Stormbringer

by Alis Franklin

  Then Móði says, “You’ve been quiet today, jötunn.”

  I open one eye. “Thinking about Þrúðr,” I lie. “Wondering what her honeymoon is like, being pawed at by the slimy, filthy maggot you sol—”

  “Shut up.” Magni, glowering. He spits. “Is there anything you touch that does not turn to poison?”

  I grin and think of Sigmund.

  And Þrúðr, too, now that I’ve mentioned it. The dvergar are notoriously secretive about where their tadpoles come from. There’s a story about that. It involves me, the goddess Freyja, and a necklace. It’s mostly bullshit, which I know, because I made the bullshit up. But if there’s one great thing about the æsir that’s remained constant throughout the ages, it’s their paranoid belief that every single man and beast in the whole nine realms wants to fuck their women.

  Still. Maybe I feel a little guilty about Þrúðr. Just a little. And maybe I’d expected a little more protest from her re her future, and maybe—

  And maybe there isn’t much I can do about it now. Later, perhaps. Not now.

  Now, it’s time for something else.

  Magni and Móði still insist on keeping watch, despite my assurance Ivan Milat’s been in jail for a while now. Watching them keep watch is interminable, as it ever is. So I close my eyes, lean back against my tree, and try to reach out. Past flesh and bone and feather, into the wind, across the treetops, into the copper wires of the telephone lines, tracking back to—

  Shit. I can barely get out of visual range. Móði’s fucking rune cuffs. They cut me off from the Wyrd, from the heartbeat of the Realms. Keep me small and limited, my sight dimmed and shuttered. It wasn’t so noticeable in Ásgarðr; things work differently there. But on Miðgarðr, I’m a god. I should feel like one. Nothing here should be a challenge, that’s the point of it, whether it be running a company or finding a parking space at the mall. The world of mortals bends to my will because that’s the way they made me, made all of us. Living, breathing stories.

  Except, right now, not.

  It’s going to be a long fucking night.

  I get my chance just before dawn.

  Magni and Móði are being extra-vigilant, probably because of the horse thing back in Myrkviðr. Even still, just before the dawn, just for one moment, it’s two sets of snores that shake the earth.

  This is my chance, and I take it. Claws driving into the flesh of my biceps, carving gory runes across the ones already laid in ink. Then rubbing dirt into the gashes.

  It hurts. But not as much as it would if I didn’t.

  Blood begins to seep and ooze, and I pull open more flesh to loose it. Thick and purple-green, I collect as much of it as I can, rubbing it onto the remaining cuff and then against the metal of the collar. The iron hisses, bubbling and corroding, and I thrust my claws into the gap between metal and flesh and tear. Once, twice.

  And I’m free.

  The world, the Wyrd, rushes back. Heady and brilliant, the spark in a wire and a wind full of cinders, like putting on a pair of glasses or taking off a pair of earmuffs, and I don’t savor it. There’s no time.

  Instead, I’m already running. On all fours, because I’m fast. So much faster than on two legs, for all I hate it, hate feeling like an animal. But that’s what I’ve been made into, leashed and collared, dragged around and punished, and it’s time to use that. To unlock that ball of spite and rage, to let it fill my limbs and send my head reeling in the euphoria of freedom.

  In the distance, I see the city lights. Still too far, and I cut across paddocks and through scrubland, over dried-up dams and the heads of anxious roos and cattle, my wings beating in time to the thunder of my claws.

  They might be clipped, and I can’t use them to get airborne. But I can leap and I can glide, and each beat of their mangled feathers still pushes me forward, flames flickering along their edges and sparks disappearing into the night.

  I am what I have always been: wind and flame made flesh. And, tonight, I fly.

  The M31 comes first, two wide scars of bitumen, cut into a gully, separated by a swathe of grass. It’s early, road trains and utes sharing the strip, the early-morning trade of those whose professions never sleep.

  I leap from one half of the cutting, just enough wing left to glide into the middle, then a second leap and I’m over, veering east, following pine-green signs with big white letters that proclaim the presence of rural towns.

  It’s here, running through scrub again, that my tattoos begin to itch.

  Magni and Móði are awake.

  The runes carved into my arms are healing, or trying to, but the mud is caked and bloody. Enough to scar, I hope. Enough to hold the jerry-built magic: alu for protection, sól as a shield. Too difficult to carve a complex incantation into your own biceps. I hope it’s enough. Enough that I can keep running, even as I feel the agony build behind.

  I vault over a high fence painted that awful green. Behind it, highway and scrub give way to wide streets and low-slung houses, still sleepy in the predawn haze.

  I need a phone. It’s five a.m. in a country town; where the fuck would a phone fucking be? Twenty-first fucking century and everyone has a cell phone, thanks to me, except for fucking me. Fuck.

  I keep running. Past the suburbs, a town emerges, front yards giving way to parking lots and the squat, ugly barns of stores selling furniture and tires. Nothing is open. Not the Woolworth’s, not the Subway. I’m on the main drag—the old highway, long since bypassed—and my tattoos are burning and my wards are healing and I need to find a fucking phone. One call. One call is all I’ll need, then fuck Magni and fuck Móði because I’m an Australian fucking citizen under the law and they can’t do this to me. Kidnapping and torture. Fuck that shit. Fuck them and their hammer and fuck Forseti, too. Fuck every last oxygen-thieving one of them, they should’ve burnt up in the fucking fires of Ragnarøkkr to save the rest of us from their self-righteous fucking presence.

  Fuck.

  And then, up ahead, I see a jogger.

  A woman in black Lycra, keeping an awkward pace behind a dog, telltale red cord from a Pyre Flame’s headphones dangling from her ears.

  Fuck, I hope it’s a Flame. Not one of our music players. Fuck.

  I take a human skin. Another woman, slight and red-haired. Skin shifted, the jogger notices me, gets halfway through a smile and a nod, mutual recognition for a fellow traveler on the hard and heavy road of daily fitness.

  Then her eyes go wide.

  I can’t hide the tattoos. That’s part of their charm. I can’t hide the tattoos, and I can’t hide the blood, either.

  The woman slows. Her dog begins to growl.

  There are a lot of ways this could go. The way it does invokes me slamming into the woman, sending us both crashing to the grass. She yelps, startled, drops the dog’s leash even as it turns and lunges, teeth bared, ready to protect its master.

  It’ll die if it bites me. So I don’t let it, fingers closing around the slick glass of the poor woman’s Flame. There’s a moment of resistance as the headphones tear free from her ears, and for a second all I hear is a single snatch of song,

  (slow down and try to tell the truth)

  and then I’m gone, dog’s jaws snapping onto air.

  One phone call, that’s all I need. One call and I can bring down every fucking cop Travis can buy onto Magni and Móði’s fucking heads. They might be gods, but this is my world, and I can be back in Panda before they’ve even figured out how to find me.

  Then just try to let them come.

  I run down a side street, past an RSL, and back into the suburbs, my fingers fumbling with the touchscreen.

  No passcode, thank fucking me.

  There are, I think, two people I could call and one person I will. Ten numbers, and I fumble on the typing, unfamiliar fingers shaking with the agony that’s slicing through my newly formed skin.

  Shifting bodies was a stupid move. Too much power, pulled from one place to another. Out of the hastily scrawl
ed wards and into a “disguise” my pursuers will see through as easily as sunlight scatters the clouds of dawn.

  On the sixth digit, something changes. The low hum of agony from Móði’s curse becomes a torrent, a fresh branding as vicious as the first time I felt it.

  And old words, echoing in my head:

  “Spit will be pain. Blood, agony.”

  And agony it is, shattering the remains of my own pitiful runes, sending my knees to the grass and blood pouring from my mouth as I bite my tongue against the scream.

  Ten digits. On the ground, muscles locked and limbs twitching, I hit Call.

  The last thing I hear, before the world fades mercifully to blank, is:

  “Um. Hi. This is Sigmund’s phone. I . . . guess I’m not here to answer it right now. But if you leave your name and number after the beep, I’ll get back to you!”

  And then nothing.

  Chapter 18

  There were a lot of þursar in the forest. A lot. Like, a whole army’s worth, Sigmund following along behind Skinnhúfa, stumbling over roots and running into branches the whole way.

  When they got to the camp, Skinnhúfa barked at Sigmund to stay put, left six huge jötnar to guard him, then vanished off into the crowd. Valdís followed, Eisa and Sleipnir stayed behind.

  It occurred to Sigmund, as he sat himself down beneath the watchful gaze of his excessive detachment of guards, that he was a prisoner. Again. He’d never been a prisoner before all of this. The closest he’d ever gotten was detention once at school for calling out his year-seven comp sci teacher, Mr. Hennessey. That’d been a long time ago, and sort of how he’d become friends with Em. They’d gotten back an assignment, Em’s had been marked wrong in a way Sigmund’s hadn’t, for more -or less the same answer. Em had tried to argue her case before the class. Mr. Hennessey had told her she was wrong, and Sigmund had known the guy’d been lying about it. So he’d said so, and wound up in detention.

  The net result of that had been Em’s mum had made Mr. Hennessey apologize to Em for being an asshole, care of a quick word to the principal about equality in STEM fields. Sigmund’s dad, meanwhile, had sighed and rubbed his eyes behind his glasses, then had launched into a lecture about appropriate times and places to speak truth to power.

  Sigmund had been a lot more careful about calling out liars after that. Em, meanwhile, had dropped out of comp sci until uni, and she’d never forgotten what Sigmund had done. Nearly a decade later, and Em was organizing rock concerts for an undead horde and Sigmund was being eyed off like dinner by a bunch of scowling jötnar.

  Life. Go figure.

  “There, um. There’s a lot of people here,” he said at one point.

  Eisa looked up, eyes as sharp as her arrows. “War is coming,” she said. “Hel sends her armies to Ásgarðr’s door. When the time comes, we will be ready.”

  “I, uh. I don’t think she really wants war.”

  Eisa narrowed her eyes, looking at Sigmund as if she could strip him raw with gaze alone. “Nor do we,” she lied, grinning her father’s grin.

  It wasn't that Sigmund was unused to being stared at with open hostility. After all, he'd been followed around in department stores by sneering middle aged white women since he'd been a child. But those women had mostly just been worried he was going to steal things. They’d never looked at him with the violent hunger he found himself regarded with now.

  It wasn’t that eating him would make the þursar cannibals or anything, what with them being a different species. And Lain did say jötunn meant eater, and that name had to have come from somewhere.

  Sigmund closed his eyes and tried not to think about it.

  He was still trying not to think about it, in fact, when he heard heavy footsteps approach, coming to a standstill just in front of him.

  “Get up, boy. The Hersir has seen reason.”

  When Sigmund opened his eyes, he saw Valdís looming overhead.

  “Um,” he tried. “That’s nice?” He scrambled to his feet, trying not to groan as the aches of the last few days made themselves known.

  Valdís huffed. “Hm,” she said. “Perhaps. There is great hunger for blood among the þursar, a desire to finish what was left undone at Ragnarøkkr.”

  “You mean war.” Sigmund tried not to think about every way he ached. “Against the æsir.”

  “The mortals have forgotten their gods,” Valdís replied. “There is no reason Ásgarðr should retain its primacy upon the Tree.”

  “I won’t help you fight Asgard.” No matter how much of a jerk Forseti was, Sigmund wasn’t going to be party to war. He hoped.

  “You will,” Valdís said, and that was definitely a grin. “But perhaps in another way. I have convinced Hersir Skinnhúfa to send warriors to retrieve Father.”

  “Lain? Why?” Except Sigmund knew the answer as soon as he’d asked. Valdís confirmed it a moment later with:

  “Ásgarðr cannot be allowed to possess Mjölnir. If father is the only one who knows of its location, then we cannot allow the æsir to possess him, either.”

  “And you need me as bait, don’t you?” Sigmund asked. “For Lain?”

  “Father’s loyalties can be . . . complex.” Valdís sounded apologetic. Almost.

  “So . . . what?” Sigmund felt something ball up inside him. Something like anger, but heavy and sour. “You’re gonna hold a knife to my throat and demand he choose sides?”

  Valdís was silent for a moment, feathers shifting across her shoulders.

  “Let’s hope it does not come to such extremes,” she finally said.

  When they left, they took a bunch of þursar with them. Maybe twenty or so, in various shapes and sizes, some running on all fours, some riding others, all dark-feathered, through either dye or nature.

  Eisa, skin rubbed with soot and swathed in indigo robes, swung up onto her sister’s back as soon as she was in reach. Sigmund did the same with Sleipnir, after an encouraging nudge that nearly sent him stumbling.

  Then they were off, variously running and galloping and loping out of the camp. All around them, Sigmund saw þursar polishing armor and sharpening blades.

  Hel on one side, Myrkviðr on the other. Sigmund had seen Ásgarðr, had wandered around inside the walls, seen the tired looks on the faces of the einherjar and the crumbling façades of the Halls. It’d been a great Realm, once, but that greatness had faded. And, like any fallen empire, its enemies were circling.

  When they finally broke through the trees, it was out beneath a silver moon so big and bright and low Sigmund had to shield his eyes from it after the forest’s gloom.

  Up ahead, a huge towering outline was shadowed against the stars. A mountain. Like, a real and proper mountain. Not the rounded, low things Sigmund was used back home, in Australia, worn down by a billion years of wind and rain.

  This mountain stood alone, rearing high enough into the sky that snow collected on its peak, and Sigmund must’ve been staring, because Valdís drew up beside him and Eisa said, “Niðavellir, home of the dvergar.” Her voice was hushed, dark cloak drawn tight around her shoulders.

  “We saw father dragged inside,” Valdís said, rumbling voice low enough for Sigmund to feel it rather than hear. “He has not emerged.”

  “You think he gave Mjölnir to the dwar—er, dvergar?” Sigmund didn’t buy that for one second. Lain loathed dwarfs, whatever fancy word they were described with. To the point where Em had had Stern Words over not bringing his weird myth-age bigotry to the DnD table, lest it come down to a choice between having the party Cleric quit and allowing Lain to stay. Later, Lain had ranted all evening about Em “just not getting” what “jealous, vicious maggots” the dvergar really were, until Sigmund had finally pointed out that, first, that was kinda a bit fucking racist, and, second, they’d been talking about someone’s character in a game of Dungeons and Dragons, not an actual bloody dwarf.

  Lain had muttered something like “Looks the same to me,” but he’d been much better behaved the next time the
group had gotten together.

  Point being, Lain really fucking hated the dvergar. Sigmund couldn’t imagine him giving them anything of actual value voluntarily, even if it was to keep it out of the hands of someone else.

  The group camped down in a hollow some distance from the mountain, sending Eisa and another one of the smaller þursar off to scout. While they waited, Sigmund ate a quick and not-at-all-terrible meal of spiced jerky and a soft, sweet bread with Valdís and Sleipnir. The other þursar murmured among themselves, and eventually Valdís said, “Tell me about Father?”

  Sigmund looked up. “Um, well.” He bit his lip. “Honestly? Your dad, I don’t really know that well. Um. It’s a little complicated, but Lain . . . Lain is to your dad like I am to Sigyn.”

  Valdís nodded and looked away. “I . . . see.”

  She looked so bleak at the news, and it took Sigmund a moment to realize he’d just, in effect, told her her dad was dead. So he added, “I’ve spoken to him once or twice. I think he really misses you. All of you.”

  A pause, then Valdís said: “He was not always the most attentive father. I would wait for him to come home. Days or weeks. Too long spent away. But when he was home . . . When he was home, we were family.”

  Sigmund nodded, gnawing his jerky in silence, at a loss for what to say. Honestly, Loki scared him a little. Sigmund felt him, every now and again, coiled beneath Lain’s skin like a festering black serpent, vicious and angry. But, for all his faults, Sigyn loved him. And her memories of him—while far from perfect—were tender and kind, on his side, not just hers.

  Loki, Sigmund thought, was a devoted father and loving husband. The problem was those weren’t the only things that he could be.

  Sigmund was dozing when Eisa returned, a small, dark ghost slipping through the camp.

  “—thing is wrong,” Sigmund heard her hiss, as he blinked himself awake. “Inside Sindri. There are no guards within the hall, nor in the streets.”