Freyja blew another bubble of gum. I couldn’t help being impressed at the way she had taken to her host. Everything about her radiated confidence and happiness. And behind it all, there was a glow—a sense of intoxication that spoke of powerful glamours at work, of powerful, untold secrets. Even I was not quite immune; I felt slightly dizzy, slightly sick, as if I had stared too long at the sun.
“Got what you wanted?”
“Not even close.”
“Too bad.” She gave me that smile, and my knees went weak. “Got to go. Laters, haters. Bye!”
And then she was Stella once again, the glamour muted; the dizziness gone; just another pretty girl loping across the schoolyard. I watched her go, and so did Jumps, with a sudden blaze of resentment that enveloped me like a cloak of fire.
“What’s your problem?” I said aloud. “She seems cool.”
Oh, cool, now, is it? said Jumps. You people—you all make me sick. It’s all: Poor Stella, she’s so nice. People take advantage. It isn’t her fault. She’s so sensitive. She likes to adopt hopeless cases. Poor fucking Stella. A bell rang, interrupting as I tried to make sense of her emotions. Oh, forget it. Hurry up. Come on. We’re already late enough as it is.
“Come on,” she said aloud, addressing Evan, “or are you just going to sit and stare?”
Ouch. That was definitely jealousy. Not one of my favourites, and not one I’m generally prone to. Something to do with Evan, perhaps? Was he involved with Stella? It seemed unlikely, given that she was gorgeous, and that he could barely walk, but then, not everyone’s as shallow as I am.
Jumps was pushing Evan’s chair in the direction of the school buildings. “Where are we going, exactly?” I said.
Odin looked at me. “Class, of course. And I suggest very strongly that, if you want to avoid attracting unnecessary attention, you sit quietly to one side and let Jumps do all the talking.”
“But I was going to—”
“Not now,” he said. “Look, I know you’re impatient. But for now, we have to cause as little disruption as we can. That means following the lives of our hosts as closely as possible.”
“Meaning what?” I said.
He grinned. “Meaning that school’s in,” he said. “And that if we want to live, then we’re going to have to learn.”
6.
Of all the things I’d expected from this, frankly, unsettling series of developments, this was by far the least likely. That Loki, Son of Laufey, Father of Wolves, and Mother of the Eight-Legged Horse, should be reduced to sitting in a classroom, listening to a man in a suit rambling on interminably about something called “examination procedure,” while Jumps made notes, and played with her hair, and sometimes drew little pictures—of fairies, stars, and the inevitable kittens—in her English folder.
Odin had been serious about my keeping a low profile. I sensed that Jumps was somehow even more furious at my presence than she had been previously, and rather than risk trouble, I retreated politely to a kind of mental viewing platform, from which I watched developments without participating.
Gods, it was dull. Ten minutes of that and I was almost ready to go back to my cell in Netherworld. And then, just as I thought I was free, we had to move to another room—a much larger room, this time—in which two hundred numbered desks were lined up in long rows. On every desk there was a booklet marked with the words: ENGLISH LITERATURE; PAPER 1.
Jumps sat down at the desk marked 92. The guy in the suit came to stand at the front and waited. No one said a word.
So, what happens now? I said to Jumps.
Shut up. This is important.
I gave a mental shrug and went back to watching from the wings. I could tell she was angry, though honestly, I couldn’t figure out what I’d done. I spent the time going through some memories that were stored nearby—not a particularly interesting archive, mostly to do with schoolwork and exams—but I was trying to lie low. I could tell that Jumps was upset, and rather than cause a scene, I thought it better to keep to the sidelines.
The dog, Twinkle, had been left outside, tethered near the bike sheds, but Evan and Stella were both there: Stella sitting in front of me, Evan somewhere near the back. The guy in the suit (Mr. Matthews: English teacher. Likes: The Smiths, tweed jackets with leather elbow patches, Star Wars, pretending he’s down with the kids.) announced that we had two and a half hours to complete the paper. Jumps turned the first page, read the questions (which were mostly about a book called Lord of the Flies, a play called Julius Caesar, and some reasonably smutty poems by a fellow called D. H. Lawrence), and then began to write.
Left with nothing else to do, I allowed my mind to drift. First towards the thought of lunch, which I was rather anticipating, but which Jumps had already written off, then towards that tantalizing verse at the end of the Oracle’s Prophecy, the one that seemed to promise us some kind of salvation.
New runes will come to Odin’s heirs,
New harvests will be gathered.
The fallen will come home. The child
Will liberate the father.
Well, of course, my child had saved me, in a manner of speaking. Without the World Serpent, Jormungand, I would never have broken free, or managed to travel as far as this World. Could that verse be referring to me? And if so, did it mean that I, too, would one day inherit those new runes? It was an attractive prospect. But one of the things about prophecies is that they tend to be rather unclear, giving out snippets of wisdom so vague as to be almost useless. The Oracle was especially so. It was bound to tell the truth, but it did so with the minimum of clarity, which meant that, in spite of having foretold Ragnarók in quite alarming detail, it still didn’t give us warning enough for us to change the End of the Worlds.
Not that it wanted to, of course. It wanted to see us swept from the board. Which was one of the reasons I’d thrown the damned thing off the side of the Rainbow Bridge, hoping never to see it again. But if Odin was right, perhaps the gods had not all fallen at Ragnarók. And if the Vanir had survived, then maybe we still had a chance. And if the Oracle could be found, and made to divulge the New Runes—
The symbol of the conch shell is symbolic of—
I yawned. Or rather, Jumps did—in spite of her efforts, she was bored. Outside, the sun was shining. The sky was as blue as forever. I hadn’t seen such a sky since the Sun was swallowed by Skól, the Wolf. Against it, the hill I had noticed earlier stood out like a citadel. I found myself remembering another citadel, long ago, with a fierceness of nostalgia that was almost alarming. The skyline, too, was familiar: that range of mountains that seemed to float above a layer of summer cloud. A memory, perhaps? A dream?
My stomach growled. Jumps ignored it.
I see, I said. You’re hoping to starve me out of this body—that is, if I don’t die from boredom first.
Jumps gave a little sniff. Trust me. If I could be somewhere else—
And then I saw it. Or she did, perhaps. A scrawl of something across the sky, glimpsed through the window opposite. A scrawl, like the words in the sky in the game of Asgard!™. My reaction was violent—instinctive. My heart began to pound. I stood up.
For God’s sake, what are you doing? wailed Jumps.
But I was barely listening. It was a runemark across the sky, invincible as the rising sun. Not a familiar rune, but one that shone out in letters as bright as snow.
Rune! My heart was pounding. Rune!
What is it? Sit down, you idiot!
But I could barely hear her. The shock was almost too much to bear. My ears were ringing. My chest hurt. It meant something, I told myself. It must mean something. I stretched out my hand to stop myself from falling. Papers and writing equipment clattered over the polished floor.
Rune! Rune!
I became aware that Jumps was trying to attract my attention. It’s only a vapour trail, she said from what seemed like a World away. It’s not a rune; it’s a trail of hot air! Fuck’s sake, Loki, please! Sit down!
 
; I blinked. I seemed to be standing up. Everyone was staring. Inside me, Jumps was apparently trying to curl up and disappear. In front of me, Stella had turned around and was watching with an expression of mingled disgust and amusement. The guy in the suit was looking at me as if he thought I might explode.
“Josephine Lucas. Are you unwell?”
I hadn’t felt so conspicuous since the day I was hauled up in front of Odin’s high seat for stealing Idun’s apples. I looked around. There were people staring at me from every direction. I bent down to pick up the papers and writing things I’d knocked off the desk.
“Er, sorry. Just stretching my legs,” I said, and sat down at my desk again.
Someone muttered, “Freak,” as I passed. I could feel my face burning.
Stella gave me a knowing smirk, contempt mingled with sympathy. I noticed that she’d tied up her hair in preparation for the exam. Little barrettes shaped like unicorns twinkled behind her ears.
That’s it, you bastard. I’m done, said Jumps. See how you cope without me.
Then there was silence. Not a word. Not a cry. Not a sign in our shared space of someone else in occupancy. It was what I’d been craving since the start, and yet somehow it didn’t feel as good as I’d been expecting.
Jumps?
In the sky, the runemark was fading. Vapour from an airplane. Of course it was. What else could it be? Those damned human emotions again. Humiliation. Helplessness. Shame.
Hey, Jumps. You okay?
Silence. Silence from my host. She seemed to have retreated somewhere deep inside our shared space. Nothing but closed doors and shadows. And behind all the doors and the galleries, I thought I could hear her sobbing.
Hey, Jumps, I’m sorry. I didn’t know.
More emotions. Fear. Remorse.
Jumps, come out. I’m sorry.
I tried to get her hands to work; to pick up the pen; to write. The symbol of the conch shell. The symbol of the conch. But whatever had been driving Jumps wasn’t working anymore. The pen stayed loosely in the hand, the phrase remained unfinished.
I tried again. I understood that this was somehow important to her, that this examination, for all its absurdity, was something meaningful in her life.
Come on. Wake up. Finish the test.
But Jumps, wherever she might be, was not taking calls from anyone. I had command over body and mind. I looked at the paper in front of me, with its unfinished sentence.
For a moment I was conflicted. I knew how much this mattered to her. I suppose I could have tried a few doors, copied out some details. I mean, how hard could this test be? I could probably have walked it.
But outside the sun was shining, the air was sweet, the sky was blue. Outside there was the promise of a thousand new sensations. Inside, there was only the desk, and the hum of recycled air, and the breathing of the other students, and the odd stifled fart from the guy sitting next to me, a tubby kid called Steve or Dave, who kept trying to see what I was writing, which frankly, wasn’t much.
If Jumps wasn’t going to respond, I thought, there was no reason to stay inside.
Jumps?
That distant sobbing.
Steve (or Dave) farted again. It summed up everything I felt. I looked at that necklace of mountains, with the fading rune above them.
Jumps?
Now even the sobbing had stopped. So shoot me. I picked up my things and left.
7.
Freedom. What a feeling. For the first time since Ragnarók, I was completely myself again, alive, alert, and in the flesh. The sun shone on my face; the sky was a brilliant shield above, and the day was spread out like a gift, ready to be opened.
Once more I thought of that white runemark in the sky. A “vapour trail,” she had called it. The Folk are so suspicious of signs, as if dreams and omens could ever be safely dismissed or disbelieved. And yet it was a sign. I knew: a sign of something momentous.
I walked through the streets of Malbry, aimlessly at first, then with a sense of increasing purpose. Jumps’s plan for lunch, I sensed, had firstly consisted of talking to Evan about her exams, then spending an hour in the school gym, working on her abdominals. In her absence I changed the plan and made for the nearest food supplier, where I found chocolate, jam tarts, and beer, and settled nearby to consume them.
I’d hardly opened the packaging when a small, angry man emerged from the place and started to shout at me. “What d’you think you’re doing?” he said. “Don’t think I didn’t see you!”
I consulted the section marked FOOD in my mind, and found a section on payment. Apparently, food and drink were not always freely available. In some places, such things as jam tarts needed to be paid for.
I reached into Jumps’s backpack for something she called a “wallet.” “I’m sorry,” I said carefully. “How much do I owe you?” The contents of the wallet were unfamiliar currency, including some paper and a plastic card, but I offered the man a handful of silver coins. That ought to cover it, I thought.
The man, who was light brown in colour, frowned. “Are you taking the piss?” he said. “And anyway, how old are you?”
I knew the answer to that. “Seventeen.”
“Too young for beer, then,” said the man, taking back the six-pack. “That’ll be nine-twenty. And if I see you in my shop again, I’ll call the police. Right?” And, taking his fee from Jumps’s purse, he dropped the coins on the ground at my feet and marched back into the building, leaving me genuinely confused.
“Too young for beer?”
Jumps did not reply. An eerie, echoing silence filled the area she’d vacated. I wondered if she’d gone for good. The thought was not as appealing as I might have expected, and the jam tarts were sticky and tasteless. I finished the packet, and went on my way, feeling guilty and rather sick. Clearly, this World was less straightforward than I’d previously supposed.
Still, the bright side was that, at last, I had free access to Jumps’s mind, including some of those closed doors. Perhaps I could learn something useful, I thought—something to help me negotiate the mental maze that was my host.
Jumps? Can you hear me?
No answer. Just an empty rushing sound, like the sea through a conch shell. The conch shell is a symbol of . . . what? I searched for the answer. But all I could find was a memory of being very small, at the seaside—of building a castle in the sand, which the ruthless waves stole away.
Wandering back through Malbry’s streets, I came across another shop, this one some kind of beauty place. I could see a girl in a chair, and a woman cutting her hair. Around them, a mirror flanked with pictures of people showcasing various hairstyles. I caught sight of myself in the mirror—the lank hair falling over my eyes—and had an inspiration. I consulted the inner directory. There was a section marked HAIRSTYLES. Quite a large section, as it turned out, with some of Jumps’s favourites illuminated in bright lights—styles that I sensed that she coveted, without having the courage to try them.
Okay, I thought. Time for a gesture. Something to show my appreciation for the hospitality she’d offered me. And maybe, too, because I was tired of keeping a low profile.
Welcome to the new me, I thought. Then I opened the door and went inside.
I came out some time later, feeling rather pleased with myself. I’d known I could work with this body, but I have to admit that even I was surprised at the difference. One side shaved, the other left longer, the whole thing dyed a fiery red. The hairdresser was pleased enough by my choice to offer me a discount, then, having discovered the use of the plastic card in my wallet, I decided to complete the transformation.
Jumps’s sartorial tastes seemed to run to shapeless, baggy garments in black. Given that this body was reasonably workable, I decided to try for something more appealing. I went into several shops, and came out feeling more like myself. The short white dress with the pineapple print worked nicely over my skinny jeans, and the pink leather jacket clashed just enough with my new hair to make it cool.
I was starting to look at shoes, but for some reason the plastic card had stopped working. Too bad. I couldn’t wait for Jumps to see what I’d made of our shared space. Perhaps now she would understand that I was on her side, after all.
I was getting admiring looks. Before that, no one had looked at me. Now, nearly everyone looked at me, which suited me just fine. My profile was far too fabulous for me to keep a low one, and I was enjoying the attention. Sadly, most of it seemed to come from balding, middle-aged men of the type I’ve never found attractive. Still, there’d be plenty of time for that kind of thing later. I’d proved I could fend for myself in this World. The rest would be a piece of cake.
8.
Let’s face it, most problems can be solved by judicious consumption of cake. My afternoon of liberty had left me feeling hungry again, and, finding myself standing in front of a tea shop called the Pink Zebra, I checked the money I had left (the section marked MONEY in Jumps’s mind told me I was still okay) and went inside for a well-deserved snack.
A pretty girl of about my own age was sitting alone at a table. I ordered (cherry coconut cake, with a side of homemade vanilla ice cream) and went over to sit next to her. Cake opens doors, and I was in need of a little conversation.
“May I?” I said.
She looked at me. “Sure.”
Yellow dress, long curly hair. Brown skin, like an Outlander’s. She gave her name as Margaret, and watched me over her cup of tea.
“No cake?”
She smiled. “No cake,” she said. “I’d kill to be as thin as you.”
I tried to process that for a bit. Jumps had all kinds of odd ideas about her weight and body shape, but Margaret was as beautiful as Jumps could never hope to be. She was plump, and soft, and brown, with golden eyes that sparkled. Just looking at her, I could tell that she would like pizza, and ice cream, and cake, and dancing, and kissing, and laughter, and sex—