So I push open the door.
BEDFORD RADIO TRAFFIC
14: Holy God. I’ve got … You’ve got … It’s a disaster down here. We have kids with weapons. Blue humanoid things. Explosions. I need backup. We need Fire to respond.
Dispatch: 10-4. Will page out Fire. All available units, please respond to the Grand Auditorium. Unit 14 is reporting armed civilians, full-scale rioting, and fire. Proceed with caution.
14: The Feds are here. At least one is down. Again. I have an officer down.
Dispatch: I need the exact location, 14. Paging County Ambulance now.
14: I have … Oh … Stand by.
The door opens to a chamber that is not a room but more like a cave, which makes no sense. Why would there be a cave under the Grand? There’s no point in wondering. Wondering wastes time I don’t have.
The walls are some sort of white limestone-type rock, totally not typical of Maine, which is more full of gray granite. Stalactites hanging from the ceiling form sharp, white points. Another chamber leads off of it. That one is emitting a weird pinkish orange glow.
In the center of this room is Nick, human. Nick’s teeth are gritted and he’s bleeding everywhere. Blood runs down the side of his face, down his arms. He is a gory, awful mess and it’s so obvious that he can barely lift his head up because the effort is just that much. Still, he does. He does lift it. He mouths my name and I know it’s a warning. I whirl around as the door whips shut behind me, guarded by four large pixies.
“So, you finally come to give us what we want,” Frank says. He has a wound on his arm, claw marks. Nick must have fought him well.
I don’t answer.
“Put down your sword,” Frank says, and I guess just to prove how tough and strong he is, he pushes Nick forward and away from him. He falls on his knees and forearms in the center of the cavern. Then he flops to his side.
He reaches toward me. “Zara. Don’t.”
The words are all he has. His lips stop moving. The pain makes him shudder. Anger rips through me. How can I let him suffer? How can I let any of them suffer? And where is Astley? “First, leave Nick alone.”
“Hardly. He is our insurance. To make sure you free the god.”
Frustration gets the best of me and I roar, “I will never free the stupid god.”
Frank unleashes a patronizing smile. “Oh, you will. And you will survive freeing Loki, but without your pixie blood you will never be able to survive what is required to stop the Ragnarok.”
“Don’t do it, Zara.” Nick’s words are broken and pleading. I don’t need pixie senses to tell that he might be dying, that his energy is running out quickly. I can’t lose him again, not because he was my boyfriend, but because he is Nick, and Nick is wonderful and imperfect and bossy and good. Maybe I can buy some time.
“What do I have to do?” My question comes out flat, almost robotic.
Frank bounces up and down with glee, stomping his heeled boot on Nick’s finger.
“Stop it! Hurt him any more and I’ll refuse,” I yell, taking a step forward.
Frank presses his boot into Nick’s finger again. A bone cracks. “I hardly think you’re in a state to bargain. I truly wish my sister hadn’t humanized you. I wanted you for my queen. But maybe I could turn you back; it might be worth the risk.”
And then Astley steps into the room from another chamber. He is uninjured. He meets my eyes. “She’s too puny and too easily manipulated by her heart. She is an unworthy queen, hardly worth anything, let alone a risk.”
“Astley?” I gasp out his name. Why isn’t he hurt? Why is he smiling like that? What is he doing?
He walks right up to Frank’s side and says, “She’d be so fun to torture, though.”
“You can torture her later.” Frank brushes a bloodied hand against his own cheek, stroking it. “Let’s bring her to Loki.”
“But … But … Astley?” Pixies start grabbing and pushing me forward. I try to plant my feet, look to Nick for help, but he’s on the floor, trapped and injured.
“He lied to us,” Nick says.
“You think?” I snap. Astley shrugs as I say it. He motions for the pixies to let me go and they do, almost as if he’s their ruler now.
“But they poisoned you,” I say. “You were fighting with us. Your mother—”
“All that happened,” he says. “All that happened and then I saw the error of my ways. The Council convinced me. They were on his side all along. They sent me here because they wanted to keep up appearances, make it look as though they were on the side of continuity, but Frank and my mother had paid them off, convinced them that the end of humans would be the beginning of a true pixie realm, where we would not have to hide who we are anymore, where we could take our rightful places, where love and matters of the heart are unimportant, where our needs are always met, our energy always strong, untainted by humans and iron and technology.”
He comes closer to me, but not close enough for me to attack him, which is totally unfortunate because I’d really like to rip his gorgeous hair out.
“How could you do this?” I gasp and say the obvious, “I trusted you.”
Nick growls on the floor, which probably means that I’m an idiot or something. My heart breaks in half.
“We were going to lose,” Astley says. “The Council was on their side. It seemed—It seemed the only way. And Frank is so much more powerful with me.”
“And he is more powerful with me, especially since he’s lost his little queen,” Frank says. “So, we made a deal. He comes to my side. I do not kill his second, Amelie. His pixies survive in a world where they do not have to pretend to be things that are beneath them.”
“Humans,” Nick sputters.
“And what does he give you?” I ask Frank.
“You.” Frank points at me.
“Me?” Anger makes me want to tear off my own skin. “I am not a possession that someone can give.” I turn to Astley and spit out, “You don’t own me. You are nothing to me. Don’t you realize what you’re doing? You’re condemning all of us.”
Astley’s face twitches and for a second his eyes almost look like they’ll cry. But the moment passes and then his face hardens again, and when he speaks his voice is nasty, condescending. “No, you are the one who condemns us, Zara.”
“Wh-what do you mean?”
“He means,” Frank finishes for him, “that the fate of all pixies lies in your hands. You’re the key to Ragnarok, pure, innocent Zara of White.”
“Why me?”
Frank laughs. “It’s because of the prophecy. It is because you are the child of the willow and the White, the stars. You are human. You were pixie. You are the one who changes. You are the one who would sacrifice everything so that those she loves survive. The only thing you lack to complete the prophecy is your fae blood and the magic. You are sadly without magic now. It makes you far less interesting and less useful to the do-gooders of this pathetic world.”
“You tell her too much,” Astley barks out.
“It matters not. She will do what we ask. I can tell her it all.”
Glaring at him, I mutter, “Then do it. Tell me how to stop the end of the world.”
“You have to die.”
“Duh.”
“You have to jump into the mouth of Hel, Zara,” Astley says. “You have to sacrifice yourself.”
I look around.
Frank starts laughing. “She’s looking for it! How cute. It is not here yet. You have to free Loki first. Come on, idiotic Zara White. Let’s go free the god.”
I want to process the information Frank just gave up, figure out Astley’s traitor ways, but I will myself to focus on the moment. I try to remember everything Devyn has ever told me about Loki. Different sources say different things about Loki’s relationship to the other gods. He was helpful and problematic. He is the father of Fenrir, the wolf that ate my pixie dad, just swallowed him whole.
“She is thinking,” Frank says as we walk thr
ough a tunnel. The surface is uneven, the stalactites are glowing orange like there is fire buried deep beneath them.
“She is always thinking.” Astley says this scornfully, like thinking is a bad thing.
That’s obviously his spiteful way of trying to make me stop thinking, but I won’t. I focus. Loki. He was a shape shifter, some say the first of the shape shifters, and has been cited as being a fly, a seal, a salmon, a horse. But when we enter the second cavern, he is shaped as a man, a suffering man.
I must gasp out loud, because Frank says, “Horrible, is it not? And yet, this is what the good gods have done to him.”
“For punishment?” I squeak out as the pixies pull me forward across the wet stone floor.
Frank indicates for them to let me go. They do, but hover behind me, in case I decide to make a run for it. Frank moves to my side and whispers almost in my ear, “You remember what he did?”
I can’t.
“He is said to have engineered the death of the much-loved god Baldr. So, to punish him, the other gods bound him here. Do you know what he is bound with?”
I don’t say yes or no. “We should help him.”
“It’s with his son’s own entrails,” Astley says.
“That means intestines. Entrails mean intestines,” Frank pipes in. He claps his hand against his chest. “Oh! She’s shuddering, how delightful.”
A giant serpent hangs above Loki’s head. Venom drips out of its fangs but is caught in a bowl held aloft by a beautiful woman. Her really defined back muscles show via the drape of her flowy, old-fashioned dress. How long has she been protecting him?
“According to the prophecies, Loki is to fight with the jötnar against the gods. It’s hard to blame him,” Frank says. “He will kill Heimdallr.”
“Heimdall?” I croak out. The air is so hot it hisses and I remember how kind Heimdall was when I crossed the bridge to Valhalla.
“Heimdallr.” Frank flicks his finger against my cheek. “You children never get anything right. BiForst became BiFrost. Heimdallr became Heimdall. It’s like you don’t even hear it correctly. Honestly, it’s insulting to have you as foes.”
I can’t help myself. “Obviously, we are pretty good foes, because you haven’t actually defeated us yet.”
He spins around and the pixies lift me up so our faces are mere centimeters apart and in less than a blink he drops the glamour. He’s blue, and toothy, and feral looking. “You wouldn’t call this defeated? After days of us destroying this pathetic little town. This isn’t defeated? Your puny human ‘army’ is up there being slaughtered. Your good pixie king, the one you chose, the one you loved, is ‘evil’ now. Your wolf is dying on the floor behind us. You, no longer pixie, are about to release Loki into the world. You are alone and about to do what we want, after we tormented you for days, toying with you. I would call that defeated.”
There’s no arguing with that, but anger still stiffens my muscles, and pity—pity for Frank because he is so evil, pity for Loki, who is naked and tortured for centuries, and pity for Astley for giving up.
“Fine,” I say.
Frank makes a motion and the pixies set me down. He starts to say something, but I ignore him and all the pixies and instead walk toward the god. The water sizzles where my boots touch it, ripples showing the displacement caused by mere forward motion. Nobody stops me.
“Loki.” I whisper his name and he looks at me, turning his head and revealing eyes as blue as my biological father’s. There is so much sorrow and pain in there. His mouth opens but no sound comes out. Above him the serpent’s fang drips one more drop of venom. It clangs into the bowl and the sound of it makes Loki cringe. What must it be like to have to listen to that for so long?
I ask Frank, because Astley is such a waste. “He’s here because he killed someone good?”
“Yes. And for mouthing off,” he answers.
“But the gods are always killing each other,” I say, remembering all those stories Devyn told us. The names run into each other and muddle up in my head now, but I do remember that there is a lot of death. “Why punish him like this for so long? Why single him out?”
“Does it matter?” Frank snaps. “Free him and let’s begin the end of it all.”
“Why can’t you?” I ask. “Why do I have to do it?”
“Because only someone who knows what he has done and still feels pity can let him go.” Frank groans as if I’m far too dumb to deal with anymore.
“And after I let him go, you’ll take care of Nick, help him?”
“Well, we’ll stop torturing him, although it is so much fun. Wolves are fun to abuse. And Astley hasn’t had his turn yet.”
I ignore him and step close to Loki. Despite his torture, he still has the form of a god, all powerful, chiseled muscle. I reach out and touch his arm, ignoring the jealous and/or protective hiss of the woman above him. Her arms quiver from holding the bowl. She must truly love him to hold that bowl for so very long. There must be something inside of him that is worthy of that kindness.
It’s so sad and so wrong. Should one being suffer against his will just so the rest of us can survive? Who are the gods to condemn one man forever? What kind of existence is this if my survival depends on his staying here, suffering forever, wrapped in the intestines of his very own son? What does it make us that we can allow such pain? Is survival worth that?
He cringes. I’m not sure if he’s cringing from pain or because his wife is hissing or because I’ve touched him, poor thing.
“Why can’t you just shift?” I ask. “If you’re a shape shifter, why don’t you turn into a fly and escape?”
He blinks at me and I move my hand away.
Everyone else just starts laughing. The horrible gales of it echo around the cave. Even the snake looks as if it wants to laugh at me somehow. My hands ball into fists, but then Loki’s eyes twitch and a horrible realization/sadness fills them and he roars. The primal fierceness of it vibrates against the walls.
I think I must swear a little under my breath, and I remind myself that I am doing this to save Nick, to free tortured Loki, and there’s this other weird feeling like a sense of destiny. But then what about the world? What about the end of it? What about Issie and Devyn and Cassidy and Grandma Betty and my mom? What about trees and birds and flowers and puppies and— What if my need to save kills everyone else, including Nick? What if I can’t stop the apocalypse once it starts?
But it’s not just Nick or Loki and his wife. Deep inside, I know I need to do this. Maybe I always have.
Reeling away from Frank, I push my fingers into my eyelids, trying to think, to understand. It’s hard because there’s an annoying house fly buzzing near my ear. I do not want all of us to die. I do not want—
Fingers touch my shoulder, firm but not aggressive, flatly planting against my sweater. Whirling around, I make fists, even though I know I can’t fight them well, not as a human anyway.
Loki looms above me. His face aches with joy. His eyes light up from within. His much smaller wife is clutching his side as if she’s afraid to let go. He’s so different than what he was just a minute ago.
“Y-you’re free,” I stutter. “Did I free you? I— I— What did I do?”
“I am free, thanks to your kindness and intellect.” He shakes his head. He exudes so much power now. “Centuries I have dwelled here and never saw the logic of escape. It humiliates me. To think I could just shape shift into a fly.”
“Oh …” I try to think of something to say, some nice platitude or cliché about not seeing what’s right before our eyes, but I can’t. All I can think about is the future, so I blurt, “Can you please not cause the apocalypse?”
For a second he just stares at me. Then he throws his head back and laughs. The booms of it shake the floor. Frank laughs too, but I’m not sure he actually knows what he’s laughing about. His pixie minions smile. Astley’s eyes are closed, like it is all too much to deal with.
When the laughter ends, Loki puts
a hand on his wife’s head, strokes her hair, but keeps his eyes on me and addresses me directly. “It was inspired of them to say that I would be the inciting force for Ragnarok, but, alas, that is untrue, little human. I do not incite.”
“Zara,” I tell him, unclenching my fists. “My name is Zara.”
“Zara … princess.” He takes in this new information.
I need to understand. “So, you aren’t going to fight against Odin when the apocalypse comes?”
“Oh, that I shall, I don’t doubt. But I do not cause the apocalypse.”
“You don’t?” I ask. “Everything I’ve read says that you do.”
“No. It is wrong.”
“Then who does?”
He points at Astley and Frank. “They do. The pixies.”
NCIC TELETYPE
Attention All Bedford County Area Agencies: Please contact the Emergency Management Services immediately about sending all available personnel to assist in an event currently occurring in Bedford. See below for details.
Finding out that he is responsible for the beginning of the apocalypse seems to absolutely make Frank’s day. He and Astley pretty much prance around the cavern, smacking each other on the back and bowing to their pixie minion types, who appropriately salute them and wipe the sweat off of their brows. It’s really ridiculously hot in here, too hot to be cavorting, and there is a battle going on, and Nick is still injured in the outer cavern, and … I need to get out of here.
I am terrified of Loki, but I touch his arm. “Can you help my friend? Can you get us out of here?”
He looks at me, expressionless.
There’s probably a protocol for asking this sort of thing of a Norse god, but I honestly don’t have the time or means to google it at the moment, so instead I try to give him the pleading-eye look that always used to work on Nick.