by A. R. Kahler
“Why are we here?” If I was dead, okay—that wasn’t the strangest thing I’d encountered. Something continued to claw at the back of my mind. A reason. A need.
“Because you dragged us here,” she said coldly. “To save that worthless boy.”
Memory hit me like a frigid wave. Chris, running toward the lake. Stopping. Stabbing his wrist. And then . . . a brilliant light. A hole in the ice, the water within as thick and warm as blood as it sucked him down. As it sucked me down. How had I forgotten about that?
I looked around, my heart suddenly hammering in my chest because, holy shit, I needed to find him. To talk to him. Chris had tried to kill me. I should have hated him for that. Instead, I was worried.
I was staring at a goddess who had tried to control me. I’d seen the glowing presence Chris was running from. We were both fighting our demons.
“Where is he?”
He’d been there. Just out of reach, beneath the waves. Our fingers had touched, and then he’d slipped away, and we’d both slipped into congealing darkness.
“The boy is not here because he tried to kill himself. You tried to save him. Those intentions lead to different places.”
“So I’m dead?”
“Not quite. Not yet.”
“Helpful.”
She shrugged. I didn’t think that was a motion gods would do. Every other time I’d seen her, she’d been apocalyptically powerful. Killing Brad. Taking down the force behind Jonathan. Now she just looked like a naked teenager, the same age as me.
“What happened to Jonathan?” I asked.
“Dead.” She looked down when she said it, but not out of remorse. Like she was pointing.
“And . . . whatever it was controlling him?”
“Banished,” she said, just as short. She looked at me. “And then you decided to throw away that victory by coming here. To save a boy I’ve told you time and again you will have to kill.”
“I’m not killing anyone,” I said.
“You already have.”
But even though she mentioned what was normally a trigger, I wasn’t paying attention to her, not really. If this was the Underworld, my body was somewhere else. I’d read enough to know that only souls could travel through the lands of the dead. So what was happening to my body? Was it still underwater? Slowly drowning?
“Your soul is here,” she said. She sighed. She sounded perturbed. Gods could feel perturbed? “And so am I. Stuck.”
Apparently gods could be passive-aggressive, too. I think I preferred just hearing from Munin. The raven at least was forthright. Most of the time. Freyja was just starting to sound spoiled.
“How long do I have?”
“Time doesn’t exist—” she began, but I cut her off.
“Until I’m actually dead. Are you saying we could just stay here forever?”
“Forever is a measurement of time.” Her voice fell flat. She stared at me like I was an idiot, as if suddenly realizing what it would mean to be stuck with me for eternity. Whatever “eternity” meant, that was.
I growled in exasperation and started pacing. The shadows never changed. Whatever lay beyond the two of us was completely obscured.
“Fuck,” I grunted. “Okay. Fine. I came here to save Chris. So how do we do that? Where’d he get sent?”
“To where the suicides go.”
My heart sank. My mom was pagan, so I’d never grown up with the hellfire speeches so many of my friends had endured. But that didn’t mean I hadn’t read Dante or heard the lectures from others. There was always a special place in Hell for the people who’d taken their own lives. Which I thought was complete and utter bullshit, because that never took into account the multitude of reasons someone would try to kill themselves, most of which had nothing to do with sin or selfishness.
“I don’t believe in that,” I said.
“What you believe does not matter here. It’s not your death we’re dealing with, but his. Which means we must follow his rules.”
“What do you mean? You mean Hell changes?”
“The Underworld is infinite. Heaven and Hell exist here, in all their forms. Just as many gods exist here, in all their forms. What you call them is not so important. What you believe is what changes your experience. Since you have decided to follow this boy into death, you are following in the trail of his beliefs.”
I stopped my pacing to look at her. We weren’t following anyone. We were standing around, talking about Chris, when he was in danger.
“I need to save him.”
“You cannot.”
“What do you mean, cannot? Like, it’s impossible? Or you just don’t want to help?”
“Both.” She said it so matter-of-factly, so without remorse, that I wanted to punch her. I balled up my fists, but I didn’t leap. She might not be acting all godlike right now, but that didn’t change what she was.
We were in the Underworld, and that meant I needed her help.
It also meant I needed to show her that she still needed mine.
“I’m going to save him,” I said. “And you’re going to help.”
She just stared at me, her violet eyes empty.
“He tried to kill you, Shadechild. Just as you will do to him. Let him die down here. Let this go. And we can both return to Midgard. We will have won.”
“Won what?” I asked. “You keep talking about a war that doesn’t exist.”
“Not yet,” she said, “but it will.”
She pushed herself away from whatever she was leaning on and walked over to me. When she neared, she dropped her voice to a whisper.
“There is so much you do not know, Shadechild. About your destiny. About his. It would be better if you let him die down here. For yourself, and for him, and for everyone you love.”
“I don’t believe in destiny,” I said.
“And yet your entire life has been carved by it.” She said it not to me, but to the shadows behind my ear. As if she were speaking to a mirror. “You cannot escape what you were made for, Kaira,” she said. “No matter how hard or how fast you run, it will always find you.”
My heart seemed to stutter at the fact that she said made for and not born, but I had bigger things to worry about.
“I’m not leaving without Chris.”
“Then you are damning yourself to killing him in the mortal plane, or dying by his hand.”
“It’s better than letting him die down here by his. I have to try.”
Something crossed over her face then—an emotion I didn’t think I’d ever seen. Not in her. She looked lost.
“He was trying to kill you,” she whispered.
“I don’t believe that,” I replied. “Otherwise he wouldn’t have taken off. He’s being hunted. By another one of you.”
I actually did punch her then. Well, pushed her, really, but the action jolted her from whatever downward spiral she was in. Her eyes focused, and she glared at me.
“The Aesir and Vanir are at war,” she hissed. “We are nothing alike.”
“You’re gods,” I replied. “That’s close enough.”
“I am not a god,” she said. She stepped back. “And neither is the godchild of the Aesir.”
“I don’t give a shit what you are. I don’t care about this war. I care about finding Chris. You’re going to help me, or we both die down here.”
She crossed her arms and stared at me.
“Perhaps that would be for the best.”
The shadows behind her rippled then, folding in on themselves like paper, and a moment later the great raven Munin appeared from the darkness, flapping down to land on her shoulder.
“You should not be here,” he said. His voice was grating and oceanic, something older than time itself.
“She refuses to return.” Freyja really did sound like an insolent teenager then. Talking to her father.
The raven looked at me, its pale eyes dim moons in the dark.
“You must return to the mortal world. You must lead
us to victory.”
I shook my head.
“I’m not leaving. Not without Chris.”
I didn’t know where this resolve was coming from. I barely knew Chris, and Freyja had a point—I had regained consciousness with his hands around my neck. But it also wasn’t about him. I was tired of playing by their rules. I was tired of being a pawn. Saving Chris was my choice—something neither of them wanted to do—and that alone made fighting for it worth it.
Silence stretched between us. I felt it in my chest, a sort of weighing, like Munin was studying my resolve. I steeled myself. I wasn’t leaving the Underworld without Chris. I wasn’t going to be some vessel for someone else. This was my body. My life. My soul. My decision.
If they thought they could take that from me, they didn’t realize what it meant to grow up with a pagan feminist for a mother.
Finally, after what could have been an eternity, Munin cocked his head to the side and spoke.
“You will find the boy. Then you will return to the mortal world. And there, you will live out your roles.”
He didn’t leave right away, and I could tell by the way Freyja’s brow furrowed that he was speaking to her. Telepathically or something, because of course that was a thing. Before I could ask what the hell they were discussing, he flew off. The shadows seemed to swallow him whole, until only the white of his eye showed, until that too was eaten by shadow.
Freyja glared at me.
“I hope he is worth it to you,” she said. “And I hope, for your sake, he isn’t too far gone.”
I didn’t bother to ask what she was talking about.
I was starting to realize that when it came to the gods, ignorance was better than bliss.
Freyja and I walked in silence for a while, me just a step behind her. After a few dozen feet, the cavernous space sank in on itself, and I was able to make out walls around us. The air grew heavier, wetter, and every breath made me think I was inhaling air that hadn’t seen human lungs in millennia. If ever. Farther on, I realized that the empty hall echoed with the sound of dripping water. Black stalactites stretched from the ceiling, some smooth and obsidian, others caked with crystals. Stalactites stick tight to the ceiling, and stalagmites? Well, they might just reach up there some day.
Gods, how was that tour guide’s quote still stuck in my head?
Really, I thought I was taking this all quite well, or maybe I’d just left my doubt in my body, underwater. I was here in the Underworld with the goddess or godchild or whatever who’d been trying to take over my body. And right now, we weren’t struggling or fighting. She was helping me rescue a guy I sort of knew and sort of liked.
The last thought nearly stopped me in my tracks. It wasn’t the first time I’d thought it, of course, but it was the first time it really had weight. I mean, I’d gone to the Underworld for him. That had to be more than a passing crush.
Hormones didn’t make teens that stupid, did they?
Munin and Freyja said he was my enemy, but something in my gut said otherwise. Something said that if I had him back in my life, if we worked this out, we would be unstoppable. Maybe that was why they didn’t want me to save him. Maybe they were afraid that, if I had someone else in my life going through the same shit, I wouldn’t put up with theirs.
“So where are we going?” I asked. My voice echoed down the hall. We’d already been walking for . . . what? A minute? A few seconds? I thought back to when we got here, but I couldn’t place it. Maybe she was right about time not existing here.
She looked to me.
“And would you please put on clothes?” I asked.
She looked down.
I didn’t think she rolled her eyes, but she may as well have.
The next blink, and she was wearing clothes. I expected something, I don’t know, regal or whatever. A dress or silk shift or the like. But she wore tight leather pants and a loose gray tunic, a belt studded with daggers draped across her hips.
“Better?” she asked.
I nodded.
“I already told you where we are going,” she said. “To find your lover.”
“He’s not my lover.”
“Yet you love him.”
That stopped me. A crush was one thing. But love?
“I don’t love him.”
The words came out on their own, a habit I wasn’t ready to kick. I loved my parents. I loved Ethan. I wouldn’t love a boy. At least not a straight one.
Freyja spread her arms. “We stand in the Underworld to rescue your enemy, and you cannot even tell me it is out of love?”
My mouth dropped open.
I thought of Chris. Of his stupid little smile and the way he kept eye contact when talking. Of the way his fingers held his paintbrush, and his hand danced over his canvas when he lost himself to his work.
I thought of his fear, of the agitation in his eyes when he’d told me about his sister. About when he was hit by a car and brought back in exchange for her life. About living forever with that guilt.
My heart twisted with the memory. Standing in the snow together so close, he could have kissed me, the cold air turned away by the gravity between us. That moment when I thought that maybe I wasn’t so alone. That maybe someone else would be able to know me—all of me, even the shit I wanted to hide from—and not run away screaming.
Or end up dead in a circle of their own blood.
Was that love? I didn’t think so. There weren’t any fireworks, and I didn’t want to jump his bones.
But I also couldn’t stand the thought of being away from him. Of losing him. I wanted to be near him, wanted to watch his brows furrow while he worked. Wanted to hear him talk about art and movies, wanted to feel his heat as we walked side by side. Our hands linked and held in the pocket of his jacket . . .
“You are smiling,” Freyja said.
I quickly stopped myself.
“You are in love,” she continued, stepping closer. “Even if you do not see it. And that love will destroy you.”
I pushed past her. I had no clue where we were going, but the tunnel only went one way.
“What do you know about love?” I asked. The words sounded cliché even before I said them.
“More than you,” she replied. “Pray it stays that way.”
I had a thousand questions I wanted to ask. And, as usual, I couldn’t find a way to voice a single one. So we walked deeper into the land of the dead, the outer world silent and my inner world on fire. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for you are with me. I had no idea where I’d heard that line—probably a movie—but I’d always liked it. Something about the visual of a shaded valley in the mountains. I didn’t know, but I’d always found it comforting.
And fitting. Though I didn’t think the original verse was about walking with evil.
I couldn’t find a single scrap of fear in my body as we walked through the dark. Freyja was there in front of me. She was the one I’d been running from my whole life, and now here we were, in the land of the dead, and I no longer had to run. What was it they said about keeping friends close and enemies closer? I was walking with the shadow of my death. What was there to fear?
Instead, I only felt confusion. A thousand amplifying questions, and a single resonating need: to find Chris.
“You still haven’t told me what’s going on,” I said. The tunnel we were in kept twisting deeper down, but beyond that, nothing was changing. Save for my ability to stay quiet.
“You’re in the Underworld. We are finding the boy you’re supposed to kill. I thought that was obvious. Even if pointless.”
So gods could be testy, too. Good to know.
I stopped.
“But why? Why the hell do I have to kill him? Why was I saved for all this?”
She didn’t pause, and she didn’t answer, which meant I had no choice but to jog to catch up. I didn’t let the question drop, though.
“What was that thing I saw on the lake? The go
lden thing. You called it—”
“An Aesir,” she said. Her words were tight. “There are two realms of gods, Kaira: the Upperworld and the Underworld. The higher gods—the Aesir—live in the boughs of the Yggdrasil, the World Tree, luxuriating in sunlight and bliss and beauty for all eternity. The lower gods—the Vanir—live in the Roots. Where we toil away to ensure the Tree lives. For if it fades, we fade. We are the caretakers of Yggdrasil and, by extension, the Aesir.”
“I never read that,” I muttered.
“You wouldn’t. Humans know about gods because we want them to. That also means we can withhold information.”
I glanced at her. In this eerie nonlight, she truly did look otherworldly, like I could pass a hand through her and feel nothing but smoke. I’d never thought of gods like that. That they’d been the ones telling mankind the myths. We were the recipients. And we only got what they wanted us to have.
Seeing as my interactions with Freyja were tense at best, I could see why mankind didn’t know much.
“But you’re not a god?” I asked.
“No.” For a while, she said nothing more, and I thought that was the end of it. Then her eyes flicked over to me, and I saw something in her expression that looked both angry and sad. “Gods are created, or simply part of Creation. I was born. For you.”
For some reason, I didn’t want to press the subject.
“And the Aesir? What’s the war?”
“That is complicated and not for me to say. Munin will tell you when it is time.”
I wanted to stop walking again—it seemed like my only tactic or upper hand down here—but I knew she wouldn’t stop for me.
“Bullshit,” I replied. “Munin told you to help me get Chris. You tell me I have to kill Chris. Which is it?”
She sighed. Again, she made a face that made me think she wouldn’t answer.
“Letting your lover die down here would be the best for him, Shadechild. It would be the kind thing to do.” Her words dripped with sadness, like she actually gave a crap about Chris’s well-being. “That is why I begged you to let him go. But that is not what the gods want. They demand a war. And so, Chris cannot die down here. Neither can you.”
