by B. C. James
The source of the amber orb was about 100 yards higher than where Baldr stood. Even from that distance he suddenly understood what this “sun” was.
Breaking through the subterranean rock wall and winding through the underground realm was something that resembled a wooden serpent, only it was about as thick as Florida. Both gods recognized this as part of the root system that made up Yggdrasil, the World Tree. He had found the place where Hela’s realm was anchored to the ancient ash.
Even though this was the past, there was almost relief in Baldr’s voice as he explained the scene. “By comparison to the proceeding endless miles of rock scaling, the hundred-yard climb to the root felt like a sprint. As I pulled myself on to the root, I suddenly understood my weariness… along with the other things that I began to feel again that only applied to the days when I was alive and not simply the drab shadow of myself that I became in Hel. The tree wasn’t just a source of life, but it WAS life. The closer I got to its root, the more alive and back to normal I became. But before I got too caught up in a wave of tree-induced euphoria, I could hear snoring nearby.”
The miniature Baldr in the vodka ducked behind a root hair and peered out at the sleeping form of the dragon, Nidhogg. From almost the beginning of time, Nidhogg had been chewing on Yggdrasil’s third root, the one that connected it to Hel. It was now clear what the amber orb actually was. It was sap dripping from the wounds chewed into the root by the overgrown lizard. After ages of collecting and congealing, the sap had slowly grown into a Sun that could be seen throughout the entire realm.
“It was at that time I wondered what would happen if I actually ate some of the sap,” Baldr said, “but before I could go all Iron Chef on what was leaking from the tree, I had to get past the dragon.”
Nidhogg looked like a winged velociraptor that happened to be the size of a World War II era Corsair fighter, but with a longer tail and more firepower. As Baldr stared at the animal, trying to craft a plan that didn’t end with him as a non-alcoholic aperitif, the dragon’s eyes popped open. He turned away from Baldr and towards something behind him. The massive beast stood on its hind legs and started begging like a dog. A Valkyrie on a flying horse rose straight up the cliff face, dragging something behind her as she flew.
“Do you want the treat, boy? Do you want the treat? Sit up…higher! Good Boy!” The Valkyrie said as she tossed a screaming and writhing soul at the dragon like a master giving their pooch a doggy treat. Baldr was fascinated and disturbed at the same time by the scene but recognized an opportunity when he saw one. He ran for one of the deep cuts in the root that was leaking sap, and stuck his hand in the warm, thick, sticky liquid. Before he could bring the sap to his mouth, he looked up. He had not gone unnoticed. The Valkyrie was staring daggers at him while the dragon continued to beg and whine, trying to coax another treat out of her.
“I thought I knew all of the Valkyrie,” Baldr said, “but I couldn’t place her. She was quite a specimen. Her angelic face was framed with deep black hair. She was taller than most women in the saddle and built like a seasoned athlete. What seemed out of place was one of her eyes. It was damaged and colored a sickly, translucent white.”
Thor pondered that for a moment. The job description of a Valkyrie included shuttling the souls of dead people to their final destination as well as being the handmaidens and playthings of the gods. Nothing in their job description came with the phrase “it’s all fun and games until somebody loses an eye.”
Injured eye or not, her beauty became distorted by rage as she unsheathed her sword and charged Baldr on her winged steed. In a heartbeat, the dragon had also gone from obedient puppy to Rottweiler as both bore down upon the God of Light.
Baldr slurped up some of the sap. As soon as he swallowed it the world around him seemed to implode. He hit the floor hard and his vision went black. After a few moments, he slowly opened his eyes. It took a moment for them to adjust to the new reality. It was clear that he was no longer on a root in Hel about to be killed, again, by a dragon and its insane yet shapely master. He decided that this sudden, almost accidental, escape was something he could put in the win column. Which felt pretty good seeing as his time in the afterlife was mostly spent not winning at all.
Baldr felt a warm breeze as he stared up at a familiar yellow sun. When he finally got to his feet he was standing in front of a small brick building that smelled like ale. While the formerly dead god couldn’t read the writing on the sign, the familiar stumbling of the people leaving the place told him it was a pub. He was back on Earth.
The feature presentation of the miniature Smirnoff Ice Theater came to its conclusion. Thor looked away from the bottle and into the face of his half-brother. “So, where were you?” he asked.
“I appeared somewhere in England’s West Country. Bristol, I think. I made quite a few friends there, but, for a while, I was barely able to speak. Spending all that time in the silence of Hel made me forget how to form words. I had to learn how to talk all over again.”
“Okay, so you disappeared from Hel, reappeared in England, and settled into life over there. That explains the accent,” Thor stated, “so what are you doing here?”
Seeing as he was done with his holographic light show, Baldr grabbed the bottle, popped the top and took a long pull of flavored vodka. He almost immediately regretted it.
“I’m hurt! So, you don’t believe that I just missed my brother?” Baldr asked with wide, puppy dog eyes.
“Not for a moment.” Thor answered, “Let’s cut through the crap, what kind of trouble are you in?”
Baldr looked at the floor and took another drink from the bottle. Not only was the taste of this drink an insult to the fermentation process, but somehow he felt less manly after swallowing it.
“You see Thor, it’s like this. When the Valkyrie put you someplace, they kind of expect you to stay there. Apparently, they are being really bitchy about me getting away, and they are doing their best to take me back.”
“Baldr, you knew that would be the case, you even told me that earlier…”
Baldr cut Thor off. “You’re right, and for a while I thought I could handle it. Theory and practice are different things though. It’s one thing to scan the skies knowing that they may someday be coming. It’s quite another when a gang of them drag you out into the alley behind a Tesco store and try to dismember you. That’s why I left England and came to you.”
“You’re the God of Light! You’re no longer just some weakened soul in Hel that they can push around. Man up for goodness sake. When you get them off their turf in the afterlife, these girls are nothing more than celestial concierges and bleach blonde geishas. That’s too much for you?” Thor stifled a laugh, and then smacked Baldr on the back. “I’m almost ashamed to be related to you.”
“Thor, I know you won’t believe me, but to steal a line from a car commercial, these aren’t your father’s Valkyrie. They have changed in some very bad ways. They behave more like a bloodthirsty Nordic mafia than anything else. And it’s my blood they’re thirsty for. So, are you going to help me or what?”
“You were still in Hel when those Oldsmobile commercials came out. Where did you see them?”
“YouTube is a wonderful thing, Thor. It gave me a window into entire decades I had missed. By the way, the seventies were pretty messed up, weren’t they?”
“Yes...yes they were, and you probably don’t know the half of it. Anyway, don’t worry little brother; I’ll protect you from the scarrrrry, sexy women. I will also see if I can have the Raiders hire you as some sort of assistant coach or ball boy or something. That way, whenever I play away games, you don’t have to cower under my bed until I get back.”
“Um, I don’t know anything about football, Thor.”
“All you have to know about football is that as long as I win them championships, the Raiders will bend over and kiss themselves in impossible places in order to keep me happy. If that means they have to agree to a little nepotism, so be it. So
, I guess that means you’re going to Arizona with us next week. And you thought Hel was bad!”
Quietly, Callista appeared at the table with a couple of Mai-Tais. “These are from the gentleman at the bar,” she stated with a wink.
Thor and Baldr looked over at a biker who was waving, and pelvic thrusting to whatever music was going on in his head. The drinks came with a note about a threesome and a detailed description of his qualifications for participation. The biker looked like he was trying to be George Michael and Rob Halford at the same time. He was also drunk to the point where all sense of self-preservation had disappeared into the bar’s atmosphere, or lack thereof. Apparently seeing Baldr and Thor huddled around a bottle of Smirnoff and whispering stuff about crabs encouraged this gentleman in ways that were simply not healthy.
The two gods looked at the drinks as the little umbrellas mocked them from inside the colorful glasses.
“We can’t let him get away with this insult,” Baldr said.
“True…” said Thor, “but you DID order us a girly little vodka drink. An argument could be made that we were asking for it.”
Baldr stroked his chin for a second. “Yeah, but not from him. I mean, c’mon! On what planet does this guy think he is in our league? I’m obviously a ten, you’re like, a six…ish…in the right light and Mr. Leather Tuscadaro over there is swirling the drain somewhere in fractional numbers. This is like James Corden trying to lure Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Freddie Mercury into a threesome. No, this insult cannot go unanswered.”
With those words Thor raised a single eyebrow to his brother and together they aggressively defended their ancient honor. They left the bar shortly before the police arrived. Thanks to Callista, the security recordings were strangely erased when the cops went to view them. Also, because of a bar full of patrons who not only knew but also liked Thor, the police went away with a description of an assailant who looked disturbingly like Joaquin Phoenix. For the moment, all was right with the world.
After the fight, the little people who were employed by the bar as janitors (and wrestlers on Wednesday nights) got the duty of cleaning up the post-fracas carnage. One of them, who went by the name of Alfrigg, pulled his long, black hair back into a ponytail, exposing pointed ears. There was more to him than being on the wrong end of a Lollipop Guild joke. The Asgardian dwarf then went back to his sweeping. His partner, Dvalin, poked him with a broom handle.
“Don’t you have a call to make, Al?”
Alfrigg nodded and pulled his phone from his pocket and dialed a number.
“Hi, m’lady, it’s Al…we found him. Baldr was here.”
Chapter 8
“I'm gonna hit the highway like a battering ram on a silver-black phantom bike.” Belle sang under her breath as she reclined on her cruiser. She brushed a lock of ebony hair out of her face and thought about changing the words of the song to honor the black on black Triumph Rocket III that she rode. It was a fun thought but something she quickly dismissed. Rearranging Jim Steinman’s, Bat Out of Hell, lyrics to suit her situation seemed somehow wrong. The Meat Loaf/Steinman collaborations where musically holy and, in her opinion, transcended the preference of British motorcycles over Hondas.
Any onlooker to this scene would only see a pinup model posing on a bike. And they would be wrong…very, very wrong. On no level was Belle what she appeared to be. Looking closely at her, one could see some gold just starting to show at the roots of her hair. While lots of women dyed their tresses, they tended to go in the opposite chromatic direction, forsaking their dark color for the sort of blonde ideal that made Marilyn Monroe so popular. Her reasons for cultivating the goth look was something she kept mostly to herself.
“Belle” wasn’t even really her name. Very few people knew what she was actually called and this suited her just fine. She was content to let her actions define her. After that people could just come up with whatever words they thought best fit those actions. While this approach opened up the very real possibility that she would be known to the world at large as “Homicidal-alpha-female-uber-bitch,” it was the word “Belle” that had stuck.
The name Belle was given to her during the years she spent south of the Texas border. The word in Spanish means beauty. While that is accurate description of her, it didn’t tell the whole story. It is the shortened version of a longer label that her actions earned her; like calling someone named William “Bill” or Victoria “Tori.”
The full version of the name she earned is Belleza Tóxica or “Toxic Beauty.” That was because she had acquired a taste for extremely wealthy drug lords during her years in Mexico and South America. Conversely, every drug lord she was romantically linked to seemed to acquire a taste for extremely messy suicides as the relationship waned. The “suicides” were served up with a side order of lotto-sized bank transfers that all made their way into Belle’s Swiss accounts.
Nobody could ever prove anything, and it just seemed safer to flatter her ego with the words Toxic Beauty rather than risk angering her by using other words like murderess, thief, or states-evidence. Those types of words tended to only result in more mysterious suicides or the occasional violent beat down from the mob of leather clad women whose motorcycles fell into line behind her.
Belle and her followers parked their bikes in front of the Ratskeller. Belle entered first with a pair of lieutenants close on her heels. As usual, every eye was on her. She favored a manner of dress that fell somewhere between the Harley Davidson catalogue and a Frederick’s of Hollywood calendar shoot. Today she wore leather pants so tight they may as well have been a full, lower body tattoo, a black bandana tied around her breasts, and a pair of old school Doc Martins. She did not dress this way to encourage male attention; she could accomplish that no matter what she wore. Belle dressed this way to deflect attention away from herself.
Occasionally, bad things happened when she went places. Sometimes those bad things included an impressive body count. When witnesses were questioned about her, they could usually rattle off a detailed description of her cup size and the quality of her posterior. When asked about important things, like what color hair or eyes she had, those questions were usually met with a kind of bewildered blank stare. The witness would hem and haw as they tried to recall those particular details. If they were being honest, most would say something like, “She had a face? Who knew?” In Belle’s life, it was to her benefit that nobody bothered to notice that there was anything above her neck.
There were a few members of the Hell’s Angels Motorcycle Club in the bar. They, being creatures of the open road, were familiar with Belle’s reputation and knew that they should respect her in the same manner that one would respect a Bengal Tiger, a King Cobra, or any other beautiful and graceful creature that also fell into the “lethal” category. They simply raised their glasses in a polite greeting and tried not to stare directly into her cleavage…at least not openly.
Three associates of one of Oakland’s younger gangs were also present. Whether or not they knew who they were talking to was unclear, but they were far less subtle with their glances. In a spasm of poor judgment, they chose to assault her with their conversation after looking her up and down. As far as they were concerned, the math worked out. There were three gang members and three hot chicks in leather. The only unknown part of the equation was whether the rest of the evening would be consensual or involve a gun and some GHB. While this is the sort of story problem one rarely encounters in high school, it was the only type of arithmetic these three amigos were intellectually capable of. Belle was not the type to humor them.
“Yo, sweet cheeks. Anyone ever tell you that you’re a fine piece of ass?”
Belle raised an eyebrow at the young man. He was tall, gangly, with three-day stubble and spiky hair that was dyed bright blond.
“I have been described in a…similar fashion.” She said this in a dismissive, almost oblivious tone. “Usually by better dressed gentlemen who expressed their admiration with far more grac
e and generally more syllables.”
“Aw, c’mon sweet cheeks. You’re going to like partying with us. The ladies, they calls me Ratchet. For obvious reason.” He grabbed his crotch and grinned as he spoke. “What do people call you?”
“Lethal. Now shoo, before I decide to take an unhealthy interest in you.”
Belle made a motion with her hand like she was waving off an annoying Scottish terrier and continued to scan the bar. The young man just continued, undeterred. It had not escaped her notice that his friends were slowly maneuvering into position behind them.
“Baby…this is a boner-fide offer and sayin’ no ain’t one of your options.”
“Young man, my suggestion is that you find other prey and leave us to our business. Or, to put this in language you may comprehend, get outta my grill before we perpetrate a beat down!”
She thought about doing three snaps in a circle to emphasis her point, but the words sounded odd enough coming out of her mouth. Plus, as a whiter than mayonnaise resident of the USA, it felt wrong to be ripping off bits from old In Living Color episodes.
It wasn’t often that she resorted to rude behavior; it was beneath her. It was rare when she couldn’t be absolutely intimidating while still remaining, in all ways, several classes above most people she encountered. These guys were dumb however and she had no time for this. She was a busy woman. Had Belle allowed the situation to continue, she and her friends would be wasting hours disposing of the bodies of this trio of Neanderthals.
The thug continued. “By morning, baby, you be calling me God!”
He made the mistake of grabbing Belle by the arm as he said this. Touching her without permission was a mistake, and in Belle’s world an unforgiveable one. She was done making conversation with these troglodytes. Belle nodded to one of her lieutenants, who, in a blinding flash of motion, separated the man’s hand from his arm with a blade that looked remarkably like a Roman gladius. Before the other pair of thugs could defend their leader, they found themselves unconscious, thanks to some well-aimed elbow strikes.
