In my mind came Jumps’s voice: It’s not a rune, it’s a vapour trail. I could hear her perfectly, even though she was Worlds away. And somehow I felt—those feelings again—very, very far from home.
Every World has its counterpart. That’s what Odin taught me. Every action, every choice, every mistake, every move we make is reenacted somewhere else, with different players, different results. And the Worlds we know are honeycomb, cells crammed together side by side, awaiting their chance to begin again. Even Death is but one of the Worlds through which the river Dream runs its course, collecting its stories like flotsam, building its reefs and its islands, making them into new cells, other Worlds for the taking. The thought of it almost moved me—another of those little gifts from Jumps’s World, not memory, but nostalgia, and unexpectedly scented with cherry-coconut cake and smoke—
Good-bye, Jumps. I’ll miss you.
The goblin was looking shifty, and I guessed it was thinking about escape. Go on. Try that again, I said. I’ll suck your tiny mind like an egg.
The goblin gave a hiss of protest. “I never!” it said. “I’m as good as me word. See? I told you. There it is.” And it waved its arm to indicate a figure on the path to the hill: a girl of seventeen or so, carrying a basket, and leading a small white goat.
Is she the mother?
“Laws, no. That’s Nancy, the wickerman’s daughter.” The goblin waved a stubby arm. “She found the baby Tuesday last, on a market trip into the Ridings. They must have left it out to die, ruined as it was, poor thing. But Nan meant to care for it herself, whatever her folk or the parson said. She’s a stubborn one, that Nan. The villagers call her crazy.”
Bring her to me. I need to be close.
“Yes, sir. Right away, sir.”
I waited with impatience in my ephemeral Aspect. The girl approached, still leading the goat, with the basket tucked under her arm. From the swaddled thing inside, there came a wail of protest.
“Shhh.” The girl’s voice came to me over the misty brow of the hill. “No one’s going to hurt you, little one. I promise you. Everything will be all right.”
I wondered how she could say that with such a careless conviction. In my experience, nothing is ever all right, and everyone’s out to get you. But babies must be easier to fool than normal people, because this one simply hiccupped a bit, then stopped wailing, and went to sleep.
I could see its colours now: they flared with a violet signature not unlike my own. And now, with my ephemeral vision, I saw that the rune on the baby’s arm was Kaen, the rune of Wildfire—my rune—although it was reversed. That was a disappointment. I’d hoped for something more workable. But even reversed or broken runes can channel power, and besides, I wasn’t in any position to be picky on details. The child was healthy, accessible, and open to my influence: what came later was yet to be seen.
Finally, the girl and her little goat reached the summit of the hill, where Sleipnir was still cropping grass. The girl approached my steed, and smiled, and, tethering the goat to a rock, she brought out a piece of carrot from one of the pockets of her apron and offered it to the General’s Horse. That made me smile: If only she’d known what a rare and terrible beast was hidden beneath that humble disguise, she might not have been so eager to feed him scraps. But Sleipnir accepted the carrot greedily, nuzzling her shoulder. Then she turned to the goblin, still holding the basket under her arm.
“Take the goat for her milk,” she said. “And use the blanket when it gets cold.”
“Well, that’s very kind, miss,” said the goblin, reaching for the basket with a gleam in its golden eyes.
“I meant for the baby,” said Nancy sternly.
The goblin assumed an air of exaggerated innocence.
Nancy gave him a long, hard stare. “You drink that milk—or eat the goat—and there’ll be no more beer for you. The baby needs it. Understand?”
The goblin wilted under her gaze. The girl was tougher than I’d thought. That was good. I would need her strength. For a moment I thought she could see me, so earnest was her scrutiny. But she made no comment, and simply placed the basket gently onto the Horse’s back, and looked at the baby from keen eyes, which, now she was closer, I thought looked quite a lot like Jumps’s eyes, as did the hair, the stubborn chin, and that stiffness in the spine, as if in anticipation of someone saying something mean.
“I don’t want to leave you,” she said to the child, although her eyes were levelled at me. “But you’ll be safer under the Hill, in the care of the Good Folk. There’s food there, and shelter. They say if you go down deep enough, you’ll find the Land of Roast Beef, where children play in the golden fields, and no one ever goes hungry.”
That sounded like pure fantasy to me, but still I let her have her way. She wiped her eyes, which had started to leak, and said at last to the goblin, “You promise he’ll be cared for? Swear it on your true name?”
“Aye, miss,” said the goblin, with a sideways glance at me. “Cared for like a princeling, don’t you worry yer head about that.”
The girl who looked like Jumps gave a sigh. “Then take him,” she said. “Look after him well. And don’t forget. I’m always here. If ever he needs—” Her voice broke. And then she bent over the basket and kissed the bundle on the cheek, and I spoke the word to Sleipnir—Stay!—and slipped back sweetly into flesh.
Game Over
1.
I’ve done this so many times before. And yet being newly corporeal never ceases to surprise: the rush of it, the dizziness, the avalanche of sensations. Time has no meaning in Dream. I felt as if my last incarnation had been more than a hundred years ago. And flesh, so deceptively similar from the vantage point of Dream, is so profoundly different when experienced in person.
Being in Jumps was like being in a cavernous vault, filled with memories, teeming with sensations and thoughts, coloured with her personality. Being in her vacated skin was like being in an empty house, furnished by a stranger. Being in Jonathan Gift had been like being inside a library. But this new location was narrow, small: a warm and lightless cave, in which the only sense of a presence was a small sense of discomfort, some curiosity, no sense of self—just a memory of darkness and warmth and the strong sound of a maternal heartbeat.
So now I’m a baby, I thought to myself, searching for my host’s glam. I found a thread of violet light, dim compared to what I’d had, but still far better than nothing. Perhaps it would grow as I did, I thought. Perhaps I could work with it later. For the present I tried to move, and found myself alarmingly weak and strangely un-co-ordinated. I opened my mouth, and a sound came out—a sound both young and very old, a sound both new and broken. A fear like nothing I’d ever felt wrung me like a piece of rag—a nameless fear, like a bad dream, or the sudden crash of mortality. What’s happening? I wailed soundlessly. What in the Worlds is this torment?
“He’s hungry,” said the girl, and though I understood her words, they were huge, swimming in the air like fish; and her face, like the giant face of the Moon, moved into my line of vision. The unformed presence of my host recognized the giant face and made a kind of bleating sound. Then I was rising dizzily into the arms of the giant girl, and I thought that, yes, I was hungry, and summoned my glam to command them to my bidding:
Bring me cake, and ice cream, and wine to soothe my frazzled nerves, and maybe some pizza, if pizza exists in this version of my World; and bring it to me quickly, for I find myself in need of sustenance—
What the Hel is that?
It was a bottle, made from some kind of animal skin, smelling most definitely of goat. The liquid inside was a little sour, and none too appetizing. But my host latched onto the teat, and drank, and seemed to be enjoying it, and I went along without protest. The urge to feed was too strong to resist. Besides, my host was hungry, and I was beginning to realize that in my current circumstances, I was not likely to be giving orders to my minions anytime soon.
New runes will come to Odin’s heirs,
>
New harvests will be gathered.
The fallen will come home. The child
Will liberate the father.
A small price to pay for a new start, in a new World, in a new skin, far from those who would do me harm. Safe from my enemies, safe from my friends, I had a lifetime to plan my next move, to explore the limits of my glam, to taste every pleasure this World could give. And it felt good to be in the flesh, to breathe, to feel, to taste, to touch. And guilty as I undoubtedly was of crimes too numerous to list, there was a kind of hope in rebirth, even a kind of innocence.
I see Asgard built anew
Gleaming over Ida’s plain.
I have spoken. Now I sleep
Until the world’s tides turn again.
And maybe things will be different this time. Maybe this time I can be—
Oh, please. Don’t let’s get ahead of ourselves. Wildfire I was, and that I remain. Don’t ever doubt my nature. But maybe this time I can be in this World without ending it, or ending myself. Maybe I can leave that behind. There’s a dream worth pursuing.
And so I closed my eyes and fed, and finally I fell asleep, and as I slept, I dreamed, and saw Asgard as it used to be, and Odin, to whom I owed a debt, and Thor, to whom I had sworn an oath that even I didn’t understand. And in my dream I was Loki again, with my runemark unreversed on my arm, and all the Worlds at my feet again, and Bif-rost hanging overhead.
And then I dreamed of Jumps, and Meg, and Evan, safe in their own World, sitting around Evan’s computer, watching him play Asgard!™. And in the game, I tried to say some part of what was in my mind, but all I could do was run and fight, and finally fall to my enemies, and look into the cold blue sky and see the words: Game Over. And Jumps’s face was as big as the Moon, swimming over the console, but she was smiling, and she said, See, it’s not the End of the Worlds. We all get a chance to start again—
And then it was Evan, and he said, See you on the other side—
And then it was Meg, and she didn’t say anything, but simply smiled, and her face was like the rising Sun, and her eyes were shining. And then in my dream I saw Gullveig-Heid, searching through the flotsam of a vanished World—Gullveig-Heid, awake, alert, and filled with relentless patience. And lastly, I dreamed of Mimir’s Head, caught fast in its net of runes and spinning through Dream like a spindle, gathering with it the threads of our lives, twisting them together.
Asgard was falling. The plain below was cratered with fires and laddered with smoke. Ragnarók, the End of the Worlds, lay upon us like a pall. Odin had fallen, and Thor, and Týr. Gullveig-Heid, the Sorceress, stood at the helm of the Fleet of the Dead. Surt, on dragon’s wings, approached from out of fiery Chaos, and where his shadow fell, the dark was absolute, and terrible. Bif-rost was broken, and as I fell, clutching at the last of my glam, I saw the great bridge come apart at last in a fractal of brightness, spilling its millions of cantrips and runes into the wild and shattered air, so that, for a moment, everything was rainbow. . . .
And then I awoke on the hillside, and the girl had already gone, and the goat was cropping grass, and the goblin was holding the basket with a look of mournful endurance.
Dusk had come. The sky was striped in purple and lemon yellow. The vapour trail above us had gone, and there was no sign of Sleipnir. Except for the outline of a Horse against the flank of the grassy hill—apparently cut into the turf, and very slightly luminous.
I don’t know why I was surprised. After all, I had told it to stay. Just as it had beneath Castle Hill, now it slumbered under the soil, its spidery limbs sunk into the ground. I wondered if perhaps I should have sent it away into Dream instead, rather than risk its presence alerting unwanted attention, but I guess it’s too late now for me to change the programme.
Instead I will allow myself to be taken far beneath the Hill, into the tunnels and passageways that only such creatures as goblins would know. It will be warm and safe down there; there will be food and security. My little cousins under the Hill will care for me until I am grown. There I will explore my domain, discover my powers, flex my glam. Odin, trapped in his mortal skin, will never know where to find me, or how to redeem the bargain we struck—my life for the Oracle’s Prophecy.
But that thrice-damned bauble never spoke a word that wasn’t twisted beyond recognition. Let it rot in its webwork of runes; let it tumble forever in Dream. Even if I knew where it was, I wouldn’t lift a finger to find it, or to bring it home.
And yet, my oath to him will be kept. Although he will never hear them, my first words, whispered in the dark, will be the words of the Oracle. Put together it almost makes sense. It almost makes a picture. A picture of new gods, lost loves, and new Worlds for the taking. A picture of a World at war. Who will fight? Who will stand? Even now, and in this form, I can’t help being a little aroused at the possibilities. So shoot me; it’s my nature. I never could resist a war. But right now it’s all too much. I’m barely a week old, after all. Let others deal with the Prophecy, or ignore it, as they choose. I have my whole life ahead of me—well, technically, someone else’s. The safest thing to do would be to stay down here, under the Hill, and enjoy the pleasures of the flesh—at least such pleasures available to a being in my tender state.
And yet I can’t help wondering. Much like the cat in Odin’s tale, my nature is to be curious. Perhaps that’s what will kill me. Or I may live forever. Who knows? Like the cat in the box, maybe I shall manage both at once. But for the present, let there be simple pleasures: milk, and sleep, and the warmth of a lamb’s-wool blanket. Let there be dreams of jam tarts, and penguin pyjamas, and coconut cake. Let there be light, and open skies, and the scent of growing grass. And let there be—as always—the occasional dream of Asgard.
I speak of One who is Nameless
And yet his name is Legion.
He will bring Order to the Worlds,
And bring about a Cleansing.
From the Cradle to the grave,
He lives in rage and malice.
And his parting gift to you
Will be a poisoned chalice.
I speak of two tender shoots that grow.
One the Oak, and one the Ash.
One the Horse, and one the bone.
One from Earth, and one from stone.
I speak of seven Sleepers, bound
With runes under a mountain.
And One who, in a net of fire,
Still lives in Wisdom’s fountain.
I speak of Worlds both old and new,
Of gods both new and broken.
I speak of war across the World,
And war across the ocean.
About the Author
Author photo by Jane Hewitt
JOANNE HARRIS is an Anglo-French author whose books include fourteen novels, two cookbooks, and many short stories. Her work is extremely diverse, covering aspects of magic realism, suspense, historical fiction, mythology, and fantasy. She has also written a Doctor Who novella for the BBC, has scripted guest episodes for the game Zombies, Run!, and is currently engaged in a number of musical theater projects as well as developing an original drama for television.
In 2000, her 1999 novel Chocolat was adapted for the screen; the movie starred Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp. She is an honorary fellow of St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, and in 2013 was awarded an MBE by the Queen.
Her hobbies are listed in Who’s Who as “mooching, lounging, strutting, strumming, priest-baiting, and quiet subversion.” She also spends too much time on Twitter; plays flute and bass guitar in a band first formed when she was sixteen; and works from a shed in her garden at her home in Yorkshire. You can find her @joannechocolat.
Visit us at simonandschuster.com/teen
Authors.SimonandSchuster.com/Joanne-Harris
Saga Press
Simon & Schuster, New York
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Also by Joanne M. Harris
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Five Quarters of the Orange
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Holy Fools
Jigs & Reels
Gentlemen & Players
Different Class
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. + Text copyright © 2018 by Frogspawn Limited + Jacket illustration copyright © 2018 by Donato Giancola + Originally published in Great Britain in 2018 by Orion Publishing Group + All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Saga Press Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020 + SAGA PRESS and colophon are trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc. + For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-866-506-1949 or
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