The Goddess Denied

by Deborah Davitt

  She watched as Trennus and Lassair returned to their house, and took their children back next door. Watched how the children ran between the houses practically at will in the evenings, at least as long as Sigrun was in residence. Even Masako ran back and forth between the homes, until her parents arrived to pick her up. Watched how Rig bloomed around the spirit-born children. Running and laughing with them, as she’d never gotten to see him with the mortal-born children at a dozen apartment complexes that they’d lived in while they were hiding. Sigrun was only there for the first week, but Fritti sat in on the ‘god-born’ lessons. Kanmi and Minori even asked that their mortal little girl to take part in the lessons, mostly, as they put it, “Because she’s got so much sorcerous potential it practically boils out of her skin at night.”

  Sigrun had told both parents, expressionlessly, “God-born are not sorcerers. You are both far better qualified to teach her anything relevant than I am.”

  “But it’ll be good exposure for her to other kinds of magic,” Minori replied, sweetly. “Besides, wasn’t Loki a god of magic, and your Freya is, as well, isn’t she?”

  Fritti had seen a tightness come over Sigrun’s face at those words, and assumed it had to do with Loki’s . . . death. Banishment. She still didn’t even know how she felt about it, herself, other than a mix of pity, awe, respect, horror, regret . . . and grief. Because it hadn’t all been a lie. And it all surged up inside of her again at those words, and as Sigrun bit out, harshly, “Seiðr is no gift of mine.”

  Kanmi cleared his throat. “Any number of people out there will argue with me that sorcerers are all just . . . really diluted god-born. With abilities and talents that have been mixed over countless generations of interbreeding. I disagree completely and fundamentally, but they do have one valid point. Power is power. You’re teaching self-control, awareness, and respect for it. I can’t argue with any of that.”

  Sigrun had grimaced, and included Masako in the lessons from that point on. There was a gentleness in her face when she taught the children that simply wasn’t there around most adults. And her teaching methods intrigued Fritti. She’d spent the last eight years of her life, once leaving the Odinhall at twenty, as a teacher in one form or another, mostly in secondary schools in a dozen petty kingdoms and provinces in Caesaria Aquilonis. Sigrun kept the children motivated and engaged in the lessons. There were rewards for the children who remembered an answer, or who got the closest to the mark, but no punishment, other than when someone showed disrespect. Disrespect meant an immediate end to the day’s lessons for the child in question. They got one warning, and after that, they could sit quietly in the corner and watch, but nothing more. No interaction. No conversation. No getting to play with the power, and with a valkyrie who could take anything they dished out, and more. And because they all wanted to play like this, being forbidden to interact was a huge deterrent. Overall, the lessons lasted no more than an hour or two at a time, because they were all still young, and only had minimal attention spans. Fritti commented on this, with a smile, to Sigrun, on collecting Rig from one lesson. “It’s like you’ve studied teaching young children.”

  Sigrun gave her an odd look. “Were you not, in your time at the Odinhall?”

  “Well, yes . . . .”

  “How they trained you differs very little from how they trained me. I received more instruction in laws, I am sure, but every student there must serve in classrooms, kitchens, gardens, and butcher shops.” Sigrun shrugged a little. “I know that I am poor with children. I have no natural gift for speaking with youngsters, but in my time at the Odinhall, I learned very quickly that the way in which my pedagogue had educated me was rapidly falling out of favor in most schools. Even the children of priests brought to the Odinhall for basic teachings while their parents worked in the temples and hospitals there were hardly caned. For me, that was my punishment when I could not remember my lessons.” Sigrun didn’t sound self-pitying, just . . . matter-of-fact. “It was a different era. I agree with Lassair that in many respects, god-born children are just like every other child. Corporal punishment for bad behavior, dangerous behavior, we both tend to agree with. But not for not knowing an answer.”

  Fritti had done her best not to gape at Sigrun. She’d never realized how old her erstwhile rescuer was. Well, Adam is looking older now, of course. My gods, he must have been younger than I am now when they found me . . . .

  After a week, Sigrun gave all the children a hug, and a kiss on the forehead. Even Rig looked upset when she explained to them that she was going back to the north, and that she’d try to be back once every few months to keep teaching them, but could promise nothing. She accepted a tight embrace from all of her coworkers, the Praetorians. Offered Fritti a wrist-clasp, as to an equal, and Fritti’s eyes suddenly filled up, and she gave Sigrun a tight hug, seeing the slightly startled expression in Sigrun’s eyes as she did so. “You be careful,” Fritti told her, and Sigrun shrugged, as if to say, I always am. Gave Adam one more kiss, and then headed out for the airport.

  Masako and her parents left at the same time, which left Fritti with little choice but to move out of Adam and Sigrun’s house for the time being—and her decision had yet to be made. Not truly, anyway. But Judean law and custom were fairly strict on the topic of people of the opposite genders living in the same house together without their spouses being present. An unmarried man couldn’t even have a live-in female housekeeper. Fritti was tempted to ask if that kind of law had once applied to slaves, but Judea hadn’t had slaves in some time . . . so she packed up her things, and Rig’s, and moved next door into Trennus and Lassair’s house, while starting to look for an apartment of her own. Unfortunately, apartments were in short supply. Most of them had been rented out to northern refugees with some means of supporting themselves, while they waited out their exile. I’ve been an exile longer than any of you, Fritti thought, but with less bitterness than had been her wont for the past seven years.

  In the end, she needed to work. Every god-born of the northern gods was expected to earn their keep, though many received a small stipend for services rendered—and by small, Fritti knew, it was about a solidus a month. That’s how much she’d received for going from petty kingdom to petty kingdom and teaching languages before Rig had been born. One solidus would have been enough to cover precisely half her rent in Divodurum, for a one-bedroom apartment, but she’d lost that, when she’d gone into hiding.

  Her paycheck as a teacher at private schools while she’d been in hiding, depending solely on references from previous employers, had been five solidi a month The apartment, two solidi a month. She’d spent another two solidi a month on utilities and groceries, which had left her with all of one solidus to save for emergencies . . . where a Praetorian at Sigrun’s level made about six aurei a month. Nearly twelve times Fritti’s tiny salary.

  Rig was upset at the thought of moving out of the Judean neighborhood, but Fritti couldn’t even begin to imagine what the rent for an apartment in this area must be. “I have a suggestion,” Adam offered, tentatively, one evening at Trennus and Lassair’s house. “My father’s turning seventy this year. My mother’s sixty-five. They’re not quite ready to give up their house yet. But they’re both retired now, on a fixed income, and getting along in years. How about if I talk to them about you and Rig renting a couple of rooms from them? That way, Rig doesn’t have to give up his playmates. He can go to a school where the other children are . . . . more or less used to seeing spirit-born around.” He gave Trennus a look. “I haven’t heard any reports so far this year about ‘accidental’ burns and singes.”

  Trennus snorted. Fritti was used to bear-warriors, so the man’s height didn’t bother her, and she’d moved around Novo Gaul enough to be used to seeing tattoos, of both Gallic and Nahautl styles. He was actually comfortable and familiar enough in his way, if . . . otherworldly. “They’re doing fine. They go around as a pack, I think. The teachers periodically try to have the ‘we’d like to see them interac
ting more with the other children’ conversation with me, and I tell them to have that conversation with the other parents, too.” He gave Fritti a sympathetic look. “Rig’s mostly had pedagogues before this, right?”

  “Here and there, as I’ve been able to afford them, and they’ve each lasted until they started asking questions that I didn’t want to deal with. So . . . yes . . . ?”

  “He’ll have an adjustment period. Ours have a big mental adjustment every year when we come back from Britannia, where magic and ley-power are part of the curriculum, at least in the ‘general awareness’ category, whereas down here, there’s more of a focus on math and natural philosophy. The other children may pick on him a bit. Knowing Rig’s sense of humor, he’s either going to be inviting more of it, or will make the others suffer for it.” Trennus rolled his eyes. “Trying to convince him not to use his abilities . . . good luck with that.”

  I have had to pick up Solinus from school for turning to flame and refusing to make himself flesh again. It’s only his arms and upper body at the moment, and he’s seven, but this apparently constitutes a ‘threatening display.’ Lassair sounded annoyed. Solinus was told not to do this, so when the bullies came for him again, he reflexively managed to turn into a phoenix. Landed in a palm tree, refused to come down, and . . . promptly setting the tree on fire. I didn’t think this was so bad, for his first time changing his shape!

  Fritti saw Adam cover his mouth as Lassair went on. Latirian has set another students’ homework on fire in the middle of the classroom. She says someone tried to steal her homework, first, but that’s . . . .

  “Difficult to prove,” Trennus said.

  Those who give learning here seem to have very good perceptions when it comes to my offspring, but are mysteriously blind when it comes to the children of others, yes. Lassair sighed. One of the other little boys hit Solinus last year, and he put flame around his hand and hit back. And Inghean got right into the middle of it and did the same thing. For better or worse, I tend to think that it is right for them exercise their powers. I see no problem in them changing form to escape, or to remind others that they have power, and should be respected, so long as no harm comes to the mortals. Stormborn disagrees.

  “And I agree with her. I am not raising a pack of bullies,” Trennus said, taking his spirit-wife’s hand. “Kanmi, Sigrun, and I are in total accord on the topic of self-control for people who have more power than an ordinary human. They have to find other ways of dealing with idiots, than saying ‘I could burn you alive if I really felt like it.’ It’s hard right now. But they are learning.”

  And that, really, decided Fritti on where she’d be living. What she’d be doing, however, was harder. She could have just gone back to teaching. There were enough foreigners here in Jerusalem who had private schools for their children, that she could have easily gotten a job doing what she’d always done.

  But there were two things that haunted her. Sigrun’s words, describing Loki’s sacrifice, had had an effect. Fritti woke up at least once a night, from a dream in which she always saw Radulfr—it was always Radulfr’s face, for her, though his hair was suddenly dark, and his eyes glowed silver now. And in that dream, she saw him stepping through a doorway that yawned into nothingness. Fear in his eyes, but also . . . acceptance. Resignation. Sometimes he held the crumpled form of a valkyrie, and sometimes, he did not. But every time she woke from that dream, tears streamed down her cheeks, and she regretted, fiercely, every moment she had been angry at him. What he’d worked to build had been perverted, and horribly, by humans. Which meant that yes, gods were fallible and limited, but everyone knew that. Each was supreme within his or her own domain, and nothing more. If he gave so much, maybe everything, to try to save our people, to try to avert the coming storm, how can I not do the same?

  The other thing that swayed her was, really, Sigrun herself. Sigrun had, clearly, accepted her as an adult. A less-experienced one, naturally, but an adult. On the one hand, Fritti appreciated that. And on the other hand, she would actually have welcomed the valkyrie’s advice. Sigrun gave little counsel unasked, however. But the exhaustion on her face every time she came back to Judea spoke volumes on how well the fight in the north was going . . . and then she’d work with the children for a week in the afternoons, before turning around and heading back north again. She said she wouldn’t influence my decision. That I should be free to make my own choices. But how disappointed would she be in me, I wonder, if I did nothing more useful with my life, than merely survive, and amuse myself? Other people, people with no gifts, skills, talents, or powers, may do so. But whether I have asked for them or not, I have been given gifts. And it’s high time I gave something back, isn’t it?

  At first, her work was purely volunteerism. She worked in a soup kitchen near the Jerusalem convention center, handing out food. It didn’t take long, however, for rumors of a god-touched woman to circulate, however, and soon enough, Fritti found herself both teaching the children of refugees, and helping out at the clinic. The Judean doctors watched her as she healed people of cholera and other diseases that had to do with poor hygiene in the tent city that currently encircled the massive building, shook their heads, and told her, quietly, “You’re saving lives, and you’re doing it without raiding our supplies. We’d have had some of these people hospitalized for a week on fluids and antibiotics, trying to stabilize them. Unofficially . . . thank you. Officially, could we . . . hire you as a nurse? So you’re at least on the payroll?”

  “I don’t have a medical certification. Just a teaching one.”

  “We can work on that. Night school, that sort of thing.” Her official position thus became refugee consultant, and that made Fritti laugh every time she heard it. But she worked at the clinics at the refugee camps every morning, and with the children every afternoon. She asked questions, as she’d learned to do in all the petty kingdoms of Caesaria Aquilonis, and did her best to provide answers to all sides. She became . . . an intermediary. An intercessor. Making the culture of the refugees understandable to their benefactors, and vice-versa. Just as she’d been trained to do, from a young age. Just in a far different part of the world than she’d ever expected to have to do so.

  The refugees were, in many cases, in a state of horrified shock. Many of them bore signs of physical mutations, and had to deal with heightened senses, as well. Fritti didn’t know what to think about that, but just treated everyone in precisely the same way.

  She got a lot of questions, naturally. She was god-born, or at least, god-touched, and she wasn’t up in the northlands, fighting. “I’m helping here,” she replied, simply.

  “Which god binds you?”

  That, she generally declined to answer, mostly out of fear. But as the months stretched on, she became aware of a distinct strand of . . . mythologizing . . . that was spreading among the refugees. She wasn’t sure where it came from, though she strongly suspected the gods themselves of taking a hand in it. But in this new mythology, Loki was the Sacrificed God. The one who had given his life for his people. And who had left behind a son, fathered on a mortal woman, who was now divinely touched as well. The god who might, some day, return in time to fight the end of the world, but who would be lamed or weakened by his old and bitter wound, and would need to be renewed. Like the Fisher King of Gallic lore, Fritti recognized.

  She didn’t know if she believed it. But, whenever she awoke from the dream in which she saw Radulfr/Loki stepping through the gate, and met his gaze, though she had not been there . . . .

  . . . she hoped it was the truth.

  Iulius 17, 1970 AC

  Adam hated his new office. He wasn’t built on the massive lines of Trennus or a bear-warrior. There was no logical reason that his knees always hit the kick panel at the back of the desk, or that his neck always ached at the end of the day, as if he’d been hunched too far over for eight hours. There was no logical reason that the perfectly suitable chair always seemed to be exactly too high, or too low. The problem,
he thought, as he pushed away from the battered wooden piece of furniture, and went to the door of his tiny office in the Praetorian offices in Jerusalem, is not the furniture. It’s me. I don’t fit here. I suppose I don’t want to fit here.

  It was a combination of a hundred different factors, he knew. He was forty-one. He’d been the chief protector for not just any official, but for Propraetor Marcus Antonius Livorus, widely (and correctly) believed to be the second-most powerful man in the Empire, for fifteen years. He’d fought entities—all right, gods—and lived to tell the tale. He’d even killed a few, and that sense of . . . spiritual dirt . . . had never quite washed clean. But he was able to forget it, sometimes for a week or a month at a time. Mostly by dint of not looking at the gun he’d used to do it.

  It was necessary, he’d reminded himself, when watching the far-viewer news from Tawantinsuyu. It would have been worse if we hadn’t intervened. Inti himself asked this of me. The deaths of thirty thousand people in the resulting earthquakes and eruptions had been . . . bad. Watching coverage of the relief efforts had caused him to stay up at night, sometimes praying, sometimes just . . . thinking. Trying to decide if there had been anything else they could have done. And the answer, over and again, had been no.