I Bring the Fire Part I : Wolves (A Loki Series)

  Chapter 4

  Maybe it is the steady hum of the engine. Maybe it is that there are people all around. Or maybe it is just exhaustion. Whatever, even though Amy wouldn’t think it possible, in the bus, just a little before St. Louis, she dozes off. She wakes up with a start, vague memories of darkness and Ed Malson in her mind.

  She takes a breath. Fenrir pushes her nose out of the bag in Amy’s lap and licks her hand. Amy pats the dog’s head. She is safe. Thor Odinson saved her. She rubs her eyes. His parents must be lunatics for giving him a name like that. Lunatic parents may be something they have in common. Thinking about Thor, she blinks. Wincing from the pain in her neck, she rolls her head to look at him across the aisle. Her eyes widen. Thor’s head is bent down against his chest; his eyes are closed. He’s shivering, his lips are moving, a scowl is on his brow. She can tell instantly he is having bad dreams, too.

  But that isn’t what’s making her eyebrows touch her hairline.

  He’s wearing armor. What looks like the handle of a sword is poking out of the knapsack that sits on the floor between his feet.

  Another passenger walking by looks down at him and blinks and then walks back to his seat, a confused expression on his face.

  Amy’s heart starts to beat fast. This is too weird. Not just that he is wearing armor, but that he was dressed like a rock-a-billy, hipster, wannabe when he got on the bus. Where did he stow the extra clothes? Not in the little bag. But she saw the armor before, didn’t she, when she hit him with pepper spray?

  Her train of thought is interrupted when Thor whispers something strange and guttural. Fenrir pushes herself out of the bag, runs across the aisle, and hops into his lap.

  Amy looks up and down the aisle. No one seems to have noticed. She looks at Thor. His eyes are blinking open. Fenrir pants on his face and his head jerks up, in surprise or because Fenrir’s breath has been especially bad since the road kill incident.

  Raising an eyebrow, he puts a hand on the wiggling Fenrir. “Hello beast that looks like a dog,” he says in the proper East Coast tones she first noticed in the police station, when the shock of everything had started wearing off.

  ...or maybe the shock didn’t wear off. He’s wearing armor.

  The Art Institute of Chicago has some suits of armor from the middle ages. They look like barrels with metal tubes for feet and arms. What Thor is wearing is very different. It fits like a second skin. It seems to be a dull metal that picks up the colors around it — it almost blends into the seat. There is a chest plate, and some interlocking horizontal strips about the width of a finger that fall to his belt. The same thin strips rise up his neck. There are more plates around his legs and arms, between them more of the interlocking finger-width pieces of metal.

  Thor glances at her. His eyes open a little bit when he sees she’s awake, and then he looks back to Fenrir, who has rolled over on his lap. Wrinkling his nose and scowling a bit, Thor gingerly scratches Fenrir on the chest with a finger.

  Thor is very pale, and at the moment very scruffy, his hair is disheveled, and it looks like he hasn’t had a shave in days. His face is narrow, and his features are somewhere between sharp and delicate. He’s definitely not unattractive, but you wouldn’t mistake him for the rugged actor who plays his namesake in the “Thor” movie franchise.

  She stares at him. As he scratches Fenrir, the armor makes no sound at all. She would expect the metal to clink or something.

  Turning to her, Thor scowls a little bit. “Is something wrong?”

  Amy opens her mouth, but no sound comes out.

  “Yes?” he says tilting his head.

  Biting her lip, she points at him. “Ummm...” she says. “You’re wearing...armor. Kind of weird SWAT meets elven Lord of the Rings armor.”

  His eyes go wide and he looks down. Almost to himself he says, “Well, that’s never happened before..”

  “Am I still asleep?” Amy says. “Is this a dream?”

  He looks at her and the corner of his lip twitches. Tilting his head he says, “You are dreaming.” Reaching down into his knapsack and pulling out a bagel, he says, “Close your eyes. Enjoy the comfort of this magnificent vehicle.”

  That doesn’t help the moment feel real. “It’s a bus,” she says.

  He scowls a little. “I know that.”

  “It isn’t magnificent,” she says. And it brings back bad memories of other bus rides she’s had to take.

  He blinks. “Go to sleep. When you awake, I will be wearing the normal attire you saw me in earlier.”

  “It wasn’t normal.”

  “What?” he says, brows rising.

  “It was totally retro, 1950s-esque,” Amy says.

  His mouth twitches. “Was it really so conspicuous?”

  “Well...” Amy says. “Sort of... I mean some people wear that kind of thing, but it isn’t precisely normal.”

  He stares at her a moment, and then he says, “Go back to sleep. When you open your eyes I’ll be totally retro again.”

  Amy settles back against the seat, takes a breath, and closes her eyes.

  Someone says, “Is that a dog?!” in a very accusatory tone.

  Amy’s eyes bolt open to see an older man glaring down at her lap. Her fingers tighten around Fenrir. “Ummmm...” she says.

  The man backs up. “Oh, I must have been mistaken.”

  Amy looks down. In her lap is a shaggy gray teddy bear that looks immobile — but she feels a wiggling Fenrir in her fingers.

  Amy looks across the aisle. Thor is wearing retro clothing again. “You are dreaming,” he says softly.

  Staring at the seat in front of her, Amy scowls. “That is the logical explanation.”

  She doesn’t feel safe anymore. She has this horrible feeling that she didn’t escape Malson, that she is dying in a ditch somewhere and her brain is making up this long dream to save her from the pain.

  “Close your eyes,” he says.

  She doesn’t want to know if this is real or not. Squeezing her eyes shut, she says, “I’m not opening them until we reach Chicago.”

  “Shhhhhh....” he says softly. “When you wake up, things will return to normal, and when they’re normal you’ll know you’re safe.”

  His voice sounds so confident, so sure, as though he knows exactly how she’s feeling.

  x  x  x  x

  The villagers pick up the pieces of Cronus’ body. They laugh and smile. Loki is still sitting on the floor of the boathouse, arms wrapped around his knees. Hoenir and Mimir haven’t entered yet. Both of them would have been useless, of course.

  A villager comes up and hands Loki a flask of something. Patting Loki on the shoulder, he flashes a smile missing several teeth. “Well done, Loki! Drink this.”

  Loki takes the flask; it smells strongly like alcohol. Loki’s had watered down mead before, but not often. Frigga’s handmaiden, Eir, is talented in the healing arts. Eir has Frigga convinced that alcohol is particularly harmful for young developing minds and livers.

  Odin says in his day everyone drank. Brusquely taking the flask, Loki takes a long swig.

  It burns, and he has to fight hard to keep it down. The man laughs again. “We are burning his body, building you a throne, and will kill a calf in your honor! Come! Celebrate with us.”

  He pats Loki on the shoulder and offers him a hand up. Loki accepts and tries to hand back the flask.

  “You keep it!” says the man. “You’ve earned it.”

  Loki looks down at the flask. He knows as soon as he exits the boathouse, Hoenir will take the drink from him. That seems unmanly. Tipping the flask back, he proceeds to drain it, even though tears run down his cheeks and some of the liquid runs down his chin. When he’s done, he wipes his chin and hands the flask back to the villager.

  Eyes wide, the villager says, “You are a god.”

  Loki smiles triumphantly. Suddenly humans are streaming into the boathouse, men, women, and children. They throw their arms around Loki and then hoist him
onto their shoulders. Warmth spreads through Loki, and he sees Hoenir and Mimir over their heads and waves happily.

  Soon the bonfire is roaring, and Loki is sitting on a rough chair that is too wide for him. They call it a throne. He would call it branches, but he smiles, and the villagers smile, and it’s all like a wonderful dream. He calls the little boy Jonah over to sit with him, and the villagers seem to think that is hilarious and fantastic. They bring over some weak beer; Jonah accepts it readily, so Loki does too. Nearby Loki hears Mimir say, “Well, I suppose one little drink won’t hurt him...”

  Soon after, there is food and more beer, and then there is music and dancing around the fire. Hoenir and Mimir try to pull Loki away, but Loki tells them something to the effect of, “in just a minute,” and dives into the dance with the villagers. Someone must have thrown some new kindling on the fire just then because the flames seem to rise halfway to Asgard. Or maybe he is just drunk. But he is happy. And after today, and the boat, and Cronus, and staring into the faces of the humans around him who are so kind, so fragile, so mortal, and who love him so much it is almost a physical pain...

  Someone hands him another flask. Hoenir is nowhere in sight and he takes a long swig. He spins around the fire with the humans and the flames leap.

  It is dark when someone says, “Loki, our God of Gods!”

  Laughing and quite drunk, Loki stands upon the throne. “No!” he shouts. “ I am the God of Fire!” The fire chooses that moment to send a shower of sparks into the air. The villagers howl in delight. “The God of Spirit,” he says, shaking the flask. The villagers laugh again. “And...” A group of three young girls standing near him giggle. It’s not like Loki hasn’t noticed girls before, but at that moment it seems for the first time he really sees them. They look so soft, so inviting...and what they are inviting him to isn’t so vague and abstract anymore. “...girls,” he says. Jumping from the throne, he takes a spinning step in their direction. A piece of wood in the fire breaks with a thunderclap, and the villagers gasp.

  A heavy hand comes down on Loki’s shoulder, stopping his spin. Somehow he knows without looking who it is, and the dream-like quality of the night comes crashing to an end. He feels his cheeks going red with embarrassment. He also feels an odd sense of relief, as though if that hand weren’t there he might spin so fast he’d leave the ground.

  The music stops. A hush comes over the villagers. Only the fire is still crackling. Odin’s voice rings through the night. “The God of Mischief is more like it!”

  Loki’s legs crumple beneath him, and there is some laughter from the villagers that sounds far off and uncertain. Before he hits the ground, Odin catches him. Hoisting Loki up in his arms, Odin cradles him like he would a babe, or a woman. Loki scowls. And then he realizes if Odin did throw him over his shoulder like a proper warrior, he would probably throw up.

  “Come on, Loki,” Odin says, not unkindly. “We’re going home.”

  Loki smiles and waves at Jonah, and the villagers, and the girls. He is embarrassed. A little. Or maybe a lot. He is too drunk to properly gauge the emotion.

  And Odin coming to spoil his schemes is so normal...he suddenly knows at last he is safe.

  x  x  x  x

  When the bus drops them off at the intersection of Canal and Lake Street, Loki’s head immediately turns to the south east and downtown. Chicago is hot, sticky and tall. Very, very, tall. Across a dreary parking lot and the river, skyscrapers tower. It’s all he can do to keep from gaping. Every single building seems to be as tall or taller than the Empire State Building. And nearly all of them seem made of glass. Some of the windows are darkened, but others are bright mirrors that reflect the large white clouds in the Midwest sky — they seem to Loki to be gigantic moving canvases. And to think they’re all solid, and real, not dependent on illusions like the buildings of Asgard.

  “Yes,” says Amy. “Lovely parking lot. You can see the pollution on the horizon. But it’s Chicago. What can you do?”

  Loki blinks. There is a bit of haze low to the ground, but... “It’s cleaner than I remember,” he says. And it is certainly cleaner than Victorian England. For a place that doesn’t have a Void to dump the garbage from their misspent magic, Chicago is doing rather well.

  “Huh,” says Amy. “Let’s catch a taxi.”

  She holds out a hand, and a white vehicle that is very similarly shaped to the chariot of her would-be-abductor screeches to a stop.

  As Amy and the driver wrestle her bag and a rather large trunk into the back, Loki slips into the interior. It is blessedly cool inside. He stops and peeks between the seats to the front. The dashboard is alight with glowing numbers. One is clearly the time, another is the temperature, but all the others are completely incomprehensible. He blinks. Computers are everywhere.

  The buildings, the computers — Earth is turning into a place that is almost magical. It temporarily makes him forget about the hunger that is beginning to gnaw at his stomach and the exhaustion tugging at his limbs. Odin’s spell to stop time drained him more than he thought possible — how Loki resisted it is a mystery.

  He shakes his head. He won’t solve that puzzle now. Leaning forward, he tries to get a better view of the numbers on the dashboard.

  The driver and Amy slip into the car and put on their seat belts. “814 N. Hermitage,” Amy says and the cab driver steps on the gas so fast Loki falls backwards in his seat. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Amy staring at him with a look of pure confusion on her face. Even Fenrir is cocking her head in his direction. For a moment he thinks that his illusion of totally retro clothes has fallen again, but he checks, and it’s still there.

  As they speed away from the center of the city along Chicago Avenue, the buildings get noticeably lower. Many are also noticeably older — two and three story row houses of stone and brick that are visibly sinking into Chicago’s soft soil. These familiar buildings are interspersed with newer abodes with tremendous windows that can’t be sensible for temperature regulation or for warding off potential intruders. It really is a good thing that Asgard put a stop to the Jotunn plans for a new ice age on Earth — and took care of the troll situation.

  As they drive further west along Chicago Avenue, shops and restaurants begin to appear. Many of the names are in Spanish, and Loki notices a great many people who seem to be of South American descent walking among the natives of European and African origin.

  They turn up a green, leafy street. About a third of the houses seem to be very new, a third are old and decrepit, and a third look old but lovingly maintained.

  Amy says, “This is good,” and the cab stops so fast that Loki braces his hands on the front seat.

  The cabbie, who had been so solicitous when Amy got into the cab, doesn’t do much more than throw Amy’s bags on the street after she pays him. As he speeds away, Loki watches as she tilts the trunk up and tries to drag it while simultaneously trying to heave a large cylindrical cloth sack.

  It occurs to him that he’s probably supposed to help. He is from Asgard. Centuries ago, Asgardians would occasionally take humans as servants. It never works the other way around... But plenty of Asgardians have mocked Loki for his lack of pride before.

  “May I help you?” he asks solicitously.

  Shaking her head, she says, “No...that’s okay...I can manage it.” Dragging the trunk along the ground, she bumps into the curb and nearly topples over. The trunk and the bag fall to the street.

  He tilts his head. She seems to know her Norse mythology, so he says, “Don’t be such a Valkyrie.” The winged warrior women are always so touchy.

  “What?” she says. Apparently his gentle jibe didn’t translate well. Rather than explain, he just bends down and grabs the trunk by both ends.

  “Don’t...” she starts to say, coming forward.

  He swings it over one shoulder with ease.

  “It’s heavy,” Amy says, touching his free arm before he can move away.

  She stops and look
s down. He looks where her hand is. She feels his armor, even if she can’t see it. Her gaze meets his and her brows come together.

  He’s saved from having to say anything by the sound of a woman’s voice. “Amy! Amy!”

  They both turn to see an old woman coming down a narrow walk from an old brick two-story house of the lovingly maintained variety. Ivy climbs nimbly up the walls and spills out over the yard.

  Loki tilts his head. He isn’t used to the elderly. Their wrinkled papery skin and white hair remind him pleasantly of gnomes, but the old have a brittleness to them that gnomes don’t share. Aging seems such a terrible affliction.

  The old woman is wearing a dress that wouldn’t be out of place last time Loki was here, but she wears the same leather-like shoes with stripes and laces that Amy wears.

  She wraps her arms around the girl and Fenrir begins yipping up a happy storm.

  “I’m so glad you’re home! Don’t ever travel alone again! Take a plane, take a train, take a bus!” the old woman says.

  “Oh, grandma, it was a freak incident...”

  Pulling back, the woman says, “Don’t go quoting me statistics about lightning strikes and how unlikely this is ever to happen to you again. It happened once! That’s enough.”

  “Grandma...” says Amy.

  But the old woman is coming towards Loki, arms outstretched. “You’re the man who saved my darling granddaughter!”

  Loki’s eyes widen. She’ll embrace him. Loki’s not squeamish about physical contact with humans, unlike some Asgardians...Asgardians like Heimdall, that stuck up stickler for protocol and station, but she’ll feel Loki’s armor. Picking up Amy’s remaining bag, he says, “Careful, I don’t want to drop these on you.”

  She stops and closes her hands together. She beams at Loki. His head roars with the sound of She’s all I have left in the world, thank you, thank you, thank you.

  Loki blinks. More human prayers in his head? But the saving of lives is done. This is so very odd.

  Despite the torrent in Loki’s mind, all the old woman says is, “Oh, yes, of course.” But she continues to smile at him, and something in his gut constricts. He’s always thought of prayers as a weak trick, but he’s beginning to think they’re deceptively powerful. He’s not sure he likes it.

  “Thor, this is my grandmother, Beatrice,” Amy says.

  Shaking her head, Beatrice says, “Such an unusual name. My late husband would have loved it.” And then turning she says, “I hope they lock up that horrible Malson man and put him away forever.”

  Loki looks at Amy. Apparently she hasn’t been entirely truthful with Beatrice. Catching his gaze, Amy winces and holds a finger to her lips. Loki raises an eyebrow. There was a time on Earth when even grandmothers would have reveled gleefully in stories of heroics, no matter how gory.

  Up ahead Beatrice says, “Come inside out of the heat!” and waves them both up the narrow walkway. “I can have food on the table in thirty minutes. Everything’s ready; I just have to heat it up.”

  Mouth watering at the word food, Loki follows them in. Looking very uncomfortable, Amy says to him, “Um, if my bags are too heavy you can put them down...”

  He’s tired. He’s hungry. But they’re not heavy. “Where do you want them?” he asks.

  Amy jumps a little at the sound of his voice. Being hungry always makes him cranky; it’s beginning to show, evidently.

  “This way,” says Amy. He follows her up a narrow staircase to a small sleeping room.

  Setting them down on the ground, he says, “Whatever your grandmother is cooking smells deli— ”

  A tiny ping rings through the room.

  He stills at the sound.

  Ping.

  There it is again, and the most infinitesimal of pressures on his back. Scowling, he spins around. Amy has her fingers outstretched, a guilty look on her face. It takes him a moment but he puts it together — she pinged his armor with her finger.

  “What do you want?” he says, the words coming out harsher than he intends.

  Backing up a little, Amy looks down. “To know I’m not dreaming.”

  Loki sighs and rubs his eyes.

  Ping. Ping.

  He feels a light pressure now on his lower arm.

  He opens his eyes and Amy has her fingers outstretched again. This time she doesn’t look guilty. Just confused.

  “You shouldn’t go ping,” she says. “I have to be dreaming.”

  He stares at her a moment, beyond irritated. He’s saved her life, sat through a tortuously long questioning session, carried her bags for her — and he’s hungry. Yet she has the gall to question her good fortune, to question him, and to ping his armor.

  He suddenly has the desire to be a little cruel. “You’re not dreaming,” he says. Dropping the illusion he stands before her in his armor. “Does this help?” he says with a smile.

  “No!”

  The sound of footsteps on the stairs makes the girl turn her head. “Change back,” she says. “Don’t frighten my grandmother.”

  Loki would rather not frighten anyone who will feed him. He slips back into the illusion of “totally retro” clothing.

  Beatrice comes around the corner, a stack of linens in her hand. Loki smiles benevolently at her.

  “Amy, why don’t you show him the spare room?” Beatrice says.

  Taking the load from from her grandmother, Amy says, “This way.”

  As she leads him out of the house, Loki looks up at the sky. He sees no sign of ravens, the spies of Odin. He doubts Heimdall can see him. Heimdall has to know where to look first. Just in case he puts on his helmet, disguised as a fedora, before he follows her across the tiny lawn and into an alley behind the garage. Amy unlocks and lifts the garage door. Inside, off to one side, is a large vehicle. It reminds him vaguely of a Jeep.

  Amy leads him past the vehicle to a door. She unlocks it and says, “It’s a little inconvenient,” and then leads him up a flight of stairs. Every step upward the heat becomes more and more oppressive.

  Loki lets the illusion of Earth clothing drop again. It’s a game, and she started it.

  At the top of the stairs she turns around and jumps at the sight of his armor. She does have one of the lovelier bosoms Loki has seen on this or any other world, and the bounce does rather nice things. He smirks.

  Thrusting the pile of linens at him, she says, “Here.” And turning around again she walks into a medium-sized room. There is a bed in one corner, and a couch. “The shower is that way,” she gestures towards a door, “And the swinging door takes you to a kitchenette. I think there are glasses. There isn’t any food, though. Do you need me to show you how to turn on the air conditioning?”

  That’s it? No more questions?

  ...Air conditioning?

  He is a Frost Giant, and the room is rather uncomfortable, even if his armor does have some temperature control.

  “I would like help with the air conditioning,” he says.

  She walks over to a boxlike thing in the window, plugs it into the wall, and shows him how to operate the dials. And she hands him some keys, and walks towards the door. Just before leaving she turns. “See you in about 20 minutes.”

  He tilts his head and looks down at his armor. He blinks. “You’re not bothered?”

  Her eyes go wide, and she looks down. “I’m probably going crazy and dying at the bottom of a ditch somewhere, but you know, this is an interesting dream, a better dream than that reality, and you’re responsible, so I’m grateful and I’m just going to go with it until I wake up...” She swallows. “Or not wake up...or whatever.”

  Well, now he actually feels like a heel. And a little foolish. Really, she’s quite lovely and just his type. Although he’s currently not in the mood, he certainly has no issue with indulging in passing carnal pleasures with a human. No use burning bridges.

  Going forward, he takes her hand. “Miss Lewis,” he says in his calmest, most reassuring, most courtly tone — he is in armor,
no use disguising his origins anymore. “You are not dying. You are home, you are safe, and the gentleman from the forest is no more. I do regret that my lapse in control has caused you to doubt this. If I believed it were prudent, I would offer to erase your memories and allow you to forget seeing Fenrir as a wolf, the portfolio pictures bursting into flames,and my armor. But memory erasing is a tricky business, and...”

  He looks down at her hand. It is shaking. Pursing his lips, he says, “This is not reassuring you.”

  “Not at all,” she confirms.

  “Damn.” With a sigh he makes to kiss her hand. It is a courtly gesture, one he would bestow on a lady in Asgard had he distressed her accidentally.

  To his shock, she rips her hand away before it even touches his lips. “That really doesn’t help,” she says.

  Eyes wide, Loki holds up his hands. “No offense meant.”

  Scowling and looking away, she says, “See you in a few minutes.” And then she turns and disappears down the stairs.

  Tilting his head, Loki turns in the direction of the shower, thankful that he knows what one is.

  He’s just rinsing his hair when he sees the red mist again. It wraps around him in the shower, and the hair on the back of his neck stands on end. The child’s voice comes again in Russian. “The petty bourgeois are keeping the grander house to themselves and leaving you the meaner accommodation.”

  Blinking the water from his eyes, Loki restrains a shudder. “I’m grateful I don’t have to rob banks again for food and a place to stay,” Loki says. Stepping through the red mist and out of the shower, he grabs a towel.

  “My Josef robbed banks, too,” says the child voice. “For the revolution.” In a voice that sounds slightly ashamed, it adds, “And food...and soft ones.”

  “Josef?” says Loki. Obviously, the mist wants to talk to him, and Loki isn’t so foolish as not to comply.

  “He woke me. He touched me. But he wasn’t like you. He couldn’t hear me.”

  Slipping on his breeches, Loki says, “You have a corporeal form?”

  “Yes,” says the mist, its voice sounding fainter, the red magic ceding to pink.

  “Where are you?” Loki asks.

  “It is impossible to know position or momentum with certainty,” says the voice, barely audible now, the mist almost invisible.

  Leave it to a magical creature to stumble over the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Magic really was just expanded quantum theory.

  “Yes, that’s true,” Loki says, trying to remain patient. “But you can think of your position in relative terms to mine and then give an estimate of location...”

  There is no response. Loki exhales heavily in frustration. He is very curious. But he doesn’t have time for this right now. He needs to eat and sleep to give himself enough energy to open a gate to the World Tree. He needs to find Valli and Nari.

  He slips on a shirt that was in the pile of towels and sheets. Stepping out of the bathroom, he looks at his armor and sword laid out neatly on the bed.

  Beatrice is going to touch him. He just knows it. He goes to his knapsack, pulls out his book and slips it into his pocket. Closing his eyes, he briefly projects his consciousness out of the small room, through the roof, and into the sky. There are no ravens in sight.

  Jaw tight, he heads for the stairs.