by B. C. James
“Anyway, Idun could be called the official arborist to the gods. Why she chose trees is a mystery to me. It was probably because all the good powers were taken, but with that said she became extremely good with them. Even within her weird little tree fetish specialty, she specialized even further. After a while Idun focused her efforts exclusively on apple trees. After years of grafting, cross-breeding, and doing things to those apple trees that are probably only legal in Amsterdam, she came up with one that produced fruit that healed any wound. Seeing as Thor, Freya, and I come from a culture where punching each other in the throat is an accepted form of greeting, her apples were very helpful.”
“Hold up a sec. I’m not completely unfamiliar with the Viking myths…well I guess after my latest experiences, I would have to refer to them as history.” In conceding that point, Brock’s voice still had a “Gotcha” tone to it. “As I recall, Idun’s apples keep you guys young, they don’t heal your wounds.”
Freya had gotten past her irritation with Baldr and was ready to rejoin the conversation. “In a roundabout way you’re sort of right, Brock, but let me ask you this, what is aging? Aging is as much damage to the body as being poisoned or having somebody run a sword through you. The men who wrote our history, what you call myth, in many cases interpreted the facts wrong or made creative edits for one reason or another. The reality is that the apples healed ALL injuries, including the aging process.”
“You’ve been on Earth for a while, and you haven’t seen this Idun person in a long time, so it doesn’t make sense. Shouldn’t you look like an old hag by now?” Brock seemed to be having trouble wrapping his brain around a world where magic apples weren’t confined to Disney movies about sleepy princesses and her seven vertically challenged buddies.
“Remember Brock, we’re not human,” Baldr interrupted.
“This is true,” Freya added, “we age about one year for every fifty of yours. I won’t need to take another apple for about thirty years. And even if I let myself become old, an apple would bring me right back to the age I was when I started eating them.”
Brock had a number of other questions about the fruit that kept them young, but at that point his phone rang.
Chapter 26
The musical notes from the Too Much Joy song, “That’s a Lie” tweedled from the android phone in Brock’s pocket.
“Ugh…I need to take this.” Brock rolled his eyes and awkwardly tried to not to drop Thor while he reached in his pocket to retrieve his device. He managed to get the Galaxy phone to his ear without putting the Thunder God on the ground. “Hi, Dad.”
Brock’s face wasn’t the easiest one in the world to read, but Freya noticed there was a definite hint of a “going to the gallows” look that was starting to creep across his features.
While it’s true that he worked for one of his father’s companies, he had been closed lipped about the man. For all she knew his genetic relationship to the big cheese might not be enough to save him from having his position outsourced to Pakistan, Yakistan, or whatever Cheaper-than-Amer-istan nation was willing to do his job for a nickel an hour.
There were some muffled words from the phone that sounded a lot like the adults from any Charlie Brown cartoon. For this to be audible with the phone pressed to his ear meant either his dad was yelling, or his voice box was equipped with THX Surround Sound. Brock listened without speaking, apologized for missing several conference calls, and started his explanation with “You see, Dad, there’s this girl.” There was silence for a moment, and then a short burst of muffled words from his dad’s end of the conversation. Brock raised a single eyebrow and looked Freya up and down for a few moments. “I don’t know dad, a 36…maybe a 38c.”
The word that immediately came to Freya’s mind was pig. Brock worked for a company that was a subsidiary of a larger corporate empire run by his father, so he was probably also a fairly rich pig. This sent a little trickle of discomfort down Freya’s spine as she began to wonder if Brock’s dad had been a client of hers in the past. It wasn’t exactly impossible. The world is a big place, and she was a favorite among the business community’s corporate emperors.
One particular CEO hired her so often that he had written her services into his ISO 9000 documentation. While this was unprecedented in the manufacturing industry, the audits of her department’s process measurables were a hoot. Her certification was still framed and displayed in the foyer of her apartment.
“No, I don’t think I’ll be back to Albuquerque for a while Dad…I don’t know. She says we have to go see something called Idun. Yes, Idun…I…D…U…N. No, it’s probably not like an IHOP…Yes, I know you love waffles.”
The conversation just seemed to go downhill from there. Brock made the mistake of telling his father and employer that they were traveling to California, which would extend his absence for another few days. It took a few minutes, but he finally got it to sink into his dad’s head that he wouldn’t be coming back to work for almost a week.
“Okay, things are cool.” Brock slipped the phone back into his pocket.
Freya looked at him with a little bewilderment in her eyes. “It didn’t sound like he even asked you where you were.”
“My father takes the free-range chicken approach to parenting. So, he’s not going to ask for a lot of details about what I’m doing.”
“I think he may be interested if you mentioned during the conversation that you had just been attacked by a dragon. It has to be all over the news by now.” Although Freya didn’t really come equipped with maternal instincts, she couldn’t believe that Brock’s father would not have some concern about his son’s well-being.
Her own father, Njord, had allowed her to be given to Odin as a peace offering at the end of the war between her people, the Vanir, and the Gods of Asgard. She could empathize with a child whose parents took a laissez-faire attitude towards their offspring. Even though she grew to be an influential goddess in the Aesir culture, she never forgot the sting of being traded like currency.
“There was no point in mentioning that to him. Had I said something to the affect that I needed him to get me a new car because mine was eaten by a dragon, he simply would have told me to stay put until he could get a patent lawyer out here. By tomorrow he would have managed to trademark the monster and sue anyone who used images of the dragon without paying him a royalty.”
They walked the rest of the way back to the highway making plans on what to do next. It didn’t actually take much time to decide what their next steps were. Their three-part plan involved stealing a car, driving to California, and getting some healing apples into Thor. Once he was back to his old self, they would be in a better position to deal with whatever might come their way. Having a healthy Thunder God in their corner would be like having the Manhattan Project on their side.
Along the way, they debated over what kind of car to steal. Once they got back to the highway, they would have their pick of the vehicles that had been abandoned in the wake of Nidhogg’s attack.
Freya favored something inconspicuous like a Toyota Corolla or a Chevy Impala. Baldr wanted a nice big SUV, mostly so he could lie down and take a nap. Brock had a sports car to replace. Stealing a vehicle would give him the opportunity to test drive something new. He would be a happy man if somebody had abandoned a Lamborghini Urus.
As they got closer to the highway, Freya could see they were coming to the section of road where the tanker truck they had cut off earlier lay on its side. Part of her wanted to climb on top of the tipped over vehicle and check the cab to see if the driver had made it out. Part of her didn’t. The feeling of guilt she felt at the possibility of the driver’s death took her a little by surprise. It’s not like she hadn’t killed before. Early in her career as an escort, she had left a string of her customer’s bodies in cheap motels all over the Atlantic Coast. In most cases, they were killed for offending her with a substandard tip. In her opinion the insult of a small gratuity justified the killings.
For a short time, sh
e reveled in the fact that she was behaving like Jack the Ripper in reverse. While she privately maintained the attitude that offending her should be considered a capital crime, this truck driver was an innocent for all she knew. He was probably just rolling down the road and listening to some sports radio show before they swerved in front of him and caused his truck to crash. The only thing he was guilty of was being in the wrong place at the wrong time when they were trying to get away from Nidhogg.
Freya jogged a little ahead of Brock and Baldr as they eased Thor down the embankment that led to highway. The truck was on its side and jackknifed in a manner that left its nose pointed in the direction she had come from. She opened the door, expecting the worst. Because of the way the truck was sitting, the door opened up like the hatch on a tank or a submarine. Freya looked into the cabin and was relieved to find that the driver had apparently escaped. A quick look around satisfied her that there was no blood inside the truck. She felt a sense of relief over the survival of a stranger.
For some reason, this bothered her a little. If she had made the leap from an aloof object of worship to someone who actually cared about her fellow man, then she had truly gone native. When that happened to a god or goddess, there was often no going back. Well, truth be told, there was literally no going back until Odin lifted the spell that kept the gods out of Asgard. But those who embraced humanity may someday be able to return to Asgard, but that will never truly be home again.
Freya was completely distracted as she sat with her legs dangling down into the truck’s cabin, leaning over in an effort to find traces of blood on the driver’s seat. She was so wrapped up in this that she didn’t notice the sudden blast of heat that happened a heartbeat before the truck’s door slammed down on the back of her head, knocking her into the cabin.
Freya found herself lying on the shattered glass of the passenger side window, looking up to the now closed driver’s side door that knocked her through the cabin. She was more stunned than physically hurt. Some of the glass from the driver’s window was sitting on her chest. The tiny, shattered pieces were blackened on one side. Freya began to get a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.
Out through the windshield, Freya saw Baldr and Brock dragging Thor as fast as they could in the direction opposite of the highway’s embankment. She could see them yelling to one another and pointing. They banked left and a ball of fire took out an abandoned Chevy Volt about ten yards away from them. The pair got the message and ran in the opposite direction with the unconscious Thunder God hanging between the two of them.
Freya stood up and kicked at the windshield. Her foot went through, but the window didn’t shatter. She cursed the auto industry and the safety glass it put into every vehicle. She put her anger into a couple of elbow strikes that finished the windshield off and she escaped the wrecked vehicle. Freya looked up at the freeway embankment and immediately thought she may have been safer cowering in the cab of the truck. Nidhogg was looking down at her and wailing in rage. Brittany didn’t look any happier. She held a spear aloft and was presumably yelling profanities at them that were drowned out by the roaring dragon.
In his fury, Nidhogg behaved like any other irate animal. He spread his wings high and wide in an effort to make itself appear larger and more imposing. Whether the beast knew it or not, this gesture was overkill. This was akin to Andre the Giant wearing lifts in his shoes to look taller. A furious Nidhogg by itself was enough to induce PTSD. The display wasn’t necessary. In this case, being a showoff gave away some vital information.
Freya saw that the membranes between the fingers of his wings had been torn in the collision with the jet. When he spread his wings, they looked like two pieces of Swiss cheese sprouting from his back. This animal couldn’t fly anymore—he was grounded. This reminded her of an idea that she had when the dragon first attacked them.
She dashed in the direction that she had seen Baldr and Brock dragging Thor and quickly found them huddled behind an old Trans Am, trying to map out their next move. Freya crouched down behind the car and joined them.
“Okay, so we didn’t kill it.” Her matter of fact tone gave away her complete lack of surprise that plowing a military aircraft into Nidhogg didn’t do much more than raise the creature’s blood pressure. “So, any bright ideas on what to do now?”
A ball of flame streaked over their head and turned a minivan into something that Boy Scouts would roast hotdogs over.
“Hey, who would have thought that it would survive a collision with a heavily armored airliner?” Brock appeared a little defensive about his idea not working.
Baldr raised his hand to indicate he had some doubt that the dragon had been slain.
“Shouldn’t you have said something before we left the airfield?” said Brock, taken aback that Baldr would withhold that sort of information. “Letting us know that we might not be done with that thing is the sort of information you should share!”
“Hey, don’t blame me. I thought we had managed to knock it cold, or at least killed the rider. If you’ve noticed, Freya isn’t very surprised Nidhogg survived either. So, it seems that you were the only one thick enough to believe the dragon was slain, human. Whose fault is that?”
Another fireball flew overhead and removed a rare 1968 Shelby Cobra from the world’s shrinking inventory of this classic automobile.
“This isn’t getting us anywhere!” Freya needed to refocus them on something besides whose fault this was. “Whoever is riding Nidhogg knows where we are, and they are just playing with us now. I have an idea, but I’ll need help.”
She had their attention and explained to them what she had in mind. As they finished their discussion, Nidhogg’s fireballs were now blowing up cars much closer to them. Whatever cat and mouse game Brittany was playing, she seemed to tire of it and was getting ready to finish them off.
Freya sprinted out into the open, running in the general direction of the dragon. She picked up a few snowball-sized pieces of broken asphalt as she ran. Any sane person would see her running toward Nidhogg and conclude that her grand strategy involved suicide and reincarnation into something that dragons are afraid of.
Emergency personnel, stranded motorists, and curiosity seekers who occupied the road began to scatter when Nidhogg appeared at the top of the embankment and started violating every fire code the state of Arizona could throw at him.
As balls of flame exploded behind her, chewing up concrete and cars, she ran directly into Nidhogg’s line of sight. While Freya was happy that she had not been victimized by a direct hit, the shrapnel from the near misses was starting to do some damage. She was being both scorched by little flaming meteors of burning concrete and cut by shards of metal that had been superheated by the dragon’s mystical flames.
Her only response was to chuck a rock in Nidhogg’s direction and hope for the best. Freya hoping for the best was far different than an average mortal hoping for the best in the same situation. Most people would have thrown the rock, only half expecting that it would land in the same zip code with the dragon. Freya may have been the Goddess of Love, but when it came to conflicts, she was no dainty little prom queen. Like most Asgardians, she was a trained and accomplished warrior whose list of confirmed kills was up there with Antietam.
She hurled the rock with all of her strength. Were her target a Kevlar clad S.W.A.T. team member, his chances of surviving the thrown stone would have been at best 50/50. When the well-aimed rock hit Nidhogg in the eye, his chances of survival were an unchallenged 100%. She was completely aware that she wasn’t hurting him. Her goal was to infuriate the already hotheaded reptile. In this she was successful beyond her wildest dream.
A dragon is not a mindless or dumb beast like a cow or a water buffalo. They exhibit a problem-solving level of intelligence that is rarely seen in the wild. Like the elephants in the studies that conclusively prove that pachyderms hold grudges, dragons are smart enough to take things personally.
While blasts of fire are their
preferred method of killing, when they are truly angry at something, they prefer the kill be more personal and painful. A raging dragon will put aside the pyrotechnics and go old school on a foe with their fangs and claws. Nidhogg was no different. After the first rock hit its eye, the pain made him angry. After Freya ignored the rider and forcefully sent another jagged shard of concrete into his cornea, the animal was blind with both little pieces of highway and rage.
Freya could see his rider pulling hard on the reins trying to hold Nidhogg back. Despite her best efforts, the dragon came bounding down the embankment in pursuit of the Goddess.
Freya didn’t go very far before Nidhogg had caught up to her. She did manage to make it back to the tanker truck before she found herself within striking range of the surly serpent. He slashed at her legs with his claws as she tried to leap over the strike. The goddess had timed her jump badly and a claw had caught her in mid-leap, right below the ankle. She spun in the air and hit the ground hard. The goddess rolled on the blacktop and came up with her back to the truck’s smooth, silver tanker section.
Nidhogg lowered his head and bared his fangs. For the first time Freya was close enough to see his rider. When Nidhogg first appeared and did its best to ruin their day, it was clear from the silhouette against the afternoon sky that the rider was a female. She wore armor that could have come from a museum of Norse history and had the sort of hard, cold look in her eyes that may be common to a mercenary or a storm trooper for some third world despot. It was the look of somebody who had seen—and been the cause of—a lot of death.
The beast and rider both hesitated now that Freya was cornered. Nidhogg was salivating at the thought of having a goddess for lunch and doing his best to lunge forward. Brittany was barely able to hold him back. She strained and pulled back on the reins with her left hand, barely maintaining her tenuous hold on the dragon’s obedience. With her right hand, she used her thumb to tap something into a smart phone. This moment of dithering gave Freya the opening she needed.
