by C. Gockel
McSpadden jumps away fast and turns. He almost draws his gun.
Thor takes a bite out of his bagel and looks towards the window, his face vaguely contemplative. “The good guy,” Thor muses aloud.
McSpadden goes over and picks up Patches. She is utterly uninterested in his phone — so the message from Laura is not just enchanted...or magical...or whatever. Wiggling out of his arms, she hops to the ground and runs over to Thor.
Smirking at McSpadden, Thor picks up a bottle of water off the break room table and takes a swig. “Sheriff McSpadden, I thank you for your hospitality, but waiting for my statement at this point would be superfluous.”
“Uh, I gotta keep you here until you sign it,” McSpadden says, straightening. “Procedures and all that.”
Rolling his eyes, Thor says, “Remember what I told you about the unicorns.”
And then he disappears. McSpadden looks around the break room. The bagels, cream cheese, and lox are all gone, too. For a brief few moments Patches does an impression of a whirling dervish, running like mad in circles. Then she stops abruptly in a beam of morning sunlight, licks her back once, and promptly lies down and goes to sleep.
Loki makes himself and all the food in the break room invisible. Holding the bagel he is eating between his teeth, he stuffs the rest into his knapsack, right in front of McSpadden. Patches hops madly around his feet. He’s a little worried she’ll try to follow him, but when he runs for the door she doesn’t pursue.
He exits the station, the door swinging on empty air behind him. He glances at the sky. Not a raven in sight — Odin’s messengers or otherwise, but he remains invisible anyway. Seeing Amy and Deputy Colbert in the distance, he runs to catch up. His hunger is nowhere near sated, and it takes more effort than he expects.
Amy is just stepping up the bus’ steps when he can’t bear the strain anymore. He drops the invisibility and gasps for breath. Fortunately, he’s behind Amy, the deputy has already turned away, and the bus driver’s facing away.
Amy spins with a start.
“Thought I’d take you up on your offer,” he says, swallowing and trying to appear pathetic and non-threatening. The effect may be slightly undone by his heavy breathing.
Her mouth opens. For a minute he thinks that maybe his illusion of Earth fashion has dropped, but he looks down and it’s still there. Then in his mind he hears, Please don’t be a bank robber or anything. The fact that he hears her is disturbing; the fact that she’s praying that he doesn’t rob banks is very disturbing.
“All right?” he says slowly, not sure if he is agreeing not to rob banks, or asking if her offer is still good.
She swallows. “Do you need me to buy you a ticket?”
He winces.
The bus driver says, “Buy it for him online when you sit down! We’ve got to get a move on!”
“Okay,” she says. From a shapeless bag on her shoulder, Fenrir gives a happy yip.
“Is that a dog in there?” says the bus driver.
“No!” say Amy and Loki in unison, quickly hurrying up the steps.
As they settle into their seats which are a might bit cramped, Amy complains about being in a “cattle car.” Loki says nothing. He actually thinks the vehicle is fairly amazing. It’s not one of the litters of Odin’s wife, Frigga, and the seats are not proportioned for someone his size, but even with his legs splayed wide, one knee awkwardly out in the aisle, it is much more comfortable than a horse.
His brain churns with questions. Why did Odin’s spell leave him so drained? And how did he escape it? How is he the good guy? Could they possibly mistake him for the real Thor? And unicorns... How in the nine realms are they slipping over here? They certainly didn’t come from Asgard’s orbiting garbage heap.
He closes his eyes. He should pull out his book and look for branches of the World Tree in the vicinity of Chicago.
Instead he falls asleep.
Chapter 4
Maybe it is the steady hum of the engine. Maybe it is that there are people all around. Or maybe it is just exhaustion. Whatever, even though Amy wouldn’t think it possible, in the bus, just a little before St. Louis, she dozes off. She wakes up with a start, vague memories of darkness and Ed Malson in her mind.
She takes a breath. Fenrir pushes her nose out of the bag in Amy’s lap and licks her hand. Amy pats the dog’s head. She is safe. Thor Odinson saved her. She rubs her eyes. His parents must be lunatics for giving him a name like that. Lunatic parents may be something they have in common. Thinking about Thor, she blinks. Wincing from the pain in her neck, she rolls her head to look at him across the aisle. Her eyes widen. Thor’s head is bent down against his chest; his eyes are closed. He’s shivering, his lips are moving, a scowl is on his brow. She can tell instantly he is having bad dreams, too.
But that isn’t what’s making her eyebrows touch her hairline.
He’s wearing armor. What looks like the handle of a sword is poking out of the knapsack that sits on the floor between his feet.
Another passenger walking by looks down at him and blinks and then walks back to his seat, a confused expression on his face.
Amy’s heart starts to beat fast. This is too weird. Not just that he is wearing armor, but that he was dressed like a rock-a-billy, hipster, wannabe when he got on the bus. Where did he stow the extra clothes? Not in the little bag. But she saw the armor before, didn’t she, when she hit him with pepper spray?
Her train of thought is interrupted when Thor whispers something strange and guttural. Fenrir pushes herself out of the bag, runs across the aisle, and hops into his lap.
Amy looks up and down the aisle. No one seems to have noticed. She looks at Thor. His eyes are blinking open. Fenrir pants on his face and his head jerks up, in surprise or because Fenrir’s breath has been especially bad since the road kill incident.
Raising an eyebrow, he puts a hand on the wiggling Fenrir. “Hello beast that looks like a dog,” he says in the proper East Coast tones she first noticed in the police station, when the shock of everything had started wearing off.
...or maybe the shock didn’t wear off. He’s wearing armor.
The Art Institute of Chicago has some suits of armor from the middle ages. They look like barrels with metal tubes for feet and arms. What Thor is wearing is very different. It fits like a second skin. It seems to be a dull metal that picks up the colors around it — it almost blends into the seat. There is a chest plate, and some interlocking horizontal strips about the width of a finger that fall to his belt. The same thin strips rise up his neck. There are more plates around his legs and arms, between them more of the interlocking finger-width pieces of metal.
Thor glances at her. His eyes open a little bit when he sees she’s awake, and then he looks back to Fenrir, who has rolled over on his lap. Wrinkling his nose and scowling a bit, Thor gingerly scratches Fenrir on the chest with a finger.
Thor is very pale, and at the moment very scruffy, his hair is disheveled, and it looks like he hasn’t had a shave in days. His face is narrow, and his features are somewhere between sharp and delicate. He’s definitely not unattractive, but you wouldn’t mistake him for the rugged actor who plays his namesake in the “Thor” movie franchise.
She stares at him. As he scratches Fenrir, the armor makes no sound at all. She would expect the metal to clink or something.
Turning to her, Thor scowls a little bit. “Is something wrong?”
Amy opens her mouth, but no sound comes out.
“Yes?” he says tilting his head.
Biting her lip, she points at him. “Ummm...” she says. “You’re wearing...armor. Kind of weird SWAT meets elven Lord of the Rings armor.”
His eyes go wide and he looks down. Almost to himself he says, “Well, that’s never happened before..”
“Am I still asleep?” Amy says. “Is this a dream?”
He looks at her and the corner of his lip twitches. Tilting his head he says, “You are dreaming.” Reaching down into his knapsack
and pulling out a bagel, he says, “Close your eyes. Enjoy the comfort of this magnificent vehicle.”
That doesn’t help the moment feel real. “It’s a bus,” she says.
He scowls a little. “I know that.”
“It isn’t magnificent,” she says. And it brings back bad memories of other bus rides she’s had to take.
He blinks. “Go to sleep. When you awake, I will be wearing the normal attire you saw me in earlier.”
“It wasn’t normal.”
“What?” he says, brows rising.
“It was totally retro, 1950s-esque,” Amy says.
His mouth twitches. “Was it really so conspicuous?”
“Well...” Amy says. “Sort of... I mean some people wear that kind of thing, but it isn’t precisely normal.”
He stares at her a moment, and then he says, “Go back to sleep. When you open your eyes I’ll be totally retro again.”
Amy settles back against the seat, takes a breath, and closes her eyes.
Someone says, “Is that a dog?!” in a very accusatory tone.
Amy’s eyes bolt open to see an older man glaring down at her lap. Her fingers tighten around Fenrir. “Ummmm...” she says.
The man backs up. “Oh, I must have been mistaken.”
Amy looks down. In her lap is a shaggy gray teddy bear that looks immobile — but she feels a wiggling Fenrir in her fingers.
Amy looks across the aisle. Thor is wearing retro clothing again. “You are dreaming,” he says softly.
Staring at the seat in front of her, Amy scowls. “That is the logical explanation.”
She doesn’t feel safe anymore. She has this horrible feeling that she didn’t escape Malson, that she is dying in a ditch somewhere and her brain is making up this long dream to save her from the pain.
“Close your eyes,” he says.
She doesn’t want to know if this is real or not. Squeezing her eyes shut, she says, “I’m not opening them until we reach Chicago.”
“Shhhhhh....” he says softly. “When you wake up, things will return to normal, and when they’re normal you’ll know you’re safe.”
His voice sounds so confident, so sure, as though he knows exactly how she’s feeling.
The villagers pick up the pieces of Cronus’ body. They laugh and smile. Loki is still sitting on the floor of the boathouse, arms wrapped around his knees. Hoenir and Mimir haven’t entered yet. Both of them would have been useless, of course.
A villager comes up and hands Loki a flask of something. Patting Loki on the shoulder, he flashes a smile missing several teeth. “Well done, Loki! Drink this.”
Loki takes the flask; it smells strongly like alcohol. Loki’s had watered down mead before, but not often. Frigga’s handmaiden, Eir, is talented in the healing arts. Eir has Frigga convinced that alcohol is particularly harmful for young developing minds and livers.
Odin says in his day everyone drank. Brusquely taking the flask, Loki takes a long swig.
It burns, and he has to fight hard to keep it down. The man laughs again. “We are burning his body, building you a throne, and will kill a calf in your honor! Come! Celebrate with us.”
He pats Loki on the shoulder and offers him a hand up. Loki accepts and tries to hand back the flask.
“You keep it!” says the man. “You’ve earned it.”
Loki looks down at the flask. He knows as soon as he exits the boathouse, Hoenir will take the drink from him. That seems unmanly. Tipping the flask back, he proceeds to drain it, even though tears run down his cheeks and some of the liquid runs down his chin. When he’s done, he wipes his chin and hands the flask back to the villager.
Eyes wide, the villager says, “You are a god.”
Loki smiles triumphantly. Suddenly humans are streaming into the boathouse, men, women, and children. They throw their arms around Loki and then hoist him onto their shoulders. Warmth spreads through Loki, and he sees Hoenir and Mimir over their heads and waves happily.
Soon the bonfire is roaring, and Loki is sitting on a rough chair that is too wide for him. They call it a throne. He would call it branches, but he smiles, and the villagers smile, and it’s all like a wonderful dream. He calls the little boy Jonah over to sit with him, and the villagers seem to think that is hilarious and fantastic. They bring over some weak beer; Jonah accepts it readily, so Loki does too. Nearby Loki hears Mimir say, “Well, I suppose one little drink won’t hurt him...”
Soon after, there is food and more beer, and then there is music and dancing around the fire. Hoenir and Mimir try to pull Loki away, but Loki tells them something to the effect of, “in just a minute,” and dives into the dance with the villagers. Someone must have thrown some new kindling on the fire just then because the flames seem to rise halfway to Asgard. Or maybe he is just drunk. But he is happy. And after today, and the boat, and Cronus, and staring into the faces of the humans around him who are so kind, so fragile, so mortal, and who love him so much it is almost a physical pain...
Someone hands him another flask. Hoenir is nowhere in sight and he takes a long swig. He spins around the fire with the humans and the flames leap.
It is dark when someone says, “Loki, our God of Gods!”
Laughing and quite drunk, Loki stands upon the throne. “No!” he shouts. “ I am the God of Fire!” The fire chooses that moment to send a shower of sparks into the air. The villagers howl in delight. “The God of Spirit,” he says, shaking the flask. The villagers laugh again. “And...” A group of three young girls standing near him giggle. It’s not like Loki hasn’t noticed girls before, but at that moment it seems for the first time he really sees them. They look so soft, so inviting...and what they are inviting him to isn’t so vague and abstract anymore. “...girls,” he says. Jumping from the throne, he takes a spinning step in their direction. A piece of wood in the fire breaks with a thunderclap, and the villagers gasp.
A heavy hand comes down on Loki’s shoulder, stopping his spin. Somehow he knows without looking who it is, and the dream-like quality of the night comes crashing to an end. He feels his cheeks going red with embarrassment. He also feels an odd sense of relief, as though if that hand weren’t there he might spin so fast he’d leave the ground.
The music stops. A hush comes over the villagers. Only the fire is still crackling. Odin’s voice rings through the night. “The God of Mischief is more like it!”
Loki’s legs crumple beneath him, and there is some laughter from the villagers that sounds far off and uncertain. Before he hits the ground, Odin catches him. Hoisting Loki up in his arms, Odin cradles him like he would a babe, or a woman. Loki scowls. And then he realizes if Odin did throw him over his shoulder like a proper warrior, he would probably throw up.
“Come on, Loki,” Odin says, not unkindly. “We’re going home.”
Loki smiles and waves at Jonah, and the villagers, and the girls. He is embarrassed. A little. Or maybe a lot. He is too drunk to properly gauge the emotion.
And Odin coming to spoil his schemes is so normal...he suddenly knows at last he is safe.
When the bus drops them off at the intersection of Canal and Lake Street, Loki’s head immediately turns to the south east and downtown. Chicago is hot, sticky and tall. Very, very, tall. Across a dreary parking lot and the river, skyscrapers tower. It’s all he can do to keep from gaping. Every single building seems to be as tall or taller than the Empire State Building. And nearly all of them seem made of glass. Some of the windows are darkened, but others are bright mirrors that reflect the large white clouds in the Midwest sky — they seem to Loki to be gigantic moving canvases. And to think they’re all solid, and real, not dependent on illusions like the buildings of Asgard.
“Yes,” says Amy. “Lovely parking lot. You can see the pollution on the horizon. But it’s Chicago. What can you do?”
Loki blinks. There is a bit of haze low to the ground, but... “It’s cleaner than I remember,” he says. And it is certainly cleaner than Victorian England. For a
place that doesn’t have a Void to dump the garbage from their misspent magic, Chicago is doing rather well.
“Huh,” says Amy. “Let’s catch a taxi.”
She holds out a hand, and a white vehicle that is very similarly shaped to the chariot of her would-be-abductor screeches to a stop.
As Amy and the driver wrestle her bag and a rather large trunk into the back, Loki slips into the interior. It is blessedly cool inside. He stops and peeks between the seats to the front. The dashboard is alight with glowing numbers. One is clearly the time, another is the temperature, but all the others are completely incomprehensible. He blinks. Computers are everywhere.
The buildings, the computers — Earth is turning into a place that is almost magical. It temporarily makes him forget about the hunger that is beginning to gnaw at his stomach and the exhaustion tugging at his limbs. Odin’s spell to stop time drained him more than he thought possible — how Loki resisted it is a mystery.
He shakes his head. He won’t solve that puzzle now. Leaning forward, he tries to get a better view of the numbers on the dashboard.
The driver and Amy slip into the car and put on their seat belts. “814 N. Hermitage,” Amy says and the cab driver steps on the gas so fast Loki falls backwards in his seat. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Amy staring at him with a look of pure confusion on her face. Even Fenrir is cocking her head in his direction. For a moment he thinks that his illusion of totally retro clothes has fallen again, but he checks, and it’s still there.
As they speed away from the center of the city along Chicago Avenue, the buildings get noticeably lower. Many are also noticeably older — two and three story row houses of stone and brick that are visibly sinking into Chicago’s soft soil. These familiar buildings are interspersed with newer abodes with tremendous windows that can’t be sensible for temperature regulation or for warding off potential intruders. It really is a good thing that Asgard put a stop to the Jotunn plans for a new ice age on Earth — and took care of the troll situation.
As they drive further west along Chicago Avenue, shops and restaurants begin to appear. Many of the names are in Spanish, and Loki notices a great many people who seem to be of South American descent walking among the natives of European and African origin.
