, and one of the soldiers helped her to her feet. Lenna and Binnan Darnan shared a look.
“How did that work?” Lenna whispered to Binnan Darnan. “Where did the papers come from? Why did they agree to take us just ‘cause the papers said so?”