Here’s the trick: Endings only look like endings from the front. From behind, they look like beginnings.
It’s the second-to-last day in March, and the sky over Pandemonium City is a riot of orange and gray. It’s getting darker earlier, the sun swallowed by the ravenous hunger of autumn. Daylight Savings is nearly done. It’s not quite cold yet, but it’s getting there, and winter is, by all accounts, definitely coming.
The inside of the car is warm, even with the top down. Sigmund’s in the passenger seat, dressed in ratty jeans and his old black N7 hoodie. His head is back, dark curls fighting with the wind. Exhaustion rolls off him in waves, and not only because he’s spent the whole day shifting boxes of crap into my apartment.
Two months ago, Sigmund Sussman killed a man. Well, allegorically speaking. But allegorically doesn’t count for much, not at three a.m. with the feel of rune-scarred wood beneath his palms. With the memory of the way Baldr’s skin had tried pushing back against Gungnir’s bite. Tried, and failed.
To say “all things” swore no harm to Ásgarðr’s favored son is, perhaps, an overstatement. The great beast that gave its tooth never made such a foolish oath. It loathed the golden-haired little brat, and shed no tears when he died.
Not that first time, nor the second.
Baldr was born to die, that’s what dying gods are for. But it doesn’t mean Sigmund was born to be the man to do it. And all the allegory—all the happily ever afters—in the world can’t wash the blood out of his mind.
So he hasn’t been sleeping well. I know this, because he’s mostly been not sleeping in my bed, and I don’t sleep at all. Not since being imprisoned in a cave for a thousand years, poison burning my eyes to milky blanks. Rebirth may have given me back my breath and heartbeats, but the blindness and the insomnia stayed. I don’t mind so much. Half measures are all I’m made from now.
Allegory. Go figure.
Point being, Sigmund stays at my place, most nights. That apartment I bought for Lain, a literal lifetime ago, all trendy open-plan and within convenient walking distance to work—the head office of my company, Lokabrenna, Inc. Sigmund tells me he sleeps over to save on petrol and on parking. I don’t mind the excuse. We both know the real reason.
We’re taking things slow, for both our sakes. For Sigmund, even living out of home is scary new territory, let alone cohabiting with a lover. For me, I just don’t want to fuck things up. I was celibate for a thousand years, once. A few weeks now won’t kill me.
I hope.
Two months ago, I destroyed the world. Today, I helped Sigmund move into Lain’s apartment. Tomorrow, I’m going to have to make a trip. Something I’ve been putting off, and something that might see me out of the city for a while. So, tonight, we’re going out. To celebrate.
“Hey, Sig. We’re here.”
Sig blinks awake when I touch him, drawing the deep breath of the chronically wrecked as he does so. The taste of his exhausted disorientation is bitter in my throat, and the guilt of it makes me say, “If you’re too tired . . .”
But Sigmund shakes his head, pushing himself out of his slouch and giving me a smile. It’s worn around the edges, but genuine, and his fingers are cool where he laces them through mine. “Nah,” he says. “I’m okay. Or will be, after some food.”
Sigmund doesn’t lie—can’t lie—and so I return his smile with a kiss, then pop my door and step out of the car. He does the same on his side, then joins me on the pavement.
We’re in Aldershot, Panda’s most overpriced suburb. My billionaire CEO alter ego, Travis Hale, has a mansion here somewhere. It’s a huge, austere thing. All harsh right angles and enormous plate-glass windows, settled on a three-acre block of landscaped native garden that fades into undeveloped bush just past the boundary fence. TV crews come and film it sometimes, and Travis hosts parties there at others. But that’s about all it’s good for.
It occurs to me Sigmund hasn’t seen it. I should take him up there one day. We can skate around the floorboards in our socks. It’ll be awesome.
One day, not today. Today, we’re at Aldershot’s local shops: a little ring of brick leftovers from the 1970s. Highlights include an organic produce store, a massage parlor, a gourmet butcher and delicatessen, a bookstore, a post office, and a restaurant.
It’s called Umami, and it’s the best in the city—one of the best in the country—serving Australian-Asian fusion cuisine to the nouveau riche and anyone else prepared to brave the four-hundred-dollar-a-head set menu and six-month waiting list.
As a local, Travis has a permanent reservation. Tonight, he’s bequeathed it to his special guests.
Inside, Umami is all black lacquer screens and red lanterns and tasteful art pieces. A neat young man greets us with gracious obsequiousness at the door, before showing us to a table in a quiet corner. He goes through the ritual of laying our napkins on our laps, then hurries off to fetch water and amuse-bouche.
When he’s gone, Sig leans toward me, eyes very wide. “Lain,” he says, “this place is really posh.”
I laugh. “Yeah. It’s not bad. I like Jaques Raymond better, I think, but Melbourne’s a long way to go right now.” I could charter a plane, I guess. Maybe next time.
“You could’ve told me,” Sigmund hisses. “I would’ve dressed up a bit.”
“You look fine, man.”
“How do you know? I thought you were supposed to be blind.”
I rock my hand back and forth, indicating ambivalence. The Wyrdsight doesn’t “see,” exactly. But I’m not blind blind, either.
“I still feel . . . underdressed,” Sigmund says, his words tasting of shame and inadequacy. He slumps back in his seat, pushes his glasses up his nose, and tries to hide behind the table, away from the stares of the other diners.
They are all pretty dressed up, now that I think about it. So I say, “Sig, look. The reality is, when you’re coming in to pay a thousand dollars for a meal—”
“A thousand whats? Lain!”
“—then nobody gives a shit what you’re wearing. This is Panda. Rich geeks in T-shirts and ripped jeans crop up here like single-use functions in bad code. Their money’s just as plastic as everyone else’s.”
Sigmund slouches in his chair. “A thousand dollars?” he says. “Really? Man, I can’t afford that.”
“You’re not,” I point out. “Travis is. This is his table.” I point, and Sigmund follows the gesture up the wall, to where a painting hangs above us. Abstract, but still obviously of the LB building, three-column statue-slash-logo-slash-prison and all. “We’ll be fine.”
Sigmund picks at the tablecloth, then picks up a fork and stares at it. It’s a fancy fork, about $50 per piece to buy: the high price of “design,” of the lifestyle, of the same principles LB is built on.
“Rich people,” Sig says.
“Mortal gods,” I agree, just as the waiter returns with all the discreet timing of the impeccably trained.
He pours the water and introduces the food; sesame-crusted salmon sashimi with ginger and wasabi, served in little handmade ceramic spoons. Then he explains the menu, all eight courses of it. With matching wines. I know the exact moment Sigmund realizes he doesn’t get a choice—realizes that everything is dinner—by the taste of shock and panic in the air.
The waiter finishes with, “Are there any food allergies or requirements tonight I should tell the chef about?”
“We’ll skip the oysters,” I say.
“We can substitute the vegetarian option, if you’d prefer,” says the waiter, unperturbed. “It’s Burmese melon salad.”
“Sounds great.”
“Anything else?”
“You right with the shellfish?” I ask Sigmund.
“Um,” he says, and bites his lip.
He’s not allergic, he just doesn’t eat things from the ocean that don’t come with scales, the last remaining vestiges of his paternal religiosity. Sig’s father, David, might be distanced from the dogma, but he never ate shellfish growing up, so never thought to introduce it to his son, either. Funny how these things turn out.
“No,” Sig says after a moment. “It’s fine. I’ll try it.”
“Certainly, sir.”
When the waiter vanishes back behind the screen, Sigmund adds, “I figure if I don’t like something here, I don’t like it anywhere, right?”
“I can call the guy back, if you’re feeling adventurous,” I say, grinning. “Get him to re-add the oysters.”
“You could,” Sig says, mischief glinting through his fatigue, “but you got rid of them pretty quick. So I’m kinda betting you’re the one who doesn’t like them.”
“Hah!” I say. “Do you know who I am? Legendary eating contest participant, hello?”
“One, you lost that—”
“Eating the dishes was cheating and didn’t count!” (Because I didn’t think of it. Also, the guy I lost to? Literal personification of fire. Like I said, massive cheating.)
“—and two, I still reckon you hate oysters.”
“They’re like drinking snot,” I say. “Someone else’s cold, lumpy snot.”
“Oh. Dude. Gross.”
“See?”
“I’m not sure I can even eat my spoonfish now.” Sigmund eyes the item in question, trying to decide how to eat it without embarrassing himself.
I help him out by taking my own spoon and gulping the contents down, all at once. Two chews and it’s gone. Sigmund copies the gesture, frowns for a moment, then says, “That’s pretty good. I don’t usually like salmon.”
“That’s the trick,” I say. “People pay a shitload to come here and get no choice over the menu. The chef has to make it good—all of it—else it’s Kitchen Nightmares time.”
“Guess I never thought about it that way before.” Sigmund stares into the bowl of his now-empty spoon. “I always kinda figured, fancy food . . . it was something you had to develop a taste for, y’know?”
“Sig, ‘developing a taste’ is for things that are disgusting, like cigarettes and oysters,” I say. “The truth is, the idea that rich people have some kind of special refined palette that sets them apart from the un-rich is a myth. One spread by rich people. Good food is good food, no matter who you are. That’s the whole point of it.”
Sigmund nods, and I feel him turning this new information over in his head. Processing. Then he grins, and says, “Except for oysters.”
I grin, too, all sharp teeth and scarred lips. “Right,” I say. “Except for oysters.”
----------------------------------------
Course number two is a roulade of smoked ocean trout, paired with chardonnay. Unsurprisingly, we’re talking about computers when it arrives. Specifically, my computers.
“It was the seventies,” I say. “Back then, all the hippie peace-and-love bullshit was dying faster than an alcoholic in the desert, and LB did coal. Only coal. We dug it up, we processed it, we sold it, we made a mint.”
“Sounds lucrative.” Sigmund sips his chardonnay with the trepidation of someone unused to wine.
“It was,” I say. “Still would be. But that’s the thing about coal, y’know. It’s a finite resource. It wasn’t going to be around forever. Not like yours truly.” Sig gives half a laugh around his drink. “We had computers back in those days, right. But they were—” I gesture.
“Enormous,” Sigmund translates. “So I’ve heard. Like. Rooms, or whatever.”
“Right. Very uninspiring things. They did payroll. Stuff like that. We had them, but . . . eh. We had them because we had them, that was all. But in the seventies, you started to get all these stories. Out of the States, mostly. People soldering together these things in their garages, these bastard hybrids of calculators and typewriters and the punchcard reel-churners we had.
“It was the microchip,” I continue. “Before that, back in the fifties, it was all vacuum tubes and whatever. Big shit. But you get the microchip, and— Well, it’s called the fucking microchip for a reason, isn’t it? ’71, that was the first microprocessor, care of Intel. But those guys, they didn’t get it. They still thought they were making this shit for niche markets. Universities, whatever. Except the kids in those places, they were looking at this stuff, and they were thinking, Well . . . how do I get one?”
“They made their own,” Sigmund says.
“Right. They made their fucking own. We had these guys, in head office. They used to hang around until fuck o’clock, get in at the same. One night, I wandered down to see what the shit they were up to. They had this . . . this fucking thing. All circuits and wood, spread out over a desk. They’d mail-ordered it from the fucking States, were putting it together.”
“One of the first personal computers,” Sigmund says. Then, dropping his eyes and pushing his glasses up his nose, “We, uh. We got taught this story at uni.”
“Right,” I say. “Well, it’s true”—more or less—“and I was all, ‘What the fuck is this shit?’ So they showed me.”
Sigmund nods. “That must’ve been pretty cool.”
I have to laugh. “Sig, the thing was a fucking glorified calculator. It was nothing. Homemade wooden case . . . a piece of junk. But it reeked of Wyrd. That shit doesn’t happen often, but it happens. Like the echo of a scream: ‘Pay attention, this is gonna be on the fucking exam.’ And that wooden pile of shit? That’s what it felt like. It wasn’t anything. But it was going to be.”
“And you wanted in?”
I shake my head. “No. I didn’t want ‘in.’ I wanted it. All of it. That night, I was on a fucking flight out to America. I tracked down those fucking hippies who’d sold the kit, wanted to buy everything out from under them, their fucking souls included. And those fucks, man. They looked at me, and you know what they said?”
Sigmund grins. He knows what they said. “They said they had something better.”
I nod. “A motherfucking monitor. Green and fucking black, cathode-ray piece of shit. But it fit on a desk, and that was it. That was history. I said I’d give them everything. Within a month, we’d rebranded, had the first Pyre fucking computer going for manufacture. By the end of that year, I was selling off the old shit, the coal. BHP and Oceanid were fucking lapping it up, the suckers. I cut whatever I had to to finance these two smartass kids and their fucking dream.”
“Everyone thought you were crazy,” Sigmund says. He’s heard this part of the story, too. Seen the made-for-TV movie, even.
“The board kept trying no confidence,” I say. “Shit like that. It was a ruthless fucking time.”
“But you won.”
I nod, swirling the wine inside my glass, smelling the peaches and the oak. “I won,” I say. “Eventually.”
“ ‘The Purges,’ right?” Not my choice of name, and I still wince to hear it.
“Yeah,” I say. “Yeah, it was— anyone who wasn’t with the new program? They were gone. Their shit tossed out onto the street overnight, some of them. It was brutal, but we did what we did.”
Coal is a finite resource, there’s only so much of it buried in the ground. But the future? The future is forever, always.
“And now we have these.” Sigmund’s holding up his phone—his Pyre Flame—and giving something like a grin. “This is what you felt? The day when everyone walked around with their own computer, stuffed into their pocket.”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
I close my eyes, breathe, and feel.
“No,” I say eventually. “Not this. This is still the journey. We’re not at the destination. Not yet.”
The future is not now.
But it will be. One day.
----------------------------------------
By the time the duck arrives, Sigmund discovers a furious need to piss, care of the wine. He manages to make it to the bathroom and back with only a minimum of staggering.
When he returns, he leans forward across the table and says, voice not quite a whisper, “Man, I’m pretty drunk.”
“It’s a lot of wine,” I say. About a bottle each, and that’s assuming the waiters weren’t being generous with the pouring, which they were. “It’s normal. Drink some water.” Sigmund isn’t much of a drinker, is the guy who’ll spend an entire evening nursing a single Corona until it goes flat and warm.
“This food is really nice.”
“I know,” I say, grinning around my duck. Then, the dangerous confession: “It’s a weakness, mortal food. One of the many things I don’t miss about home.”
Sigmund blinks at the comment, then takes a guess: “You mean in Asgard?” His pronunciation is still terrible.
I nod. “An eternity of charred goat and apples and skyr.”
“ ‘Skyr’?”
“Viking yogurt.”
“Oh.” Sigmund peers at his plate, trying to identify what he can of the ingredients. After a moment, he gives up, and instead says: “You don’t talk about Asgard very much.”
It’s not posing a question so much as it is seeking an invitation to ask one. I make a noncommittal noise in reply. “There’s not very much to talk about,” I lie. “I wasn’t there, then I was, and now I’m not again.” Sigmund winces at the aggressive not-truthiness of these statements.
“You don’t miss it?”
“No,” I say, maybe too quickly. If this one’s a lie, Sigmund is the only one of us who can tell. I don’t ask him for clarification.
“Then why are you going back?” Sigmund does not look at me when he asks it, eyes focused on his own plate with ferocious intensity.
Ah. Yes. That.
There’s a long, horrible moment where I don’t know what to say. I fill it with a sip of wine. Sigmund scarfs a potato. As he’s chewing, I say, “Because.” Then can’t think of anything else.
“ ‘Because’?” he quotes back.
“Because.”
This earns me a scowl, thick clotted waves of red-brown concern oozing from Sigmund’s Wyrd. “Lain . . .” he starts.
Here’s the thing. I both haven’t been to Ásgarðr for a millennium and was just there two months ago. That’s the downside of being two people at once. As Lain-Loki, I’m exiled from the place, presumed dead. As Loki-Baldr, I’m the goddamn king of it. This is what is commonly known as a “loose end.” In this case, said loose end has a physical embodiment in the form of one very ugly magic spear, Gungnir, which functions as a sort of de facto symbol of office. Baldr inherited the thing from his father, Odin. Now I have it. The chances that some áss brat is going to come looking for it sooner rather than later is fairly high, and I’ve had enough assholes from my past gate-crashing my city as of late. I think it’s time to return the favor.
I try explaining this to Sigmund, complete with hand gestures and a lot of blather about fate and destiny and Wyrd that sounds unconvincing even to me. Maybe the truth of it is I just want to go home. Miðgarðr is nice and all, but . . .
But.
But this one I don’t say to Sigmund. Because Sigmund is Sigmund and Sigmund is mortal and he’s a Miðgarðr boy, through and through. I don’t want him to start thinking that’s not enough. Because Ásgarðr was home and Sigmund is home, and getting this one wrong is a mistake I’ve made before. It’s not one I plan on making again.
So. I’ll go to Ásgarðr, look around, say hi to the old gang, wave Gungnir around a bit. That’ll take a day, maybe two, tops. Then I’m back. To Panda and to LB and, most of all, to Sig. Easy done.
Sigmund is still looking at me from across the table, all big brown eyes and seeping uncertainty. I give him my best, most rakish grin, reaching across the table to squeeze his hand with my own.
“It’ll be fine, Sig,” I say. “I’ll be back before you know it.”
His cool fingers intertwine with my own, and he looks down, before quickly bringing our joined hands up to his lips to brush a kiss across the knuckles.
“Yeah,” he says. “Okay. I’m sure it’ll be fine.” Then he smiles, and I try not to melt.
Eight courses, matched wines, and by the time we stumble out of the restaurant it’s approaching midnight and Sigmund is as pissed as Thor in Útgarðr. He leans on my arm as I take him back to the car, his eyes heavy and feet dragging.
“Is this where you take me back to your lair and have your wicked way with me?” he asks.
“This is where I take you back to my lair and roll you into bed, you drunkard. Just what kind of monster do you think I am?”
“A cute one,” he says. Or possibly the wine does. “A nice one.”
“Mm, don’t say that too loudly,” I say, folding him into the seat. “You’ll ruin my reputation.” Whatever’s left of it.
I get into the driver’s side myself, the car’s engine coming to life as I do. Sigmund looks over at the sound. “Hey. You can’t drive. You had all that wine, too.”
“Mortal wine,” I say, pulling the car out of its parking space. “It doesn’t count.”
“Are you sure? Maybe you should let the car drive.”
I laugh, lifting my hands off the wheel. It continues to turn, taking us out into the street.
Sigmund smiles and closes his eyes. “I had a really nice time tonight,” he says.
“Me too.”
Then: “You take all your dates there, huh?”
“Uh . . .” Jesus, Sig.
But all he says is, “Next time, I pick the restaurant. And pay. Somewhere special, just for us.”
I’m silent for a moment, then: “Yeah, that sounds . . . I’d like that, man. A lot.”
----------------------------------------
By the time we get home, Sigmund’s starting to sober up enough for the hangover to creep in. I follow him into the bathroom, making sure he doesn’t slip and die while he brushes his teeth. Then he changes, takes another piss, and grumbles when I make him drink a glass of water and down two Advil.
“You’ll thank me in the morning,” I say, sitting on top of the bed while he settles himself beneath the covers.
“ ‘ll be gone inna mornin’,” he points out, mostly to the pillow.
“Yeah. Yeah, I will. So text me.”
He makes a nondescript noise, curling his head against my thigh.
I watch him until he falls asleep. It doesn’t take long.
He drools when he sleeps, and snores. Sigmund is all awkwardness and acne, hunched shoulders and double chins. His skin and hair and eyes are dark, he isn’t tall or fast or strong, and no one would ever look at him and think that, once upon a time, he used to be a Viking goddess.
Sigyn, the Victorious. A shipbuilder’s daughter. One who grew up chopping wood and dreaming of distant lands. Who didn’t ever want to marry, lest she never get to see them.
One who, in the end, caught the eye of the most capricious of the gods. My eye. Well, Loki’s eye. Adopted brother of Odin, the monster slithering through the gilded halls of heaven. Certainly not an easy man to stay married to, but Sigyn did.
None of us are the people we used to be. But that’s okay, and change is good. I should know, I made my fortune on it.
When Sig’s snores start to rattle the windows, I slip off the bed and out onto the balcony. There, beneath the moon’s wide, silver eye, I lose my human skin and unfurl my wings.
It feels like coming home. Shedding Lain’s too-tight, too-fragile body for something bigger, broader, more monstrous. Seven feet tall, with curving horns and stitched-shut lips. Mottled-dark skin and feathers that shimmer like flame or float like ash, and finished off with a tail and claws and blank-blind eyes that glow a dim and poisonous green.
This is me, my jötunn skin. Monsters and giants, enemies of the gods, first children of the Tree, elemental and eternal.
Wind ruffling through my feathers—on my head, my arms, my legs, my tail—I hop up onto the railing.
Then I fall.
Then spread my wings, and fly.
I’m better at this than I was the first time I tried it, though I’m still not much of an acrobat in the air. My body’s too heavy and my tail’s too long, but that’s what the feathers on my limbs are for, to compensate. To steer and turn. It doesn’t quite come naturally, not yet, and I have to will myself to hold my wings out steady, to not flap, to trust the currents in the air.
That’s the other thing I did wrong, that first night: too much goddamn flapping. Because that’s how flying works, right? Birds flap, up they go.
Did you know different birds have different ways of flying? Because, hell, I didn’t. Not until Sig bought me a book on prehistoric birds. (It’s the tail, it makes me look like a fucking archaeopteryx, that and the little wing claws, whose main purpose seems to be making sarcastic “air quotes” in conversation.) The gift was a joke, but the introduction had a whole section on the evolution of bird flight and, go figure. Turns out that by length and breadth and feather, my wings just aren’t the flapping sort. They’re the soaring sort.
So this is how I relearned to fly, by reading a book on fucking dinosaurs, then jumping off high buildings. It works, more or less. I haven’t hit the ground yet. Much.
Flight is freedom. The wind in my feathers, Pandemonium a glittering galaxy that sprawls beneath. The dark abyss of the lake, the spiderweb lines of the roads. The dim glowing backdrop from the houses. My city, my power. And, at the center of it all, the bright and glowing sun of the Lokabrenna building, the axle around which the gyre turns.
How could I ever leave this place?
Nostalgia is one thing, but the truth of it is that I’m not gonna be the next goddamn king of Ásgarðr, Allfather v2.0. That was Baldr’s destiny, the fate given to him by his father. The one I abandoned when I decided to eat Loki’s heart and take his road instead.
And a Loki can’t be king of Ásgarðr. Even when he was—after Ragnarøkkr, when things got capital-C Complicated—he wasn’t really. He thought he was Baldr. Everyone thought he was Baldr. That’s how he ruled, under a usurped name.
And he fucked it up. Big-time.
He doesn’t like me disturbing the memories, so I try not to. But I get flashes, every now and then. Some things he shows me, that dark and binding thread that lurks somewhere deep within my psyche. Old me, Loki v1.0. I may have stolen his name, but he isn’t gone. And he doesn’t like me much.
I don’t take it personally. Honestly, I don’t think he likes anyone much, except maybe his wife. I feel him stir sometimes when Sig’s around. Not in response to Sigmund himself, but to the frozen core of the goddess underneath.
I feel her move, as well. The first time I saw Sigmund, that part of him was buried. Distant. Dormant. Now it isn’t. She unnerves him, I think. She’s not quite him except in every way she is, and she can take his body when she needs it: can speak with his mouth and touch with his hands. Sigyn is terrifying and she’s ruthless—that I do remember—but she’s kind, too, and gentle. She has such honor and compassion in her, such strength and determination. Enough to reweave the very Wyrd itself.
That’s why she won’t harm Sigmund. He’s her creation, the vessel of her rebirth. She’ll drag him through the fire when he falters, but will stand aside to let him take the final step with his own will. She loves him.
She loves Loki, too. Her capricious, bitter husband.
Me, I’m not so sure of. At the moment I’m just hoping that if I’m kind to Sigmund, if I honor Loki’s legacy, then Sigyn will get her happy ending and won’t re-erase all of existence to try it for a third time.
It’s not the worst destiny I could be facing.
Even if I am still terrible at landings.
It’s the tail, again. It’s the wrong shape to slow me down enough to make the process something elegant and gentle. The feathers on my thighs and butt do their best, but I still mostly “land” by falling. Tonight, it’s onto the outstretched arm of a streetlight. They’re bigger up here than they look from the ground, but the whole structure still sways when I slam into it.
“Unnghf!”
My gut takes most of the impact, all four claws scrambling to find a perch. I manage to pull myself up, sitting hunched above the street like some flaming hipster gargoyle, tail trailing down below.
The pole is still swaying when I pull the memory of a cigarette out of the nothingspace—no clothes in jötunn form means no pockets, and I really should look into that—light it with a thought, then get down to the business of sating my nicotine addiction.
I’m trying to quit. I’ve been trying to quit for thirtysomething years, but this time I’m really trying. For Sig’s sake, because he’s a nonsmoker, and for mine, because he won’t make out with me if I stink of cigarettes. Motivation’s ninety percent of the way, but this is the rest of it: an indulgence, every now and then. Somewhere that won’t give Sigmund cancer.
In all honesty, I’m not completely sure where I am. Between Haven and West Hazel, I think, but these are the new suburbs, and I stopped paying close attention to Panda’s town planning sometime circa 1980. It’s a growth market out here. Mostly young families pushed to the outer reaches by rising prices in the center, by the gentrification that sees cheap flats torn down and replaced by million-dollar duplexes.
LB makes millionaires. That’s what we’re renowned for, being the employer of choice for any kid with a half-baked idea and a Swiss bank account already reserved in their name. Land a decent job at one of LB’s subsidiaries and it’s a one-way ticket to the nerderati. For a mansion in Aldershot and an elevator down to a cellar, stacked with vintage Grange.
For everyone else, it means a rising cost of living, an hour commute, and not a single free medical clinic between here and Melbourne.
Meanwhile, a bunch of millionaire twentysomethings sit around on bean bags, patting themselves on the back for synergizing crowdsourced phone apps to solve every problem faced by the young and privileged.
Welcome to the New World Order.
Somewhere beneath the streetlight’s orange glow, a lone Toyota hurtles down the freeway. Fleeing from brushed chrome and glass and dreams of progress. Back toward the comfortably numb plush suburbia of home.
It’s not the worst idea I’ve heard all night.
So I finish my cigarette (immolating the butt into ash, Sig hates it when I litter), open my wings, and let the wind carry me home.
----------------------------------------
Sigmund is still asleep when I slip back through the balcony doors and into the apartment. I watch him for a while, but his mind is still and dark, undisturbed by dreams of blood and murder. I hope it stays that way, and I kiss his shoulder lightly—he huffs, turns over into his pillow, but doesn’t wake—before I make my way down the stairs and into the living room.
The apartment is two floors of clean, modern, open-plan hipster paradise. Three bedrooms up top, one and a half bathrooms, plus one big combined kitchen-dining-living area. Everything is white and beige, accented in wood and stone, with soft-close cupboards hidden in wall panels and a tiny indoor garden-slash-water-feature tucked beneath the glass-floored staircase.
It’s not the sort of apartment Lain could afford. I should probably fire the assistant who bought it for going so far outside the spec, but, well. It’s not like I need the kayfabe anymore, and it is a pretty nice place to live.
It also has extra-high ceilings. For someone seven feet tall and horned, that’s an important feature.
I head toward the front door, pressing my hand against the adjacent wall. The façade springs away, revealing a coat cupboard hidden behind it. True to form, it’s full of coats. Mostly Lain’s, but a few of Sig’s and at least one of Travis’s, too. And, behind them all—tucked against the boots and umbrellas—is a spear.
Once upon a time, an idiot thief cut off a sleeping woman’s hair. A metaphor, of some description, and far more metaphorical than the anger of said woman’s husband. So, in repatriation for his crime, our idiot thief agreed to get the woman some new locks, ones made from pure gold. In order to do this, without payment, he set two groups of dwarven craftsmen in a competition against each other, to see who could produce the greatest treasure.
This is where the spear, Gungnir, comes from. It was taken by the idiot thief’s adopted brother. Odin, king of the northern gods.
There were other treasures, too. Even the idiot thief got his own, after a fashion. It’s called Vartari.
The leather stitches in my lips.
Vartari’s still there, in my jötunn skin—Lain and Travis just have scars—but at least it doesn’t keep my mouth shut anymore.
That’s probably a metaphor, too. Of some sort.
Gungnir probably is as well. The thing is a six-foot broomstick with a foot-and-a-half-long dragon tooth tied to the top, and there is no war in all the Realms that it can’t start. That used to be Odin’s game, back when we were all young and stupid. He’d find two groups of mortals, getting along mostly okay, then he’d throw Gungnir over their heads. Then we’d all laugh over how petty and violent mortals were, then send in the valkyrjur to pick the corpses clean. That was the old days, before Odin’s star began to wane and the mortals, tired of cruelty and of infighting, swapped out the blood eagle for the hammer, the war of Gungnir for the war of Mjölnir, the war of Thor against the giants. Against the Other.
Maybe mortals get the gods that they deserve.
I pick up Gungnir. I don’t like touching it. Odin’s stolen magic seeps out of the wood, makes it stink of pain and rotting flesh. But Odin is dead, and I’m not, and this is my legacy. Not the legacy the old bastard was hoping for, but maybe gods get the things we deserve, too.
I leave the apartment and take the elevator.
The doors open again on floor seven, revealing a young couple saying their good-byes just inside the landing. When they step into the elevator, their eyes fall on the spot where I’m standing, leaning against the mirror, spear in one hand. My wings are gone, but the rest of me is still me—horns and scars and tattoos and all—and for that one single breath, the mortals see it.
Then they look away and let the doors slide shut.
This is what it means to be a god, to be Wyrdborn, to be woven from the stuff of hopes and dreams and fears. I could make the kids see me. Could grab them, scream at them, shove my Wyrd down their throats until they choke.
I could, but I won’t. Wyrdtouched are too much of a handful. I already have Sig and his father and his friends to deal with. I don’t need to go adding random strangers to the pile as well.
Wyrdtouched mortals are dangerous, even more than gods. We’re powerful, but predictable. Have well-worn rails we rattle down for all eternity. But mortals? Mortals have imagination. They do things, unpredictable things. And they kill their gods, always. Something about the human condition.
The couple gets off on the ground floor. Tonight, he’ll dream of endless flames. Tomorrow, she’ll look down to find she’s spent a whole meeting doodling a pair of grinning, stitched-shut lips. Then they’ll both laugh, forget, and move on. That’s the way the game is played.
I step out of the elevator two floors later, down in the car park. My car is here, nestled next to Sigmund’s ancient Magna. I throw Gungnir into the backseat, then hop into the front.
I really shouldn’t fit. I don’t in mortal cars, not with the feet and the tail. But my car, like myself, isn’t mortal, and, somehow, the system works.
Then I drive out of the building.
It’ll be a while before I return.
----------------------------------------
I head back into the city, slightly west of center, toward the uni. Pandemonium University—locally known as PU, pronounced as per the expression of revulsion—is a sprawling modern campus nestled on the banks of Panda’s artificial lake, Lake Cameron, named for yours truly’s middle name.
Just off campus, where the lake narrows back into the river it was carved from, is a bridge. Technically, the bridge has no name and is simply an extension of the road known as the Byway, the main artery that runs along Panda’s length.
Locally, however, the bridge is called the Rainbow Bridge. Named after the university students, who maintain a tradition of throwing colorful powdered chalk across the blacktop, of yarnbombing the railings and spray-painting bright murals on the concrete pillars. The hippie kids started it, back in the 1960s and ’70s, and for years it drove the local council nuts trying to clean up the “damage.” By the late ’80s, however, public opinion on the bridge changed. A new generation of kids was still creeping out at night with their neon legwarmers and Hypercolor T-shirts, but this time they were “warring” against a council that was becoming increasingly stacked with the grown-up balding versions of the people who’d thrown the first handfuls of chalk. Thus was the Rainbow Bridge turned from antiestablishment rallying point into a quaint local tourist attraction. Forty years later, kids still sneak out to bring color to morning commuters. The only difference is now sometimes adults join them.
There’s power in symbols, especially for a god. At the end of the day, a walking symbol is all we really are.
I feel the car aching to gallop as we approach the bridge. There’s no one around, not tonight, and so I let it; taking my hands off the wheel and my claws off the pedals, leaning back in the seat and feeling the wind tear through my feathers and howl on my horns.
The dials on the dash begin to climb, well over the speed limit, straining clockwise into three digits. Beneath the wheels, mad splashes of chalk seem to shimmer in the moonlight, blending with paint and yarn into one long multicolored slash into the night.
Once upon a time, mortals looked up at a rainbow and imagined a bridge, spanning between the heaven and the earth. A path the gods could walk to descend into the world, one mortals could never reach.
The Byway isn’t a rainbow in the conventional sense—and thousands of mortals drive and walk and cycle its length every day—but sometimes allegory is even better than reality.
Engine roaring in my ears, wind whipping through my feathers, and the pit of my stomach lurching as the car begins to rise.
Tonight, we ride the true Rainbow Bridge—the Bifröst, the Asbrú, the bridge of the gods—that winds between the branches of the great tree Yggdrasill and ends up at Ásgarðr’s gates. I haven’t been up here in a long time, not since well before Ragnarøkkr. Back then, the bridge was beautiful: a burning riot of color and chaos, large enough for a hundred men to walk abreast, the roar of the Rivers Körmt and Örmt churning far beneath. Nowadays, it’s . . . less like that. Shattered by the ravages of war, treacherous and broken, blocked by pits and rubble that no mortal car could ever hope to cross.
Fortunately, my “car” is about as mortal as I am, and the higher we climb the more the rumble of its engine sounds like the galloping of hooves.
The journey doesn’t take that long. It’s much shorter than I remember, given the last time I was here I was walking, not driving at odometer-cracking speeds. Soon, through the leaves and past the rubble, I see the crumbling façade of a building. This is, or was, Himinbjörg, the hall of Heimdallr, supposed watchman of the gods. On paper, his job was protecting Ásgarðr from attack by its enemies. In practice, the guy was mostly rolling around on the stone, drunk out of his fucking skull.
Heimdallr never liked me much, and the feeling was mutual. By the books, we were supposed to do the double KO thing come the Ragnarøkkr. Obviously, that didn’t happen, and when things were over, it was my wife’s belly his sword split open, her cold, dead fingers wound in the hair of his severed head.
So I can’t say seeing his hall in ruins leaves me with any great sense of regret.
Seeing the figures standing in front of it, however, does.
Ásgarðr, it seems, has sent a welcome committee. And now the show is on.