by B. C. James
Baldr moved away from his brother and slumped back into his own seat. “I will guarantee you that if he survives this, the only thought that will drive Thor will be punishing those who took everything away from him and regaining his place as a god among men. I doubt that this time he will settle for being a zillionaire sports star though. If I know my big buddy here, once his dander’s up we will be looking at one of those ‘blood of the martyrs running through the streets’ situations that the crazy, third world, religious nuts are always shouting about.”
The pain in Baldr’s voice as he spoke was unmistakable. “Baldr?” Freya asked softly, “Are you talking about Thor or yourself?”
Baldr quickly recovered. The waves of melancholy that were coming from him turned off as if he hit a light switch. The shadow that crept across his face melted into a cocky sideways smile.
“I’m talking about Thor of course. While my own sad tale allows me to relate to what he is going through in ways neither of you can hope to understand, don’t confuse empathy for self-pity. By the way, there is big part of me that can’t wait to get the hammer back in his hand and watch him go all Hulk Hogan on Odin and his cronies.” Baldr’s face took on a certain sadistic, mischievous quality that would have made Hannibal Lecter’s skin crawl.
“Um, I’m no expert on Norse myth,” Brock stated. The hesitant tone in his voice left no doubt that he was probably more familiar with tales of The Lorax or Horton Hears a Who than he was the stories of the Viking gods. “But if I remember some of the stuff from school. Didn’t Odin do everything he could to get you out of Hel? If that’s true, I don’t get why you’re upset with him.”
“Seeing as I was there until I managed to get myself out, he apparently didn’t do enough.” Baldr’s tone was measured but Freya detected the same bitterness creeping its way back in.
“I’m no great fan of Odin. In fact, in my experience he would be better served by the title ‘God of Sexual Harassment’ than he is the label of ‘Allfather,’ but he DID strike a deal with Hela for your release from Hel. According to her terms, she would release you if everything in creation shed a tear for you. Odin managed to make that happen. The hitch in the plan was that Loki turned himself into a giantess named Pökk, and in the guise of this woman, refused to cry for you. Loki is the reason you stayed in Hel, not Odin.” Freya actually felt a little dirty defending Odin, but Baldr’s misplaced anger was getting on her nerves.
“Well, thank you, oh Goddess of Plot Summaries, but you missed something. Dear ol’ Dad made that deal with Loki’s daughter knowing it would fail. The terms were that EVERYTHING had to shed a tear. Not everything except Loki. They both knew that Loki, disguised or otherwise, would never cry for me, so the very terms of the agreement doomed it to failure from the get-go. This gave Odin cover. He could play the grieving father that had done everything in his power to free me, while still keeping me imprisoned. Why would he do it? I don’t know. Maybe he was jealous of my popularity, but the truth is that he left me to rot, for whatever reason.”
“Look guys,” Brock said before Freya and Baldr could get into a “Less filling / Tastes great” style argument about who was the most to blame for Baldr’s troubles, “We are going to be in the car for the next five hours or so. Can’t we just agree to disagree and head off to a Hardee’s or something? I don’t know about you two, but I’m starved.”
Baldr agreed to put the argument on hold and go to lunch. Ever since the crash at the airport he had been itching for a sandwich, and the thought of something topped with bacon seemed preferable to beating the dead horse that was his time in Hel. Twenty minutes later they were in the restaurant.
Brock had ordered his food and was at a table before Freya managed to decide what she wanted. While she was verbally bouncing between a wrap and a salad, Baldr was in line behind her impatiently tapping his foot.
“Freya, this isn’t a hard decision. Just find something with meat and cheese on it and order.”
Freya made a sour face at the idea that the Goddess of Love would order a meal that would get the Whitney Way Thore seal of approval. “A burger is so common, and besides, have you seen the calorie count on what they serve here?”
Baldr laughed, “Freya, you’re a goddess. I think your waistline is beyond the reach of the fast food industry.”
“Really, Baldr? Think back to what Buddha looked like before he discovered Chalupas.”
Baldr mulled this over for a moment. “Good point, get the grilled chicken salad.”
Brock listened with half an ear as his companions discussed godhood and how it was a potential growth market for the Jenny Craig Corporation. The bulk of his attention was on the college student who was apparently surfing the web on her laptop.
In a brief, yet brutal negotiation, one that Brock was on the losing end of, he managed to negotiate the rental of the girl’s computer. He would get to use the laptop while they were there for lunch, and the student got two hundred dollars, a piece of Strawberry Swirl cheesecake, and the right to hold on to his car keys as insurance against Brock just running off with her Chromebook.
Freya finally got her order. Before she took it to her table, the manager slipped her an envelope with a full refund for her dinner, his phone number, and a print of a picture he took of himself with a camera phone in the stockroom mere moments before. Freya looked at the photo, made a comment under her breath about how small the mozzarella sticks were in this establishment and then blew the fawning manager a kiss.
When Freya and Baldr got back to the table, Brock was slowly chewing on some fried zucchini and looking at the news. The lead story was that a winged Chupacabra had attacked the highway and accidently frozen itself when it clawed open a tanker containing liquid nitrogen. Before the authorities could muster the proper personnel to take possession of the animal, the Chupacabra woke from its frozen slumber, ate a startled zoologist, and lumbered away, never to be seen again. Oddly enough, the only available video or pictures of Nidhogg were either so grainy or blurry that the images could have been of almost anything.
The military was on site and, according to some witnesses, they were confiscating phones and dash cams. The good pictures of Nidhogg are probably being stored with the real file on the Kennedy assassination and Elvis’ current address.
“So, the dragon is still out there.” The tone in Brock’s voice was flat and deflated.
“Yes, but remember, it wasn’t Nidhogg who was actually after us. Dragons are no different than any other animal. While it is capable of holding a grudge, it would never occur to it to start hunting us just out of spite.” Baldr’s tone was a bit more upbeat as he tried to convince Brock that they were not currently being hunted by a large airborne predator. “It was his rider who wanted us. Without her sitting on his back and calling the shots all it will do is return home to Niflheim.”
“And we ditched the phone they were using to track us,” Freya said, allowing some optimism to creep into her voice. “So, for the moment I think we’re safe.”
Brock shrugged but seemed to feel a bit better knowing that he wasn’t going to spend the afternoon playing the role of a field mouse to Nidhogg’s Red-tailed hawk. This allowed them to go on to the next order of business, which was finding Idun. That seemed like a nicely mundane and less daunting task. After the drama of the past several hours, the mundane was a welcome break.
As Freya had mentioned earlier, Idun owned a day spa near Los Angeles. A quick Google search on the word “Idun” brought up the Apple Tree Spa in Beverly Hills. Idun listed herself as the proprietor and didn’t even bother with the pretense that she was anything but a goddess. Even in her profile she lists herself as a beauty consultant and “Deity of the Divine.” Her clients probably thought it was a charming little quirk in her personality but in reality it was a stroke of brilliance. It allowed her to hide in plain sight while being exactly who she was.
Brock was highly impressed with the site. Among the thousands of references to the Goddess Idun, it
was her spa that was the first listing on Google. He started to go on about the brilliance of her search engine optimization technique until Freya playfully shoved a burger in his mouth and declared the restaurant a tech geek free zone.
A few clicks later, they had the directions to her Beverly Hills establishment. A single smile in the direction of the restaurant manager from Freya gave her access to his office copier to print out the directions and a map. Some batted eyelashes from Baldr in the direction of the guy at the deep-fry station, and they had several orders of onion rings to munch on during the trip.
When they got back to the car, Thor’s condition showed no signs of improvement.
“I feel really bad about leaving him in here while we went to eat.” Freya leaned over the seat and stroked his head.
“Hey, we left the car running and the air conditioner on. He was as comfortable here as he would have been anywhere else,” Brock said.
“And I DID crack a window for him too. He will be fine once we get him to Idun.” Baldr leaned back in his seat and contentedly munched on onion rings.
Chapter 29
Idun closed and locked the door of her place, The Apple Tree Spa. Before closing up the shop for the day, she made sure to shake out the tasteful welcome mat that graced the entrance to her establishment. She also made sure to tie the terrycloth robe that was wrapped around her a little tighter as she did this.
Most shop owners on Rodeo Drive didn’t close up their own shops, and if they did they certainly wouldn’t wear something from the Walmart bath and body department to perform such a menial task. But Idun figured if the guy who managed the shoe store across the street went to all the effort and expense to buy a high-powered telescope and point it at her spa; she may as well make it wasted investment. To the world at large, her admirer was the sort of openly gay man that would make Ru Paul look like The Outlaw Josey Wales. The telescope that moved with each of her subtle gestures told a different story about him. Even though he kept his attraction to her firmly in the closet, Idun, the Goddess of Youth, still appreciated his adoration. Of course, this appreciation didn’t come with a peep show.
Idun’s face and body was exactly the sort of thing that Dr. Frankenstein would have created if he specialized in pin-up girls instead of mindlessly violent monsters. Her long, blonde hair fell in golden sheets over her white shoulders. Idun had long ago abandoned the idea that a tan should be considered a beauty ideal. Her influence with the celebrity beauty elite had resulted in a significant number of converts to a lifestyle that included sunscreen and really big hats on bright, sunny days. Even the pop sensation, Katy Perry, a self-proclaimed “California Gurl” took Irun’s advice to heart and reveled in her alabaster skin.
Idun was not the typical Hollywood blonde. Just like with the tanning issue, she went counter to most of the beauty culture trends when it came to her body. Unlike many of her peers, who did their best to balance out their bulimia-sculpted bodies by having things that look like floatation devices surgically implanted in their chests, she did not try to starve her curves away, only to replace a percentage of them with silicone. Instead, Idun celebrated her curvaceous nature. When speaking within the catty little circle of her most trusted clients, she talked about “California alchemy” and how plastic surgeons managed to turn breasts into gold.
The truth about Idun was this: she had infiltrated a West Coast society that based itself on the two-dimensional sensibilities of Baywatch. She presented herself as the opposite of everything they believed in, and they worshipped her for it. She managed to stand among them with her pale skin, soft curves, and small C breasts that had never been touched by a surgeon’s scalpel, and she still appeared perfect. The rich and famous lined up outside the door of her spa, day in and day out, to seek her advice and bask in her wisdom.
For her, this was better than life in Asgard. Back there she was simply the lowly keeper of the apples. In California, she was a sage, an object of desire and élite…truly a goddess.
Idun stopped in front of one of the spa’s mirrors and smoothed an errant lock into place. As she checked her makeup, she felt a sudden change in the movement of the air against her skin. In the blink of an eye, she turned and faced the darkened coffee prep station at the back of her shop. In her hands was an elegant rapier and dagger set. She had pulled these from hidden scabbards near the mirror so quickly that they almost seemed to appear from nowhere.
“There’s no profit in this for you,” she said to the darkness in a patrician accent that would have made the John D. Rockefeller feel at home. “My clients don’t use anything as common as cash and all the art objects you see are worthless reproductions as well, so there is nothing here for you.”
Baldr flicked on the lights. He was standing behind the counter of her beverage area munching on a blueberry scone. “Hi-ya, Toots! Just how the hell did you manage to hide those blades in that tacky robe?”
“Don’t be silly, Baldr,” Idun said, sliding the blades back into their hiding place behind the accent cabinet. “And the robe isn’t tacky. Some would say it is perfectly suited to its purpose. I would dare say that many of my customers make more unfortunate fashion decisions when they are simply out shopping. You wouldn’t believe some of the things that horrible Ms. Gaga comes into my spa wearing. I swear she is the only person in the world whose closet has its own red light district. By the way Baldr, it’s really good to see you.”
Idun walked over to him and gave him a friendly little one armed hug. Baldr took a subtle sniff of her hair, enjoying the fact that her locks had been perfumed with the delicate scent of vanilla. His gaze on her also lingered as she walked away from him to an antique dressing screen.
She was beautiful, but not in the same way that Freya was beautiful. Any man would be overcome with desire at the very sight of Freya. With Idun, it was different. A person would look upon the Goddess of Youth in much the same way they would appreciate an exquisite and flawlessly perfect art object. Her mannerisms were also slightly at odds with her physical attributes. While her face and body screamed Scarlett Johansson, the way she carried herself and her gesticulations were more akin to Cersei Lannister from Game of Thrones..
“You know, Idun, everybody greets me the same way nowadays. They say something snarky and then end the sentence with ‘By the way Baldr, it’s really good to see you.’ Considering the fact that I’m supposed to be living in Hel, I would think at least one or two people would be surprised to see me walking among the living again.”
“Oh, Baldr,” Idun said as her robe flopped over the top of the dressing screen, “I can only speak for myself, but it’s not that we’re not pleased to see you; we’re just not surprised. You were always rather crafty and clever, second only to Loki in that regard. So clever in fact that you have fooled those who write history into portraying you as the most virtuous and best loved of the gods.” She peeked out from behind the screen. “I would agree with the ‘best loved’ part, but truth be told, virtue was never quite your thing. Honestly, I am surprised you didn’t escape from your incarceration centuries ago.” With a wink, she disappeared back behind the barrier.
“True…and a biased press did do wonders for my legacy. It’s funny how few things really change with time. Anyway, on to business...”
Idun emerged from behind the modesty barrier in a simple yet sheik little black dress. “Oh, do we have business? And I thought you were just here to see me.”
Baldr noted the playful little pout she added to her statement and was tempted to play flirtatious word games with her, but there were more pressing matters.
“Normally, I would cough up my spleen if that’s what it took to see you honey, but today’s visit isn’t a social call. I’m here with Thor, Freya, and Freya’s flavor of the day, something named Brock. The problem is that Thor is hurt pretty bad…”
“Yes, Baldr…I know. Well, at least I am aware that there are issues with Thor. His transformation from football superstar to somebody who may at some
point strap a bomb to themselves and run into the Sears Tower has been the biggest news of the day. Well, that and the Chupacabra attack near the stadium.” Idun gave a bit of a chuckle when she referenced the Chupacabra. An Asgardian, even when shown blurry images, would know the difference between a dragon and the mythical, Mexican killer of goats.
“I figured that he would be showing up at some point looking for apples to heal whatever wounds he took as part of his flight from justice and dragons.”
“So, is that why you had that dress on hand?”
Idun just shrugged and looked coy.
Baldr gave an exasperated little sigh as he headed for the back door. It was frustrating that he was second fiddle to Thor, even when the Thunder God was in a venom-induced coma.
Idun grabbed a small remote control and began turning on all the lights to her establishment. She prepared a pot of coffee and then removed a platter of small pastries and sweets from a refrigerator. She was artfully arranging them on a silver platter and switching herself into hostess mode when Freya came in. Behind her were Baldr and Brock who carried an unconscious Thor between them.
She greeted Freya with an air kiss to each cheek and quick introductions were made between Idun and Brock. She did her best to be friendly but was obviously distracted by the sight of Thor.
He hung between the two men like he was made of wet pasta. To Idun’s eyes, he was beyond simply being unconscious or hurt. Thor was limp and deathly pale. His red hair, that in better days surrounded his head like a corona of copper and ruby flames, lay damp and lifeless. To her, he appeared to be standing at the border of life and death, one passport stamp away from crossing over.
Idun knelt down, put her hand under his chin, and raised Thor’s face toward her. His skin was cold and almost sticky against her fingertips. To those around her, Idun looked as if she was about to break into tears over what had become of Asgard’s greatest hero.
