It left a tingling in my chest and arms, and the more I concentrated on the sensation, the more my head hurt.
It didn't stop me from stalking away from the table, head held as high as I could manage.
The place was as silent as deep space as I walked away from Hera. All the assembled gods and goddesses had stopped what they were doing – their ale mugs halfway to their lips or their heads half tossed back, mid-laugh. They were all waiting for what would inevitably come next.
Hera's reaction to Zeus’ various lovers – whether confirmed, or innocent, as in my case – was the stuff of legend. The viciousness, the violence, the single-minded willingness to hunt them down and turn their lives into the embodiment of misery.
While a majority of Zeus’ romantic-equivalent side-servings were of the pouting human damsel kind (though not so much these days with all the anti-interference laws), it wasn't unheard of for him to dip into the goddess basket, too. Based on experience, Hera had every right to believe Thor/Zeus was up to something. Based on how she reacted to such experience, every single god and goddess in this room knew she was about to attack me viciously and screaming at the top of her lungs from behind.
As I mentally steeled for the attack, something happened: there was a rustling of leaves. It wasn't all that distinct, it wasn't all that loud, it wasn't all that noticeable. Somewhere far off, at the edge of the room (or at the edge of my senses), I heard the gentle shifting of leaves under a slight breeze. While it could have been a draft unsettling any number of laurels or tree gods, it felt different. The bare sense of it sent such a tingle through my gut that I felt giddy from shock.
Blinking and twisting my lips in, I tried not to stumble as I walked, yet I couldn't help but slow.
“How dare you!” Hera shrieked from behind.
I hardly heard her. She sounded as though she was at the edge of hearing, and the incessant rustling of leaves was growing until it threatened to press in on me from above.
I stopped moving, parking myself right in the middle of the room, jaw humorously slack as I stared above at the moving leaves I could hear but couldn't see.
I got the impression of a warm welcome light filtering in through young, tender foliage. The green of spring and the golden glow of the sun beckoning me on.
Then something smacked me right in the back of the head. It made a terrible thwacking sound and felt suspiciously like the back of a chair.
I fell forward, but didn't drop to my knees. It was more of a dignified stumble. Though the chair had been flung at me with full-force by one of the most powerful goddesses of the Greek pantheon, it was more of a surprise and less of a concern.
I wasn't injured.
I turned to the side, putting a hand up to the back of my head. It didn't hurt. It was an automatic move at being struck with a heavy object from behind.
Hera, face a hotter red than the lava that spewed from Mount Etna, still held the chair easily in one hand. With a vicious twist of her mouth, her eyes pulled shut from the anger clawing across her face, she swung the chair right at my head again.
From her expression, to her movement, to the light glinting off the chair – I saw it all at once. Every detail.
I put up a hand, grabbing the chair leg and stopping it in place an inch from my face. Despite Hera's huge, grunting effort, she couldn't shift it from my grip.
I could feel the grain of the wood against the skin of my hand, and the wood only served to remind me of those rustling leaves.
I was aware of the fact I stared over at Hera with a confused look on my face.
She looked out of breath and shocked. “What?” she puffed at me as she tried to yank the chair from my grip. “How are you doing this?” she spat through a tight jaw.
She gave another almighty (literally) tug on the chair, and the thing snapped in two. I kept one of the legs. She got the rest. The force of her effort sent her stumbling backwards, face still a picture of sneering shock.
For my part, I kept my lips closed and my head cocked to the side, as my eyes wondered from side-to-side trying to locate the origin of that damn rustling.
Hera – because she was Hera, and wasn't about to let the surprise of a small-time goddess besting her in a chair fight stop her – came at me again. Except this time it was fist-cuffs. With nothing but the look of calculated, frightful, impending vengeance on her face and her fingers curled into the equivalent of grappling hooks, the wedding-planner launched herself at me.
I noticed it like you might when you take a quick glance out the window to check what the weather is outside. It was a fact, but not one that had much importance for me.
Then reality snapped back with a twang. With no more edge-of-awareness rustling to keep me distracted, I realized in a single strangled heartbeat that Hera – a goddess ten times more powerful than me – was seconds away from ripping me to shreds.
I screwed my eyes shut and gave a pathetic yelp as I slammed my hands over my face.
I need not have bothered – Hera didn't reach me. There was a half-strangled puff of air, and I opened one of my eyes between the gaps in my fingers and saw that Thor had grabbed an arm around Hera, stopping her in place.
Boy, was there a look on his face. Except it wasn't directed at his malevolent, paranoid, crazy, wedding-planning, half-wife from a different identity. Nope, he looked right at me. His expression was such a mix of angry, bothered, surprised, and something far, far deeper. Something... old was gathering and tugging at the edges of his eyes, like a long suppressed memory that could no longer be subdued.
He held my gaze for all of about two seconds – though I'm sure time somehow squeezed several eons between that stutteringly short moment – then his cheeks stiffened and he turned back to his half-wife.
Hera still steamed, but was turning her boiling inferno of a temper back to where it belonged – Thor.
She rolled up a hand and thumped it against Thor's shiny breast plate. It gave a resounding twanging sound. “You always do this to me,” she began to mope, then hit his breast plate again. “Always.”
Thor took a rumbling sigh. “How many times, Hera? When I'm Thor—“
“You're still Zeus. When you are Jupiter, I’m Juno. I know the mysteries of identity, Zeus, don't you stand there and tell me it doesn't matter. You've been telling me the same old story for millennia – and guess what? It matters to me.” She placed a delicate hand on her chest and stared up at the blond-bearded version of her half-husband.
“When you're Juno you are a lot less paranoid,” Thor mumbled to himself.
Which was the wrong thing to mumble – even quietly – when he had an arm around the middle of his maybe-wife from a different pantheon.
Hera sucked in a sharp breath of air from between her clenched teeth and hit Thor a lot harder this time.
This was... great. Here I stood in the middle of the Ambrosia, in the middle of a divine domestic. If they started make-up kissing, I'd hit them both with my chair leg.
I swallowed.
I wanted to point out to Hera that Thor wasn't Zeus. I wanted to defend the buffoon. Though, as immigration officer, I knew the differences that allowed a god to have more than one functioning identity didn't run that deep. Hera was right: underneath it all was still the same god. He still represented the same forces, he was just given different names and systems of belief under different pantheons.
That point didn't seem important to me. What was important was the fact that whilst entering Earth as Thor, he couldn’t be held accountable for the actions of Zeus or Jupiter. If it was good enough for the Integration Office, then it should be good enough for Hera.
I watched them, a growing nervous feeling swelling in my stomach. I flicked my eyes away and tried to find something else to stare at. My gaze soon settled on the chair leg in my hand. The one that belonged to the chair I’d somehow caught after it had been swung by Hera of all people.
How had I done that?
....
I used to
watch the leaves flutter above me.
....
I blinked slowly. Words had formed in my mind – unspoken but undeniable. I hadn’t thought them. They had thought themselves.
I slid my gaze slowly towards the chair leg still in my hand. Sudden Hera-chair-stopping powers, mysterious fluttering noises, and spoken words forming directly in my mind?
Being a goddess, I immediately skipped through the possibilities, and none of them involved standard human causes of delirium. I wasn't dehydrated, I hadn’t munched on some suspicious fern shoots, and nor had I gobbled a brightly colored pill I'd spied in an alleyway behind a club. There were all sorts of divine sources of madness however, but none of them tended to involve chair legs as far as I knew.
Was I tired? I hadn’t got much rest between being chased by Loki, chained to a wall, taken to Asgard, and coming to happy hour at the Ambrosia. Yes, that had to be it – I was exhausted.
“Details—“ Thor was somehow right in front of me, his hands pressed into my shoulders. He gave me a tender shake.
Blinking up at him, I realized I had allowed myself to become monumentally distracted by my thoughts. So distracted that I’d tuned out everything else in the universe.
Everything – and that’s a lot of things.
It hit me, and it wasn't another chair. It was the same pain I’d been feeling on-and-off for the past several days. No, not the same – this was worse by a factor of about a billion.
I didn't shout anything indicative of my situation like “Ow,” “Blimey,” or “My head is about to explode.” I crumpled. It was too much. It was too severe.
It felt like the universe was either trying to rip into my mind or rip free from it. It wasn’t a good feeling.
Unsurprisingly, for the third time in three days, I conked out.
Chapter 10
I can't say I awoke in a nice God Hospital somewhere. I can't say I awoke with a nice godly blanket pulled over me and a curled-up toga supporting my head. Then again, I wasn't, thankfully, strapped to a wall either.
I didn't wake anywhere either appropriate or inappropriate for a potentially injured goddess. Instead, I didn't wake up at all. I never lost consciousness.
Something far stranger occurred: my awareness was shunted to the side as if someone had slapped me hard on the face, jolting my head to a position that allowed a view I’d never before seen.
And what was the view of? Those darn rustling leaves.
I was lying on my back, I was sure of it – though precisely seconds before I’d been standing in the middle of the Ambrosia with a worried Thor shaking my shoulders. I was no longer in that god-awful (excuse the pun) divine bar. I was lying on wonderfully soft grass, staring at fluttering leaves above me. The sunshine filtered through them in a divine, dappled light. It was wondrous, relaxing, and oh-so welcoming.
I could stay here forever.
I had already spent eternity here.
I blinked rapidly as that thought raced through my mind. I hadn’t been here for an eternity, had I? I couldn't concentrate long enough to answer that. My thoughts faded in and out like a dream lost upon waking.
I watched the leaves. I listened to them move. They held more secrets than one person or god could appreciate. It would take eternity to listen to their wisdom.
A smile spread slowly across my lips.
I had eternity. I possessed an entire, immortal, never-ending existence to watch, listen, and know.
I could lie here with my back on the soft grass, with the tree above me and my husband beside me.
Husband?
The leaves began to shake above, and in a terribly violent fashion. The whole world around me was shaking itself loose. Loose from what, I didn’t know.
I tried to hold on, but it faded.
The leaves turned into hair, and the glorious dappled sunshine filtering through them shifted at once to a pale, cold light.
I stood back in the Ambrosia. Standing was hardly an accurate term – I was being held up by the shoulders. My head was lolled to the side, all muscle control gone. The only reason I wasn't a pile on the floor was that Thor had such a hold of my upper arms that he could use them to prop up a bridge.
Reality didn't click back as quickly as I hoped. I didn't snap back into the present with a look of popping-eyed wonder followed by a strangled “Awesome, I was hallucinating, and the colors, man, the colors!” No. I had to claw my way back to the present and to who and what I was. As that was such an odd way to describe what was going on, it placed serious doubts on the exact epistemic credentials of what I'd previously been comfortable to describe as me.
I could still hear the rustling of leaves far, far off in the distance. It was fading. The more it faded, the more I tried to hold onto it. The more I did that, the more my head hurt – the more my brain tried to shift out of my skull through the center of my forehead.
Thor gave my shoulders a shake, and he almost shook my head off.
“Ahhh,” I managed, though it was more of a gurgle.
This appeared to satisfy the searching, pressed, unsure-look in Thor's eyes. It was a look I’d never seen, and not one I would have thought possible for the Nordic god of inappropriately-timed-happy-hour parties.
He looked lost and yet on the cusp of finding something.
I watched those cheeks for... what? Seconds, moments, a fraction of time?
“There is something wrong with that goddess,” I heard someone say from off to my side.
My neck muscles still weren't what they should be, so I wasn't about to bother lolling my head their way like an uncoordinated puppet. Plus, I knew who it was: Hera.
She was right, there was something wrong with this goddess. My problems ranged from being hunted, to having a blown up front door, to having had a hallucination in the middle of a god bar.
I was starting to regain control over my body and was starting to hold my head aloft. This gave me a fabulous view of all the people staring at me. Boy, were they staring. This was, for the assembled gods and goddesses, the equivalent of dinner and a show. Thor, Hera, and my partially paralyzed, oft-hallucinating self were providing an act in the middle of the bar for all to appreciate over their ale and club sandwiches.
I went to push my glasses up my nose – a move I’d grown accustomed to performing whenever a situation was beyond my control in the Immigration Office. If some boisterous, loud, and dangerous war god was seconds from destroying my desk with his magical spear, I would take a moment to slowly and pointedly push my glasses up as if they were magical microscopes that enabled me to peer right through the problem.
Except I wasn't wearing my glasses. No rims to hide behind. Instead I... had to take it all in. Which wasn't a good thing to do considering how much there was to stare at. In a move becoming all too familiar to me, my bloody head hurt.
“Do something about it,” Hera stamped up to Thor's side and pointed a finger right at me.
I was it, apparently.
I glanced her way. I didn't like being talked to in that manner while I was recovering from sudden leaf-filled dreams. “I have a name, Hera,” I said, proud that my voice was more in control than the rest of me. “If you can't remember it, I'm happy to write it down for you.”
Hera looked murderously at me.
Thor looked confused and torn. “I—“
“My cat!” I spoke the sudden thought out loud. “Damn it, I left him in Ancient Egypt.” I pulled free from Thor's grip – which was easier to do than it sounded – and stood on my own two feet as I tried to think. If I went back to my house, I might be able to con the old spatial anomaly between my bedroom and living room to send me back to the library of Alexandria. Then I would... grab a bag of dried food and walk around the sandy streets of an ancient port city shaking it and calling “Here, kitty, kitty.”
.... Damn.
“Her cat?” I saw Hera out of my peripheral vision swing her gaze from me back to Thor and twist a finger in a circle next to her head.
/> I wasn't crazy – I just had priorities. Plus, if Thor was going to stand there having an almost-domestic with his almost-wife during happy hour at the Ambrosia, then at least I was going to be proactive. Yes, he’d been assigned by one of the most powerful gods to protect me. But if Thor wasn't going to do his job, then by Jove (excuse the joke), I was going to do it for him.
First things first, I was going to get my cat back. Or – considering I wasn't a total klutz fond of walking into traps/offering myself up free-of-charge to my kidnappers – I would make some enquiries at the Integration Office. I would check with our contacts in Ancient Egypt as to whether the cat goddess would mind having a roam around for a stray. While I was there, I would also get on to the Divinity Police and ensure they put immediate measures in place to track down my kidnappers.
Gosh, yes, this was a good plan. Why I hadn’t thought of doing it before, I didn't know. The entire point of the Immigration Office was it provided a centrally organized point of security. Going to them was logical. Staying with Thor was idiotic. I’d been lulled into staying by his side, since he thought that good detective work was qualitatively the same as good ale.
So be it, I was going alone.
I turned and walked away as Hera stepped into my place. “I can't believe you—“ she began to admonish Thor in a riotously loud tone.
I tuned her out.
“Details, don't wander far,” Thor immediately boomed from behind me. He was being diplomatic – realizing that he could hardly blow off Hera and yet not wanting to disappoint his old man by losing sight of me.
That was the problem with gods like him – split personalities meant split priorities.
“I won't,” I lied. When the truth would have a golden-bearded idiot breathing down your neck, a lie was always preferable.
I didn't head straight to the door. I meandered around the side of the room for a while first. I didn't want to out-and-out leave the place while Thor was still watching. It was one thing to say you would do something then do the opposite immediately and brazenly. It was what Thor would do. I wasn't that stupid.
Modern Goddess: Trapped by Thor (Book One) Page 16
