Sigmund never did manage to figure out the logistics of their flight, not really. Because the Earth was round, and huge, and hung in the vast black void of space. Not to mention Sigmund had been on airplanes before and he knew—empirically knew—that everything above the clouds was cold and bright and empty.
It certainly wasn’t full of leaves. Or branches. Or . . . was that a herd of deer?
“Where the bloody hell are we?” he asked, hands gripping the edge of the gondola window as he peered out beyond Hrímgrímnir’s feathers.
“Passing between the boughs of the World Tree,” Hel replied.
“Oh. Right.”
The drop below was . . . long. Oddly, Sigmund wasn’t frightened of it. Yeah, falling would suck, but a dragon wasn’t an airplane. It was alive, and thinking, and it would catch them if they fell.
Maybe. Probably.
“Dooder, this is so cool,” Wayne was telling Em. “I’m filming it for you.” She was leaning halfway out of the gondola, phone held with both hands, trying to keep the camera steady as she pointed it alternately at their surroundings and the enormous dragon above them. “Oh!” she said, as if an idea had suddenly occurred. “I can upload this to YouTube!” She pulled herself back inside the gondola, eyes bright with excitement and phone pointed straight at Hel. “I can, right?”
Hel tilted her head, and Sigmund felt a stiffness in her. “You . . . Tube?”
But Wayne just said, “Oh! Right, duh, Wayne!” Then smacked her palm against her forehead, and proceeded to spend the next fifteen minutes introducing Hel to modern technology.
Hel ended up with Wayne’s Flame in her hands, turning it over and over. Her sleeves made the touchscreen useless, so Sigmund helped with the button-pressing.
“And this is . . . Father’s magic?” she asked.
“I guess,” said Sigmund. “I mean, he owns the company. Other people make the phones.”
“He just gives them the endless litany of uninspired product names.” Em still had her eyes closed, but she may have been peeking under her lashes. Just a little.
“So much has happened in Midgard,” Hel said, voice quiet and thoughtful. “The dead tell stories and bring strange grave goods. But the Realms have stayed separate for many years. When they turned from our worship, Odin outlawed travel among the humans, and was merciless with enforcing his decree.”
“Why?” Wayne asked. “That seems . . . counterproductive?”
Em scoffed. “To punish the puny mortals for their pride,” she said, voice exaggerated and arms miming divine wrath vigorously enough that Wayne had to dodge out of the way.
Hel just gave one of her cheek-twitching un-smiles. “Perhaps,” she said. “Or perhaps it was fear of Ragnarøkkr. If the humans told no more stories of our deeds, then his plots for the end could be no more disrupted.”
No more disrupted than Hel and Sigyn already had, Sigmund didn’t say. Instead, he looked back out the window. Far down below, the edge of the world curved like a too-close horizon, an endless waterfall plummeting into the void.
“Well,” Wayne was saying, “Odin’s dead and Ragnarok’s over. So you should come and visit Midgard more often.”
Hel looked at the phone in her hand once more, then returned it to Wayne. “Perhaps I shall,” she said.
----------------------------------------
The edge of the world was beautiful, if both scientifically nonsensical and difficult to talk near, what with the constant roaring crash of water dropping off into nowhere. Sigmund got his head and his glasses soaked from sticking them out of the gondola, trying to peer up underneath the world-plate. Hrímgrímnir’s presence turned the water to sleet and Sigmund was shivering by the time he pulled himself back inside. Frozen, but satisfied after catching a glimpse of the immense tangle of branches that made up Miðgarðr’s underside. Real fantasy special-effects stuff, but running on its own kind of illogical logic. A physical metaphor for the solar system, described by people without telescopes or complex mathematics or even basic literacy, for the most part. The models may have changed over the years, but the poetry was beautiful, whether it was song or numbers.
There were stars out here, too. Cascades of glimmering light that floated around the gondola like fireflies. Sigmund wondered which one was the original Lokabrenna, the flame Loki had once thrown into the sky, whose bright light drove men mad on midsummer nights, even as it now comforted them from little glass screens pressed close to faces beneath the bedsheets.
Sigmund’s own phone was heavy and solid in the pocket of his jeans. A tangible reminder of Lain, and for a moment Sigmund felt a strange ache that when he turned it wouldn’t be poison-burned eyes and a stitched-up grin that looked his way. His first real proper trip outside of Miðgarðr, and it hadn’t been with Lain. Sigmund had never thought of himself as the traveling type—too many strangers, not enough Internet—but, maybe, when this was all over he’d ask Lain if they could go somewhere. Just the two of them, outside of Miðgarðr maybe, trekking on their very own MMO adventure.
Then again, maybe not. Sigmund liked hot showers and gourmet burgers. He wondered if they could find some kind of compromise between the two.
Hrímgrímnir began to descend, soaring in big, wide, easy spirals. Down through the waterfall and into the shadow of the Tree, to the place where leaves gave way to roots, and the only light came from the dust-mote stars and a bleeding red slash somewhere far off in the distance: the endless sunset of the burning realm of Múspell.
Outside, the air grew thicker, choked with greasy ash Sigmund remembered from his time stuck in the Helbleed. Wayne was still filming, but Sigmund wasn’t sure what she’d be able to pick up on her phone in the gloom. It must’ve been something, because after a few minutes he heard her say, “Are we, like . . . following the Yellow Brick Road?”
Sigmund looked out the window, craning his neck to see through the ash and fog, and yes, there. Somewhere far beneath them, a yellow-gold highway running like a molten river through jagged shale.
“Gjallarbru,” said Em, before adding, “Um. I’m probably saying it wrong . . .”
“Well enough,” said Hel. It was a lie, but Sigmund decided not to mention it. “It is the road to my domain, made from the grave goods of an eternity of fallen kings.”
“The Highway to Hel is literally paved with gold?” Wayne asked, leaning far enough out of the gondola that the whole thing swayed. “That is so cool!”
Em swallowed hard, fingers clenched against her knees and eyes jammed shut. “Bro, can you not? You’re rocking . . .”
Wayne stammered an apology, pulling herself back inside with one last shudder of the gondola. “Sorry!” she said. “Sorry, I was just trying to get you a good video!”
“I know,” said Em, trying for a queasy smile. “It’s just I don’t wanna hurl all over the Goddess of Death’s feet, y’know?”
Hel lifted a sleeve to cover her mouth, but Sigmund heard the snicker underneath.
----------------------------------------
“Whoa. There’s like an army down there!”
A little while later, not too long, Sigmund opened his eyes, glancing over to where Wayne had gone back to looking out the window.
“They are my people,” Hel said. “The living once called them náir. To me, they are Heljar-sinnar. Not an army, an escort.”
Honestly, Sigmund thought they looked like an army: a great mass of people, swarming around the huge, feathered shapes of a handful of drekar.
“They’re coming with us?” Sigmund asked. “To Asgard?” Hel hadn’t been lying about the escort, but escort could have a lot of meanings, some more martial than others.
“Yes,” said Hel.
“Oh. Right.” That was . . . something, Sigmund supposed. He wondered if Hel meant to start a war if she was denied her place in New Valhalla. He wondered if he cared whether she did.
It occurred to him he probably cared if he was there when she did.
They circled three more times before Sigmund could start to make out some of the faces in the crowd below. He was relieved to see features—human features, eyes and mouths and noses—looking upward. So. Not like the things he’d encountered last time in the Helbleed, then. Lain had called those draugar, and even thinking of them made Sigmund shudder.
When Hrímgrímnir landed, Sigmund felt the jolt in his teeth.
“We’re here!” Wayne shook Em’s shoulder, and the latter opened her eyes, blinking behind thick glasses.
They stepped out of the gondola, stretching and groaning from the time spent on the ride. Sigmund had to double-take at the sound of flapping and the feel of wind, when what he’d assumed to be a black-featured shawl draped across Hel’s shoulders turned out to, in fact, be a pair of small, stumpy wings.
Sigmund didn’t see Lain’s wings very often, since Lain’s wings were fifteen feet wide and tended to knock things over. He tried not to stare at Hel’s, either, mostly by concentrating on the ground instead.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
Grave goods, Hel had said. Sigmund could see plates and goblets, brooches and torques. Plus about a million coins and something that might even have been a crown, once. Now it was distorted and crushed flat, embedded beneath their feet along with everything else.
Maybe the saying was wrong, and you really could take it with you. Apparently, that didn’t mean you wouldn’t lose it along the way.
“Psst, dude. What do we do now?”
Sigmund looked up to find Em standing by his side, Wayne just beyond her. They were both hanging back, barely beyond the gondola, watching as Hel strode forward to greet the surging throng of náir.
They were definitely dead, Sigmund thought. Pale and shriveled, or dark and bloated. Some had wounds, some were missing bits or obviously rotting. Fashions ranged from chain mail and hauberks to jeans and sundresses and, in at least one instance, a three-piece business suit. They cheered riotously as Hel approached them, then fell silent when she raised her hands and began to speak.
The speech was in Old Norse. At least, Sigmund thought so: lots of languid vowels and snapped consonants, plus words he almost knew but didn’t. Valkyrjur and Ásgarðr, ásynja and einherjar. Sometimes even whole sentences that sounded almost, almost, like English. He must’ve looked like he was listening, because, after a moment, Em elbowed him in the ribs and asked, “What’s she saying?”
“How do I know?” Sigmund hissed, voice low beneath Hel’s. “I don’t speak Viking any more than you do!”
Em scowled. “I’ve heard you—”
“Ssh! Guys!” from Wayne, phone raised and pointed at Hel. “I’m trying to film here!”
They could translate it later. Whatever Hel was saying, the assembled crowd approved, the mood rising from grim and hushed reverence to ecstatic cheering when Hel turned to gesture toward Em and Wayne. Sigmund heard the names Hlökk and Hrist, the Screamer and the Shaker, the valkyrjur his friends had once been.
“Dooder,” Wayne said to Em. “She’s talking about us.”
“Smile and wave, bro,” replied Em, taking her own advice.
Sigmund, meanwhile, tried to press himself into the shadow of the gondola and disappear.
----------------------------------------
They didn’t get to do any more flying after that. Most of the escort was on foot, but Hel had a wagon waiting for her three mortals. It was pulled by two things Hel called fíflmegir and that looked, Sigmund thought, not unlike a cross between a drekar and a horse. About the size of the latter, but heavyset, with dark green skin and glossy black feathers. Stumpy little wings, too, and Sigmund couldn’t help but see the evolutionary themes. Something related to the jötnar. He added it to his list of things to ask Lain about later.
For her part, Hel had her own transport: an ornate litter on top of another huge dragon thing. More of a mobile throne, really, hung with gold and silks and feather and bone. Lots of the latter two in particular, but that was a definite theme running through the entire ar— escort.
Sigmund spent a good deal of the ride hanging over the side of their wagon, watching the road roll by beneath and the zombies and monsters march along beside.
People smiled at him when they caught his eye, or waved, or nodded in respect. The march’s mood was serious but positive. The participants determined, motivated in the way only a righteous cause could motivate.
Time passed. Em and Wayne spent ten or so minutes enthusing over everything within visible range and then, when that got to be too much, opened their bags to pull out a sketchbook and a Flash, respectively. Then it was all the sound of pencil on paper and the crab-leg scuttle of Em’s fingers as they flew across her tablet’s screen. That just left Sigmund, who’d never been very creative, feeling the aches of a day’s worth of sitting catching up to him.
“I’m gonna go for a walk,” he declared at one point.
“ ‘Kay, bro,” said Em, not looking up. “Have fun. Take a photo if you see anything cool.”
The wagon wasn’t moving much faster than walking pace, but jumping down off the back was still terrifying. Sigmund stumbled from the inertia and found himself caught around the arm by a guy who said, “Varlega, drengr,” and turned out to be an enormous six-foot-something Viking in rusted chain mail. A ring of dark bruises circled the guy’s neck. Like from a noose. Sigmund tried not to stare.
(the dishonored dead)
“Uh, thanks,” he said instead. Then, “Um. I mean, þakka þér?” Somewhere deep inside, Sigmund could feel Sigyn cringe at his pronunciation.
(well you could help!)
(“I do, by allowing you victory on your own. but . . . until then, use your lips more, boy. your words slur”)
Slurring or no slurring, Sigmund’s rescuer laughed, grinned, and said, “Good! Good!” His English was probably only slightly better than Sigmund’s Norse.
For a shambling, undead horde, the náir really weren’t too bad. Sigmund might’ve felt like a splash card in a mono-black deck, but no one tried to, like, eat his brains while he wandered through their ranks. And not even the enormous fiflwhatsits
(“fíflmegir”)
so much as growled in his direction, even if he wasn’t quite game enough to try to pat one. What if they were sentient, like Hrímgrímnir? That would just be embarrassing.
“They’re amazing, aren’t they?”
Sigmund blinked, then blinked again when he registered the words as English.
“Huh?” Turning, Sigmund found one of the náir walking beside him.
“The Helbeasts, we call ’em. Those of us who still struggle with the language, anyway. I’m Robert. Robert Paulsen. Or used to be. Nowadays most folks call me Gaps.” He offered his hand and Sigmund shook it.
“Sigmund. Sigmund Sussman.” He tried not to notice the clammy, leathery texture of the fingers clasped in his. Cold and brittle.
“Pardon me saying, but you ain’t dead. I know Bosslady made the big speech before, but, well . . .” Gaps made a what can you do? sort of gesture.
“Uh,” said Sigmund. “Yeah. Yeah, we’re from Earth. Er, Midgard. Miðgarðr.” He was getting better. Maybe.
“British?” Gaps asked.
“Australian.” Sigmund gave half a self-deprecating grin.
“Ah, right right. Hazleton, Pennsylvania, myself.”
Sigmund nodded as if the name meant anything to him, and instead asked, “There are a lot more, like, modern people? Than I expected.”
Gaps nodded. “Hell of a thing, isn’t it? Lady, pardon the pun. But with six billion people on the planet—”
“Seven.”
Gaps’s eyebrows shot up. “Seven!” He whistled. “Well, I’ll be. Seven billion people, even a minority religion’s gonna have a fair few followers. And then they die and . . . well.” He gestured around.
“Probably not what people were expecting,” Sigmund’s mouth said before his brain could stop it. He tried not to cringe, but Gaps just nodded.
“Tell me about it! My goði was all mead and chariots this, honor and valkyries that. But what they don’t tell you when you sign up is that no one dies in bloodied battle anymore. Well, not so many people. So many of our people, I guess. And it’s up to the Lady to look after the rest of us, down in the cold and dark.” Gaps thought for a moment before adding, “Not that I’m not grateful, mind. The Lady’s a great gal, y’know?”
“She, um. She certainly seems to . . . care about her Realm?” That was a nice, safe, probably true thing to say, right? Lot of ways that could be interpreted, and it wasn’t like Sigmund didn’t like Hel, it was just
(“she is her father’s daughter”)
Right. That.
“Damn straight she does,” Gaps said. He gestured around. “Hence all this. Bosslady died for us, to try and get us all the afterlife we deserve. Who knows if it’ll do much good, doing deals with Upstairs, but don’t ask, don’t get, my mother always used to say.”
Upstairs, and there was something about the way he said it that made Sigmund ask, “You’re . . . not a fan of Asgard, then?”
Gaps shrugged. “I was a Thorsman, so it’s not like that. But the Big Guy bought it before I was even born, along with everything else we thought we knew about our gods. And their new king, Odin’s kid . . . I mean, don’t get me wrong. I never knew the guy when he was down here, y’know? But some of the old nails, they remember him. Mad as a bag of tomcats in spring is what you hear. In spring, and on fire.”
“On fire” was right. More than Gaps knew by the sound of it.
“He, uh . . . What—?” Sigmund trailed off, hoping Gaps would fill in his namesake.
“Back up top, after Ragnarok.” Gaps pointed a finger skyward, accompanied by a half whistle of fast ascent. “Heard he made a mess of things up there, too. Latest rumor is he went down to Earth a few months back and never returned. Now his kid and his girl are eyeing each other off over who gets to warm his seat.”
Sigmund felt like he’d been punched in the gut and fallen down a staircase, all at once. “His . . . girl?”
Gaps nodded. “Right. Wife, from before. What’s Her Name. Gran? Grammi—”
And Sigmund’s mouth said: “Nanna.”
(he never told me he had a)
“Right! That’s the one.” Gaps clapped his hands together, then rubbed them back and forth with a sound like shifting leather. “Well, her and the kid . . . if dad doesn’t get back soon, it’s gonna be interesting times on the top plate, that’s for sure. Even before we show up.”
Gaps grinned, wide white teeth a Cheshire cat moon against his gray-black skin.
----------------------------------------
“Em. Did you know Baldr has a wife?”
Some time later. Gaps could’ve talked them into a second Ragnarøkkr, but Sigmund had made an excuse about his delicate mortal feet, then hurried back to the wagon. All he could think was He never told me he had a wife never he could’ve why wouldn’t he over and over and over.
“Huh?” Em looked up from her Flash, blinking behind thick glasses. She and Wayne were curled up together, shoulder to shoulder.
“Baldr,” Sigmund repeated, hauling himself back up into the vehicle. It was easier than getting down had been. “He has a wife?”
“Oh, yeah. Um. She has a funny name . . .”
“Nanna.” It made Sigmund think of his own grandma, a wizened old woman offering trays of fresh-made rugelach. He doubted the mental image fit.
“Right, yeah,” Em said. “Yeah, why do you— oh.” Sigmund saw the pity wash over her as she shared a glance with Wayne.
“Yeah,” said Sigmund. “ ‘Oh.’ “ He threw himself back onto the bench, facing his friends, crossing his arms and trying not to feel small and useless and petty.
“Um . . . I’m sure Lain didn’t mean . . .” Wayne trailed off, sketchbook abandoned in her lap and pencil dangling from her lips. “Maybe he just . . . forgot.” When Sigmund raised his eyebrows and stared at her over the top of his glasses, she quickly added, “He is sort of flaky, sometimes.”
“And,” Em added, “he doesn’t really consider himself Baldr anymore . . . does he.” Sigmund thought the last was supposed to be a statement, not a question.
He sighed, closing his eyes and rubbing against the bridge of his nose. “No, I . . . I dunno. Who knows, with Lain?” Shifty, mercurial bastard that he was.
“But he loves you, yeah?” Wayne asked. When Sigmund opened his eyes, she was leaning forward, elbows on her knees, eyes bright with compassion and intent. “He’s not lying when he tells you that?”
Sigmund shrugged, turning away, unable to look at anyone in that moment. “He loves Sigyn, too,” he said. Somewhere deep inside, he felt an ache like the cracking of a glacier.
“Sig . . .” He heard Em breathe out, heavy and thoughtful. “Relationships . . . marriages fall apart all the time. Lain adores you, I’d say ‘you’d have to be blind to miss that,’ but in this instance it’s a bit too ironic. And wrong.”
That got a smile, albeit a sharp and brittle one. “I know,” Sigmund said. “It’s just . . . things were different in the old days, y’know? A wife for politics and a lover for fun . . .” Especially a male lover, and Loki had been there, done that, bought the commemorative emotional scars to go along with the ones etched into his skin.
“Sig,” Em said. “It’s not the tenth century anymore. Lain knows that. He’s Travis goddamn Hale, for gods’ sakes! He is the modern era.”
Then, barely above a whisper: “But she’s a goddess. What if . . . What if Lain sees her and . . .”
“Lain doesn’t see anything,” Wayne pointed out.
Sigmund closed his eyes again. He knew that, he did. And he knew what he looked like to Lain’s Wyrdsight, too, or at least had heard Lain’s descriptions of it. Lain’s Sigmund was brave and kind, loved life and was loyal to his friends, and those things were more alluring to Lain than all the shapely breasts and clear skin and smooth and shining hair in all of Ásgarðr.
Still. Kindness and loyalty weren’t traits unique to Sigmund, either.
He heard Em sigh, fingernails making little tlik-tlik-tlik sounds against the surface of her Flash. “Look,” she said. “Lain is Lain, and he’s a jackass. But, at least where you’re concerned, maybe don’t ascribe to malice what can be attributed to thoughtlessness, yeah?”
“Yeah,” said Sigmund. “I guess.” He tried to give Em a smile, and she returned it.
They spent the rest of the trip watching Die Hard on the Flash, Sigmund trying to lose himself in the sound of tinny gunfire and the feel of his best friends pressed against his sides.
Outside, all around them, death rolled slowly into Ásgarðr.