by James Comins
Deeper.
Then the coins were gone. A hollow brown basin rounded in with smooshed tree roots was wrapped around them. The freakishly twisted bodies of Scandinavian men were sharp and scrapy beneath their fire-retardant shoes, a terrible ball pit.
Nanna twirled into existence, grabbed the three stranded people inside the hill and fled upward to the rim, pulling them draggily to the top.
Chapter Eight
Andvar
or, Softest Feelings Yer Ever Saw
Slurrrrrbbbpop sound returned.
“Where is it?” Lieutenant Commander Thorstein shouted desperately. “What happened? Where’s the hoard?”
From the top of the sky glittered downward a pale, glowing shape, drifting cloudily to the gap just above the hill. The shape was small, no taller than Binnan Darnan. Among a mess of see-through hair came a peeping face, a tiny round nose above a bushy beard.
“A-well, a-hey, ahoy. Bless dear fallen Thor, and bless me beard as well. Gullvig,” said the ghosty dwarf.
“Why, it’s Andvar and Andvar and Andvar, that’s you yourself,” said Gullvig. “Har, y’old rockhound, I’ve got your gold!”
Andvar’s beard grinned. “Eh, so’s I see! That’s the geld and the last of it, lay it down and flip it over and it’s all away.” The ghost dwarf sighed. “Nice to have, a mighty pain to look after, and no fun at all once every scrap is yours.” He ran his stubby fingers through his ghost beard. “It’s hunting for more is the treat. But I found it all, and it’s yourn now, and a riddance to geld and a thoroughfarin’ riddance to a curse that killed many’s the hero.”
“What’s going to happen to everyone who was the ormalaster?” piped Lenna from her perch on the stone rim of the pit, pointing at the skeletons below.
“Dead and forgotted, my darling dear, as I’ll be in a trice an’ a half,” Andvar replied.
“Then no hard feelings?” Nanna asked him.
“Lordsamercy, goddess lady mine, I’m dead!” Andvar exclaimed with a laugh. He poked a finger straight through his gut and out the back. “Softest feelings yer ever saw.”
“Then fare you well in the Deadlands,” said Nanna stuffily.
“Ahh, you ain’st seen nuthin’ on what I seen. At least,” he added to Lenna with a wink, “not yet!”
In a fluff of ghost feathers, Andvar vanished.
“Old legends,” murmured Sigurd blearily. “Then they were all true.” The soldier knelt beside Lenna and took her hand delicately in his own big scruffy hand. “You saved my life. I would be shot like all the others if it weren’t for you. I don’t understand what happened here, but listen to this, Lenna. I believe in you.” He pulled his backpack around to the front, unclipped it, dug around and pulled out a big chocolate bar. “I wish I had something else to give you.”
Lenna broke off half of the chocolate for Binnan Darnan. Sigurd waved and dashed happily off toward Romeo Squad.
Lenna took a bite. The square-cornered chocolate bar had melted and frozen more than once, but it was cool and dry. It went clock as a piece broke off where she bit. It tasted like the end of a war. Binnan Darnan ate hers fast, with a smile, but Lenna let each bite last until it melted.
Soldiers walked slowly around the lip of the pit, looking down into the empty hoard at the hordes of dead soldiers. Enemies cautiously approached each other.
“Ve’ve been med fools hof,” shouted one foreign commander.
“So many lifes lost and no Danageld,” said another.
Lieutenant Commander Thorstein walked suspiciously up to a foreign officer in blue. “Lieutenant Commander Adils Thorstein.” He offered his hand.
“Ali Gustavsson, brigadier.” They shook.
“I am from Telemark,” said Thorstein.
“Uppsala,” said Gustavsson.
“My condolences for your losses.”
“Likewise.”
The two commanders went toward Vee-camp together. The armies followed, mingling, the many colors of uniforms streaming into one long mixed melange. Lenna had another few bites of the chocolate. People who had been shot were carried on stretchers into the enormous tanks, which ground the muddy turf up ...
Hm. Something was different. Lenna tapped Binnan Darnan on the arm and pointed.
“What?”
“Look.”
“I don’t--ohhhh. Where has all the fire gone?”
“Mrs. Nanna. Binnan Darnan wants to know where the fire is!’
Binnan Darnan put her hands on her hips. “Lenna. Don’t ask questions for me. I can ask my own questions.”
Lenna had a mean idea. “You aren’t allowed to ask questions anymore,” she said.
“Lenna, you’re not the boss of me.”
“Binnan Darnan, those are the orders. No questions.”
“Hey! Who--”
Lenna smirked wickedly and shook her head. Binnan Darnan squirmed.
“What were you saying?” said Lenna. “Was it a question?”
“Oo! Who ... you are doesn’t ... let you tell people what to do.”
Binnan Darnan nodded firmly at Lenna, who had another mean idea.
“I saw such amazing things in the tower.”
“Mmm! You ... should ... tell me what those things are. Mistress Llenowyn.”
“You aren’t allowed to call me this.”
“Why--oo! Why ... you have ... decided not to be called this ... doesn’t matter. Ha! Do you see how I’ve fooled you? Ono.” She covered her mouth.
“As punishment, you don’t get to hear what happened in the tower.”
“No no no. Will you tell me, mistress? Aa!”
Nanna stepped between them. “Take my hand.” Gullvig gripped Nanna’s arm, and with a giant step and a sickening breathless crumple, they were back in the clay palace of Breidablik.
Chapter Nine
A Door in the Tree, A Door in the Magic
or, Very Dangerous, This Trinketty Thing We Do
“Lenna! Binnan Darnan!” called Talvi from a distant room in Breidablik.
“How’s Aitta? Is she dead?” asked Lenna.
“No, it’s only whiplash,” said Talvi, dashing down the hall to meet them. “It’s serious, but not too serious. She’ll have to rest for at least a week. She’s awake now, but don’t ask her to move.”
The girls ran down the impossibly long hall till they came to Aitta’s chamber. They stopped at the wall outside. Binnan Darnan put her chin on Lenna’s shoulder again, and they peeked around the corner together.
Aitta lay back on the soft clay bed with her feet propped up and starchy wrappings around her neck. She looked like she was in a lot of pain, but she pushed a smile out at them anyway.
“Hello, you two,” she whispered without moving.
“How do you fee--ono!”
“Binnan Darnan, you may ask questions now. I give you permission.”
Aitta’s eyes narrowed.
“How do you feel?” Binnan Darnan asked her, nervously looking at Lenna, who smirked.
“My head hurts,” said Aitta.
The girls crept in and knelt beside the clay bed and Aitta gave them her hand to hold. She braced the other around her neck.
“Listen, both of you,” she whispered. “I’m going to have to stay here while you go. There are some things I want to say. I want you to remember something. For everything you do, there’s someone above you who knows if it’s good or bad. Always and always. There are times when someone might tell you what to do. But you’ll be judged on what you do, not on who told you to do it. Never do something you know is wrong, even if someone instructs you to. There’s always someone who knows and remembers.”
“So I don’t have to do what Lenna says?” said Binnan Darnan.
“No. You don’t.”
“Ha! She spent all day telling me what to do.”
“Have not,” said Lenna. “It was you who told me I must go fix the tower.”
“Wasn’t this good advice? You solved it!”
“Listen,�
�� interrupted Aitta seriously. “All the things you do are your own. Choose things that are kind.”
“I promise,” said Lenna, squeezing the thin, strangely fragile hand.
“Don’t promise,” said Aitta sternly. “Just know that there’s someone watching your choices. You’ll have to answer for all the wrong you do. Just remember that.”
“This is church magic.” Lenna frowned at the idea.
“Don’t be afraid of it,” said Aitta seriously.
Talvi came in and led the girls out. “Go talk to Baldur,” he said. “Gullvig has things to say, and Baldur says you should be there to hear her.”
They walked back up the smooth adobe hall to the front room. Looking out through the four archways, they could see that the fire sea had burnt down to dark maroon billows of smoke. All the fire seemed to be receding. Even the clay under their feet felt cooler. Lenna leapt up and caught the seat of a giant chair, waggled her legs back and forth swingset-style and swung up to sit across from Baldur. She leaned out over the seat on her belly, her feet sticking out the back of the chair, and caught Binnan Darnan’s hand and pulled her up. Nanna gave them plates of red quiche that tasted sweet and sour.
Baldur skritched his arm vaguely. “Welcome back, and well done. What you found inside the hill was the essence of gold. Gold is a fulcrum for the world,” he explained. “Magic bends around it. Everybody wants it, and human desire creates magic. In a fire world, the desire to own gold was channelled into Surtur’s fire magic. Without gold, the heat of mankind’s desire has faded to a manageable level. Fire no longer consumes the Earth. We’re lucky Hodur knew where to find the essence of gold, which was stored in the legendary Danageld. In Gullvig’s care it will be protected from destruction. Now. In this version of the world, there were two magics.”
“Yeah, now that the fire’s mostly gone, won’t those fast trees take over the world?” Binnan Darnan asked.
“Yes,” said Hodur, standing beside their chair. “The cities of humanity will be engulfed and lost and hidden in the woods.”
“Until the world Changes again, we’ll need to stop the flood of trees,” said Baldur. “Gullvig, you told me that you know how to do this?”
“Ah-ha, so I do. A secret thing I’ll teach to this little lady.” Gullvig swished her ragged sleeves at Lenna. In her hand appeared a tiny tree on a ball of mud. With her old shoes, she scratched the clay floor and planted the spruce sapling. She pressed the mud into the floor and smooshed the edges into a pinched pyramid. “Firsty-lursty, you start up the magic. Woop, huzzah!”
She sprinkled powder on the tree and exhaled a long stream of breath onto it.
Lenna watched as the tree began growing, an inch a second, gradually shooting up toward the ceiling. “Do I Change it?” she asked. “Or cast a spell? Or--”
“Aah, my pretty, you are looking across the magic. But, but but but, look into it.” Gullvig twirled her long brown knotted fingers mystically.
Lenna reluctantly slid down to the floor, bump, paced across the clay, bent down and squinted hard at the zoomy tree.
It was a tree. A blue spruce with spreading branches. It grew very fast, bending and twisting under its bark.
“I’m looking at it,” said Lenna.
Gullvig grinned, showing half a dozen slimy brown teeth. “Are you looking at the tree or at the magic, my duck?”
“Oh. Okay. Look into the magic. Right.” So Lenna tried to forget about the tree and imagined that there was more to it than a prickly bunch of branches.
“There we is. You’re going to walk into the magic in just a minute. Little Blacklocks and the elders will watch from afar. The places you walk across will cause ripples, and we’ll follow your path so we’ll be there when you come out the door. Now--”
But something distracted Lenna. “Talvi?” she said, perking, leaning around the narrow heaving tree. She turned and ran like lightning back to Aitta’s room, where Talvi had remained. Weeping came from inside.
“Ono.” Lenna’s hands flew to her mouth. Someone was dead. Someone was dead. Who was dead? Talvi was slumped over the bed, crying. “What happened?” she whispered.
Aitta and Talvi both looked up at her. They looked very happy. “I’m going to have a baby,” said Aitta. Talvi’s eyes were dripping with happy tears.
“Binnan Darnan Binnan Darnan come hear what happened! It’s good! It’s good!” Lenna’s heart swelled with excitement. “When will it be, Aitta?”
“I’m not sure. A few months.”
“Months? I must wait months for there to be a baby?”
Aitta smiled.
“But you need to tell Kaldi! And Brugda and and Joukka Pelata and and--”
“No,” said Aitta. “We’ll tell Kaldi, of course. But this is ours only.”
“Me and Binnan Darnan’ll help you think of names! And we’ll pick out toys and clothes for it and we will sing it songs--”
“No,” said Aitta firmly.
Puzzled, sympathetic, Talvi rubbed her arm with the back of his hand and tipped his head to look at her. She glared back, as if she were a hurt animal.
“It’s ours, and it will be private,” she repeated.
“Not too private,” he whispered.
“Ours,” she growled. Her arched eyebrows wrinkled together.
“Okay,” said Binnan Darnan from the doorway. She took Lenna’s hand.
“Talvi, Gullvig says I’m going to be going inside a magic tree soon. Are you going to stay here with Aitta or will you go with Binnan Darnan to follow the ripples?” Lenna asked.
He sighed beardily. “Aitta, I need to go with them.”
“Don’t you dare leave me and him--” She gripped her belly--“alone in that woman’s house.”
He sighed again. “Aiti, are you really going to trust the girls to go by themselves?”
Her eyes flashed. “Do not leave me alone in ... her house. I’ll kill somebody.”
“The goddess could go with them and Hodur could stay with you, Aiti. Or Gullvig could stay.”
“No. It has to be you.”
“Aiti, it’s only going to be for a day or two.” Talvi looked irritated. “I can’t let the girls run off by themselves. We have to look after our responsibilities to them first.”
“I don’t care what we have to do. You stay. Send an illusion.”
“Aiti, there’re so many things that can go wrong. You know there are.”
The two girls stood just outside the door, waiting.
“Send it. And stay,” said Aitta.
“Aiti, I don’t want to. Aiti, have we really got to fight on the day you tell me?”
She leaned forward to give him a look, grimaced in pain and laid her head back again. “Just--just do what I said. Please.” Her voice was scratchy.
There weren’t any chairs in the room. Talvi sat on the floor with his back against the hard orange wall. He propped his knees up and closed his eyes. Binnan Darnan hid behind Lenna.
Talvi stood up. He walked to the doorway. And he also sat against the wall beside the bed. There were two Talvis. One was crouched in the corner beside Aitta, frowning in concentration. The other was a gray-blue copy, walking. When the copy spoke to the girls, the voice was strained and quavery and blurty, lacking breath.
“I’llexplainittt-t-toyouinam-m-m-minute.” The Talvi that crouched beside Aitta winced and clenched a hand over his gut. “Comebackto the o-otherroom.”
Talvi walked like a marionnette’s shadow, fading in and out or reality and flapping his limbs like a newborn foal. Lenna tried as hard as she could not to stare at the doppelgänger or to run away from him.
What was this flickering shadow Talvi? How did he do this? He’d made a replica of himself, just by sitting and concentrating. Was it some secret magic that Talvi had never talked about? Did Brugda know about this power? Was it part of being Brugda’s son or Bres’ son, being part Fomor and part Old One? Besides, what had happened to Lugh and Ethlinn, who were probably probably Talvi’s son and .
.. other wife? Was it like Pol and all his wives and kids? So many questions.
Aitta had known that Talvi could do this, obviously. She was the one who had asked him to. Was she a regular mortal or some magical person herself? She could summon angels, of course. But she never talked about who she was or where she came from. She never talked.
Lenna wished she could hear all the thoughts that went on under the blonde-frosted dark hair. Did people who didn’t talk have words going through their heads? Or was Aitta’s mind as silent as her mouth? There was no way of knowing. Lenna kept all these questions to herself. But was that just making all the not-talking worse?
The three of them were back in the living room, so tall its ceiling was in darkness. Nanna’s enormous slender back and platinum hair were still muddy. She was glaring at the intruding spruce tree. It had hit the ceiling, bent, grown downwards to the floor, hit the floor and was growing back upwards toward the ceiling like the letter N.
“Welly well, the unveiling of a secret,” quacked Gullvig to the vague outline of Shadow Talvi.
When shadow Talvi tried to nod, he folded in half and unfolded like a finger puppet.
“WillI beableto followthegirls likethis?” he gasped. The words didn’t really have any weight or breath behind them. Parts of him vanished like a shifting shadow, then returned.
“You’re not the Allnorn, nor are you a magician of nature,” said Baldur. “Neither are we. None of us can enter the magic of nature. If the world Changes into a world of shadow, then you could follow her. But the door--”
“Yes, the door,” muttered Gullvig to Baldur far above her. “The door has rules, my caution, that it does, and the rules follow themselves. Magic is a shifting thing at the best of times, and where you enter is rarely where you leave.”