“Which brings me to the question,” I said. “Who among our colleagues has had the good fortune to merge with this paragon?”
“I’m glad you asked me that,” Odin said.
I thought back to the game of Asgard!™—its principal protagonists. We already had the General (Odin) and the Warrior (Thor). Remained was the Warrior Princess, I thought (unless the sleeping gods counted as characters).
I looked at the General. “Freyja?” I said. The Old Man always did have a bit of a soft spot for Freyja.
Odin said nothing, but I thought his host looked a little awkward.
“Freyja? Really? What’s the point? All she ever does is preen, complain, and try to seduce people.”
“Perhaps,” said Odin. “But currently, we need her. More specifically, we need Stella. Or rather, something that Stella has.” Now Evan was looking more awkward than ever. Between that and the sudden surge of jealousy I sensed in my host, I deduced that Evan might have a soft spot for Stella too.
“Why?” I said. “What does she have?”
The General gave his narrow smile. “Stella has a runemark.”
4.
For a moment I just stared at him. “In this World? How is that possible?”
First brought into Asgard by Gullveig-Heid, the Sorceress of the Vanir; bartered for by Odin, used by him to build his power, and finally handed out to the gods as symbols of their allegiance, runes and runemarks have always played a crucial part in our sovereignty.
In the old days there were sixteen runes, each with its own set of attributes, from opening doors between the Worlds to building bridges out of thin air. But now our runes were broken and scattered around the Nine Worlds; and I for one had seen no sign of them anywhere in Jumps’s world—except of course for that scar on her wrist—Kaen, reversed—which coincidentally, mirrored my own—but which, as far as I could tell, carried no special power.
I wondered if Odin had one too—a scar, a birthmark, a tattoo—anything that could channel the form and substance of a runemark. But there was nothing visible, not even a spark of the primal Fire. And as for the ridiculous dog that currently served as a host for Thor, there was nothing to suggest that it was unusual in any way, except perhaps for the length of its tongue, apparently designed to make up for the shortness of its legs. It saw me watching it and growled.
“No, Twinkle. Bad dog,” Evan said.
I suppressed laughter. “Twinkle?”
“Yeah. Long story,” Evan said. “Not my choice of name, obviously.”
Twinkle. Canine. Suspected poodle-Pomeranian cross. Likes: barking, long walks, splashing in puddles, chasing things, eating leftover human food. Currently serving as host for Thor, who shares most of his interests.
I summoned my composure. “You were talking about Stella,” I said.
Oh good, let’s talk about Stella, echoed Jumps sarcastically. Let’s talk about how special she is. Let’s talk about her runemark. I mean, forget about my exams, or the fact that I’m going crazy—
“What is it with you and Stella?” I said.
Jumps said, Whatever. Just do it, okay?
And so, as I listened and Jumps kept up a counterpoint of internal complaints, Odin explained how, in this world, the runes we had known were corrupted. Runes, the ancient code, from which all the Worlds had once been built, the language of the primal Fire, had somehow in this World been reduced to a simple game of chance. Gone were the words of power, the words that once had adorned the hammer of Thor made meaningless, just pretty shapes for carving onto trinkets.
I have to say I almost laughed. But it was the laughter of Chaos—bleak and without humour. I knew our runes had been broken the moment Surt’s shadow fell over us, but even so, the thought of the gods reduced to little squeaking toys, when once we had ruled with such arrogance—
“Yes, I know. What a joke,” Odin said, although he wasn’t laughing. “Chaos didn’t just defeat us at Ragnarók; they broke us into tiny pieces and scattered the pieces throughout the Worlds. Whatever power we had is gone. But maybe we can find it again. Maybe, in another place, there’s the chance to start anew.”
“How are you so sure?” I said.
“The Oracle predicted as much.”
“The Oracle! Don’t you ever learn?”
The Prophecy of the Oracle, revealed to Odin by Mimir’s Head, had shaped and predicted everything that had happened to the gods, from my early adoption by Odin to his inevitable betrayal. And though every word that the Oracle spoke had been true in its own way, it had done everything it could to lead the Aesir to perdition. And still the Old Man couldn’t let go of that last part of the Prophecy, even now tormenting him with its fleeting gleam of hope—a bright and cruel lure that he had swallowed hook, line, and sinker.
“ ‘On what was once the battlefield
A New Age dawns. Its children
Find the golden gaming-boards
Of bright Asgard, the fallen.’ ”
Odin gave a twisted smile as I spoke the Oracle’s words. “An Oracle never lies,” he said. “It may tell the truth perversely, or with malice, but what it reveals is still the truth. There will be a new Asgard.”
“There is,” I said tartly. “Asgard!™. There’s your golden gaming-board. There’s your New Age. In this World, the Folk play with gods as if they were Skáktafl pieces.”
Odin shook his head. “I’ll admit, that’s what I thought at first. But whatever can be dreamed can be made reality. The Prophecy promised us new runes, new gods, a new beginning. And I mean to find those new runes with whatever resources this World can provide.”
“But why?” I said. “We’re alive, in the flesh—”
Odin gave me a patient look. “You may be enjoying this,” he said. “But the thought of living this short life, in a body not my own, and in more or less constant pain, doesn’t seem to cut it, somehow.”
Well, I guess I could understand that. Odin’s host was hardly the most comfortable of Aspects. There was a section of Jumps’s mind filled with pictures of Evan as a child—some of him wearing an eye patch, some of him in the metal chair, some of him walking with some kind of metal frame around his leg, some of him looking healthy. Phrases like “Chronic Fatigue Syndrome” and “nerve avulsion” and “joint hypermobility” swam ominously around these images, although it seemed to me that even Jumps was unsure of their significance. Instead I sensed a mixture of guilt, affection, and a low, buzzing anxiety, as if she felt somehow responsible.
Dammit, will you stop that!
“Sorry. My bad.”
I don’t feel responsible for him, okay? He’s a friend. We go back a long way.
“And what about Stella?”
Jumps sniffed. Stella doesn’t have friends. Stella only has worshippers.
That certainly sounded like Freyja, I thought, turning my attention once more to Evan’s passenger. “So, if there are no working runes in this World, how can Stella have one?”
“Excellent question,” Odin said. “One possibility is that Freyja survived Ragnarók with her runemark intact.”
“One possibility?” I said. “Hasn’t Freyja told you herself?”
“Freyja,” said Odin, “has always been—shall we say, somewhat capricious? So far I haven’t managed to get the full story out of her. Or indeed, any story.”
That, too, sounded like Freyja. Fickle, flirtatious, shallow, and vain—she and Odin had history from which Odin had never recovered. Given what lay between them, I guessed that he had handled things badly. Freyja had always enjoyed wielding power, and Odin’s visible neediness had probably brought out the worst in her.
“So how could she have survived?” I said.
Odin looked thoughtful. “At Ragnarók, the Aesir fell beneath Surt’s fiery shadow. Some were dragged into Netherworld; others crossed into the kingdom of Death. Until now I had assumed that the Vanir, too, had suffered this fate. But recently, I have come to believe that the Vanir may have remained in the World
. And I think they may still be there, suspended in some kind of frozen sleep, awaiting resurrection.”
“You mean, like in the game?” I said. “You’ve been playing too much Asgard!™.”
Odin smiled. “That may be true. And yet, even a game may contain elements of reality. Imagine if that part were true. Imagine if we could find them again. Imagine if the runes had survived—maybe even the Oracle—”
“The Oracle?” I said. “What for? Hasn’t it already done enough?”
But Odin’s one eye was shining. He said, “The runes, Captain. The New Runes—”
“Oh please,” I said. “That’s ridiculous. Even if you could find the Oracle, do you think it would cooperate? You sent Mimir to his death at the hands of the enemy. Then, you took his knowledge, his lore, and kept his freaking head alive, just in case it wanted to spout the occasional bit of cryptic verse—”
“It’s complicated,” Odin said.
“Isn’t it always?”
He grinned at that. “You need to meet Stella for yourself. Come on. Let’s go. If anyone asks why you came in late, you can say I missed the bus and you had to help me.”
“Go where?” I said.
“School, of course. Bring the dog. You push.”
And so we made our way to school, with Thor trotting at our heels, and Jumps still protesting in my mind, in search of—you guessed it—trouble.
5.
I have to say I wasn’t thrilled at the prospect of seeing Freyja again. What would she be like in this World? Given my recent experiences with Odin, Thor, and myself, I wasn’t holding out for anything too impressive. The game had described her as a Warrior Princess. I hoped that was an overstatement. Jumps was no warrior, but I was pretty confident that she could survive a catfight.
The place Jumps referred to as “school” was maybe a mile and a half from Evan’s home. A big, sprawling camp, built from the same kind of concrete, trees to the west, grass beyond, a stretch of black tarmac to the east. On the tarmac I could see a crowd of young people talking, walking, running. Most were younger than Evan or Jumps. Some were carrying schoolbags. I felt a sudden sadness, all the more unexpected because I had no idea from where it came.
I’ve got an English Lit exam, said Jumps. I mean, when you’ve finished gawking.
But Odin didn’t seem keen to join the young people walking to class. Instead, he said, “I see her,” and put out a hand to slow me down.
Inside, Jumps moaned, We’re going to be late. Can’t we just go in now? And then suddenly, I saw her, and everything shrank to a point of light, and the heartbeat of the Nine Worlds stopped as if a switch had been thrown.
To be fair, I didn’t see Stella at first. Instead I saw the cluster of boys standing all around her, their faces all the more bovine for being at the age of peak testosterone. To me, they looked like a herd of young stags around the one available doe. But even to my human eyes, there was something special about her. In this Aspect I couldn’t see colours, but I sensed that if I’d been able to, they would have almost blinded me.
Oh, for Christ’s sake, muttered Jumps.
Odin and I moved closer. The dog, Twinkle, whom I’d almost forgotten in the heat of the moment, barked, and then the crowd parted to let us through.
Pff, said Jumps.
I had to stare. Freyja’s host was stunning. Eyes the colour of the sea and hair like a miser’s fantasy, wearing a pair of shorts apparently designed to show as much buttock as possible and a halter top emblazoned with a picture of a sparkly pink kitten (what was it with the Folk of this World that made them want to have animals on every item of clothing they possessed?), she looked cool and poised and beautiful—that is, until she opened her mouth, extruded a wad of bubblegum, and popped it with the tip of her tongue.
I said, “Wanna dance?”
The Goddess of Desire gave me a look that suggested nothing but contempt. “Dogstar. You’re a girl again. Can’t say it suits you, but I suppose that’s the only way you’ll ever get to see a woman naked.”
I grinned. That sounded like Freyja, all right.
Jumps muttered something vaguely obscene.
The dog Twinkle started to bark, sharply and insistently.
Odin looked absurdly pleased. “See?” he said, addressing me. “Isn’t she just perfect?”
Oh, just perfect, growled Jumps. Why are boys so stupid? Why is everyone so stupid?
Stella—or was it Freyja?—shrugged. “I’ve known worse. I can work with it. I mean, the hair’s a disaster, and the wardrobe looks as if someone brought it in on a goat chariot from some downmarket World’s End store—”
Odin gave her a quelling look. “Perhaps we should talk in private, eh?” he said with a glance at Stella’s entourage, who had been following every word with puppyish adoration.
“Oh, them,” said Stella, and snapped her fingers in a gesture of casual dismissal. “Laters, ’kay?” At once the little group was dispelled as neatly as with a cantrip, and I started to understand why Odin was so pleased. Stella had glamour, and lots of it. Even in this skin I could sense it. It sparkled like cheap jewellery, surrounded her like cheap perfume. But could it be used for our purpose? That remained to be seen, I thought, skimming through Jumps’s memory for any information that might lead to a better understanding of the fact, that out of the four of us, Stella was the only one who seemed to have a spark of the primal Fire.
I found very little. Stella was, as I’d suspected, a pretty girl of average intelligence, whose popularity at school was mostly due to good hair, prowess in sports, and a large collection of short skirts, hoop earrings, and sparkly animal-print tops. I also gathered that she had once been a close friend of my host’s—until, at least, an incident that Jumps kept closely guarded behind one of those unlit doors. I sensed a painful memory, cocooned in conflicting emotions, before Jumps registered my interest and slammed the mental door in my face. A spike of pain flashed through my head.
“Ow! What was that for?”
I told you not to do that!
“You have some major trust issues,” I said, pressing a hand to my temple. It must have hurt her, too, of course, but she didn’t seem to care. The door marked STELLA was firmly shut—which made me all the more curious to know what was behind it. But Jumps was clearly unwilling to tell, and so I went to the horse’s mouth and addressed the goddess directly.
“I hear you’ve got a runemark,” I said.
Freyja gave me a scornful look. “Jumps was supposed to bring Thor,” she said, addressing Odin. “What happened? Did you lose him?”
Odin shrugged. “It didn’t work out. For some reason, Loki was the best match for this host. But we do have Thor. In a way.” He looked down at the fluffy white dog, who was now cavorting around her ankles, still barking excitedly. Thor at least seemed happy enough in his current Aspect. I imagine he and his canine host had more than a few things in common: an optimistic outlook, excellent teeth, a boundless appetite for snacks—in fact, as far as Thor was concerned, he’d probably found his perfect match. I patted his head. He growled at me and bared his little puppy teeth.
“Cute,” I said. “Does he do tricks?”
“Sorry,” said Evan. “He’s still confused.”
I shrugged. “Thor was always confused. But now that we’re all together, I’d like to know what’s happening. What about this runemark? Where did it come from? What is it?”
Odin looked at Stella. “Show him. It’ll be easier.”
Freyja raised her halter top to reveal her bare midriff. There, just above the band of her shorts, there was a mark—a familiar design, most certainly a runemark. It looked to me like an inked tattoo, but the execution was better than any tattoo I’d ever seen—the colours sharp and bright and clear. And at the heart of the inked design was Fé, the rune of wealth and success, Freyja’s since the Golden Age, Fé unbroken and unreversed and shining with its own inner light—
“Nice,” I said. “Can I have one?”
Freyja laughed. “What, are you having performance issues?”
I quoted the Oracle’s Prophecy:
“New runes will come to Odin’s heirs,
New harvests will be gathered.”
Odin made a clicking sound, suddenly sounding a lot like his ravens, Hugin and Munin. “But this isn’t a new rune,” he said. “Where did it come from, Freyja? I assumed they’d all been broken when the gods fell at Ragnarók. Which begs the question—”
Freya shrugged. “Don’t look at me. I told you before. I don’t remember anything after Bif-rost fell. I passed out. One minute I was in Dream, having a perfectly lovely time, then boom! The next I was in Stella. And she had no idea who I was. Imagine that? She’d barely even heard of Asgard. Here, let her tell you herself.”
For a moment, the Goddess seemed to withdraw, allowing the host to have her say. The process was like turning down the wick of a lamp to a very low setting. Nothing changed, except that the inner fire seemed to dim; then suddenly Freyja was gone, and we were left with Stella. She blinked at us rather resentfully, then did the thing with the gum again.
“So, what’s with the tattoo?” I asked.
“I told you,” she said. “I liked the design. It’s not like it means anything.”
“Oh, but it does,” Odin said. “Those runes were lost at Ragnarók. How this came to you, I don’t know, but it’s certainly something. Did you always have a close affinity with Freya? Did you read a lot about her? Pray to her in secret?”
“No, nothing like that,” Stella said.
“Well, you must have played Asgard!™.”
Stella shrugged. “One time. On my phone. I don’t even like computer games.”
“What about books? Films? Comics? Art? Could you have pulled it out of Dream?”
Stella said, “I never dream.”
Well, I could believe that. Stella didn’t strike me as being overburdened with imagination. Nevertheless, she had the glam—and not just any glam, either. A rune unreversed after Ragnarók, which had plunged all runes into darkness. I’ll admit to a pang of jealousy. Or maybe that was Jumps in my mind, infecting me with her feelings.