by C. Gockel
Chapter 11
“What do I do?” says the girl.
Loki stares at Thor in front of his golden chariot. Valkyries stand beside Thor and are blocking the road behind Car. More are alighting along the sides of the road.
“Drive forward,” he says. “Slowly. When I tap the roof, stop.” Knocking at the top window, he says, “Car, open up.”
“You know...” the girl begins to say.
“What?” he snaps, not bothering to look at her.
“It can wait,” she says, gripping Car’s door as the window above slides open.
Loki stands up. Heavy but sparse drops of rain fall on him. He can see trees waving madly in the distance, but around him the air is nearly still. They are in the eye of the storm.
Around Car, Valkyries raise their spears, but they do not fire. In front of him, Thor stands up straighter. His eyes meet Loki’s, then go over Car, before coming back to meet Loki’s gaze again.
Neither Loki nor Thor say anything. When Amy has brought Car within a few paces of Thor, Loki taps the roof. She obediently stops the vehicle.
“Well met,” says Thor in the Asgard tongue.
Loki does not respond.
Thor licks his lips and looks distinctly uncomfortable. “I bring grave tidings — ”
“If you mean the fire that consumed Hoenir’s hut, and all within, including Sigyn and my sons, I already know,” Loki snaps.
Appearing genuinely hurt, Thor takes a step forward. “Loki, I did try — ”
“To save them,” Loki says sharply. His body sags and he looks away. “Yes, I know that, too.” It occurs to him how devious it was for Odin to send Thor on this particular outing. Thor is possibly the only Asgardian Loki will hear out at this point. And Thor does have something to say; if he didn’t, Loki would be dead by now.
It’s uncomfortable standing half in Car, half out. Loki’s legs are at odd angles, so he slips onto the roof and sits there, legs dangling into the inside of Car below. The roof buckles a little at his weight, Amy gasps, and Fenrir yips, but Loki ignores them. “Spit it out, Thor. What do you want?”
Thor straightens. He takes a deep breath and appears almost to go a little green, as though he has just been asked to eat something extremely distasteful. “I have been sent...to beg you to return.”
Loki stares at him for several long heartbeats. Then he bursts out laughing. The sound seems brittle and hard even to him. Waving at the Valkyries, Loki says, “You came to beg me...at spear point?”
Thor doesn’t back down. Raising an eyebrow, he smiles slightly. “It would seem I needed their help to find you.”
Loki sighs. Once he might have warmed to that; now he feels only emptiness. “Flattery will get you nowhere, Thor.”
The slight smile on Thor’s face vanishes. “Nonetheless, everything I say is true. Loki, my father needs you to come home. ”
Loki’s lip curls into a sneer. “And he would have the gall to ask me after killing Hoenir, Mimir, Sigyn and my boys!”
Scowling, Thor takes a step forward. “It wasn’t like that! The fire — ”
“Wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t tried to execute my sons!”
“Let me finish!” Thor’s voice rips so loudly through the darkness of the stormy dawn that Car reverberates. Lifting his hammer, Thor shouts, “My father tried to stop the flames — but even Gungnir couldn’t halt them. Something is growing in the nine realms, something that is twisting magic and time and will pull the World Tree asunder.” Thor swings his hammer for emphasis and a stray bit of lightning sprays off into the trees. There is a loud crack, and a small scream from Amy. The Valkyries shift on their feet.
Stepping back with one foot, Thor’s face contorts into something like disbelief or revulsion. “My father believes only you can stop it.” Loki crosses his arms. Of course Thor would feel ashamed if there was some threat to the realms he couldn’t resolve with a few pounds of his hammer.
Not that Loki believes this little story. “Would saving the realms involve me remaining in a cave doused in snake venom for a few centuries?”
“It isn’t like that!” Thor says. “You will be absolved of all wrongdoing in this matter. This is the truth!”
Absolved? As though he was the one who needs absolution. His sons, Sigyn, Mimir and Hoenir are dead. Loki grits his teeth and feels his eyes get hot. Thinking about them all gone — his body feels hollow, as though he is an empty shell.
He takes a deep breath and pulls himself back into the moment. Absolution is a farce. As soon as Loki returns to Asgard, there will be some dire punishment, and this time there will be no Sigyn to tend to him. Loki rolls his eyes at Thor’s naivete. When will Thor realize Odin is as capable at lying as Loki, perhaps more so? Anything to “protect” the realms, or rather, his own power.
“Lovely,” says Loki, tapping his fingers on Car’s roof. “But I’m afraid I have to refuse.” Shrugging, he points down at Car and says, “I have some mortals I have sworn to return to their own realm. You know I always keep my oaths.”
Thor scowls. “Father said that you could slip between the realms...” He walks around the car towards the driver’s side — as he does so, the Valkyries raise their spears a bit higher. Loki scowls at them and then turns his attention to Thor. Odin’s son is now peeking in the driver’s side window. Thor smiles and waggles a finger at Amy as one might waggle a finger at a pretty bird in a cage. In the back seat Fenrir growls warningly.
Looking up, Thor raises his eyebrows and says brightly, “She is a pretty thing, Loki. And just your type.” Raising one hand to his chest, Thor makes groping motions with his fingers in what is probably a universal symbol for large breasts. “I suppose the old woman in the back is her kin. Convince them to come back to Asgard with you. Keep the girl as your plaything for a decade. When she withers she can remain your servant, a much better life than she’d have in her own realm.”
Somewhere a Valkyrie’s spear must fire accidentally because Loki sees a flare of orange flame in the periphery of his vision. His sons are dead. As are his ex-wife and two best friends. Thor dares talk of playthings? Loki is too furious to speak.
“What did he just say?” says Amy in English, her voice sounding indignant.
Loki looks down at her. She is staring hard out the window at Thor who is waggling his finger at her again and smiling like an idiot. It is probably innate contrariness that makes Loki translate. “Oh, he’s just suggested I bring you home to Asgard and keep you as a plaything and servant. Perhaps you’d like to answer?”
Eyes going wide, Amy’s brows draw together and she springs up through the window in the roof between Loki’s knees. Facing Thor she says, “You can tell the God of Blunder he can take that idea and shove it up his great big Viking butt!”
Loki blinks. Well, that was absolutely priceless. The corners of his lips pull up.
Thor’s face goes completely red, his lips curve into something between a frown and a grimace, and his brows draw into one line. The hand holding his hammer starts to tremble.
“Actually,” Loki says, keeping his gaze fixed on Thor, “Thor understands English well enough.”
“Oh,” says Amy, sounding not at all brave. Putting a hand gently on her head, Loki pushes her back into the car.
Thor is breathing deeply, but Loki nor Car nor the girl are dead. Odin must want Loki very badly.
In English, Thor says very slowly, “You can tell your whore that my orders are to bring you back to Asgard alive. Father will not care about her puny little mortal life.”
Head darting out of the car again, in a voice that is plaintive rather than angry, Amy says, “I am not a whore!”
Putting his hand on her head not so gently this time, Loki pushes her back inside. With a smirk he says, “She has my oath of protection. You’ll have to kill me first.”
With a bellow, Thor swings his hammer in empty air like a toddler having a tantrum. Something cracks in the distance, like lightning hitting tree br
anches. Loki smiles. He hears the Valkyries at the dark side of the forest give angry cries.
In Car, Amy starts pulling at his leg. “Loki!” she whispers.
“Not now!” he snaps down at her.
In the distance he hears more cracking in rapid succession. Thor looks away. Someone shouts, “Dark Elves!”
“Loki!” says Amy.
He scowls at her. But she gives a ferocious tug at his leg. Letting himself be tugged into Car, he finds his face just inches from hers. Her eyes are wide with fear — and so help him he’s about to make her more afraid with the words at the tip of his tongue. But before he can even breathe she says, “Do elves have automatic weapons? Because that sounds like automatic weapons.”
Loki’s eyes go wide. He looks towards the dark forest. Something hits the side of Car and there is the sharp clang of metal on metal. In the dark forest there are loud angry popping noises getting closer. Valkyries from the left side of the road are streaming past Car to the dark side. Car makes a sharp beep.
Turning back to Amy, he sees her hands are already at the wheel.
“That does sound like automatic weapons fire,” he says. He hasn’t heard it since World War II.
Amy hits the gas. Loki puts a hand on her leg and says, “I’m making us invisible again!”
From the backseat Beatrice says quietly, “Oh, the elves have fireworks.” Loki looks back at her; her eyes are still closed. Everything around them begins to shimmer as his spell takes effect. He hears Thor yelling orders.
Loki looks at the shimmering Amy, now steering them around Thor’s chariot. “How do you know what automatic weapons sound like?” he asks.
“I live in Chicago,” she says, as though that is explanation.
Her shimmering form hunching over the wheel, Amy says, “Elves have guns?”
“No,” says Loki. More gunshots go off, and the car shoots forward. “Not that I know of.”
“Oh, what lovely fireworks,” says Beatrice.
An explosion goes off in the distance behind them and something whizzes past. Amy jumps beneath his hand. Loki follows the whizzing shape with his eyes and turns his head. “That was just another flare.”
He turns around. “Thor’s broken off from the rest and is pursuing us!”
Car shoots forward.
x x x x
It’s like a video game Amy tells herself. The flares aren’t going to hurt them. No one dies if they get hit.
“Veer left,” Loki says. Amy veers left and a bolt of blue shoots by the car. She’s not sure how long she’s been driving since the Valkyries were overtaken by dark elves. It seems like forever, but it’s probably only a few minutes.
“We’re almost at the gate,” Loki says. “Slow down.”
“How will you open it?” Amy says, putting a foot gently on the brake. “Will you have to get out of the car?”
“Of course I’ll have to get out of the car,” Loki snaps. “Stop here!”
Amy stops so quickly she bumps the steering wheel.
Loki’s hand leaves her knee, and she is suspended in absolute nothingness.
“Car, open up the top hatch!” Loki says.
Amy doesn’t try to argue with him. She just searches blindly for the button in the door's armrest. Another flare goes by. She hears what sounds like feet on the hood of the car, and then the only sound is the wind. She can feel rain coming in through the open sunroof and she shivers.
There is the sound of quick steps on the hood again, and then Loki’s voice is very close to her ear. “Drive forward!”
Amy does. She sees the rainbow of the gateway again, and her body and the car come into view bathed in early morning light. Dark bricks surround her on either side and she smells garbage and urine and thinks that an alley has never smelled so sweet. She looks up. Loki is half on the hood, half on the roof. His head is above her, looking in the direction they came, a sword in his hand. Glancing in the rear view mirror she sees Beatrice sleeping, the seat behind her Grandmother just coming into view.
Amy smiles and breathes out a long breath of relief. The car is almost through when it suddenly jerks up and backwards, the back wheels seeming to leave the ground. Lines of light surround it on either side. Loki swears. Amy looks back in the window and sees a huge hulking Thor-like shadow seeming to emerge out of nothing behind her. It looks like he’s pulling the car backwards by the bumper.
Loki scrambles across the roof towards the back of the car. Amy doesn’t think. Shouting “Loki, hold on!” she throws the car into four wheel drive, then reverse, and hits the gas. There is a loud thud. Amy can’t see the back of the car; it must still be in Alfheim. But she feels it when the back tires hit the ground and bounce. Heart suddenly very loud, Amy puts the car into first gear and pulls forward but meets resistance.
She looks back. Light flashes in a wide vertical circle behind the car. There is a loud clang, and Loki jumps down off the car and stands in the middle of the circle shouting something in a weird slavic-sounding language. His sword is gone, but in one hand he holds what looks like a tiny book. She thinks she sees Thor again, but then the circle collapses on itself and there’s just Loki swaying on his feet.
Turning, with wavering steps he comes around the car. Amy hears the scrape of metal on pavement, and then Loki climbs into the passenger side, sword in his hand.
Beatrice is rubbing her eyes. Fenrir is standing on top of her, looking out the backseat. There is no Thor, but the last six inches of the rear of the car is just gone.
Closing the door and hanging his head, Loki says softly, “Will Car be alright?”
Amy looks back at the missing rear end, and over at Loki. “You know...it’s just a machine.”
Loki turns his head to look at her. “How can you say that?”
Feeling like a heel, she turns to the steering wheel. Her hands are shaking so much she doesn’t really want to go anywhere for a few minutes.
“Dude!” comes a loud voice from outside the car.
Raising her eyes, she sees three guys with spiky hair in hipster clothing standing directly in front of them in the alley. Their mouths are open. The middle one’s got a bottle of something in his hands. It falls to the ground and lands with a crash.
Somewhere a police siren wails.
Swallowing, Amy revs the engine a bit. The hipsters move to the side. She pulls out into the alley and heads home. Thankfully, they don’t run into any police. She’s sure driving with a hole in the back of your car is some sort of moving violation.
Loki says nothing the entire way. He just slouches over in the seat, his breathing ragged and uneven as though he’s extremely tired or might weep.
It’s still mostly dark out when she backs into the garage, and she doesn’t see any neighbors about. Beatrice says, “Oh, my, are we home already?”
Before Amy’s even parked, Loki jumps out of his seat and walks out of the garage.
“I’ll be right back, Grandma!” Amy says, following him.
She catches him just a few feet outside of the garage. “Loki,” she says putting a hand on his left arm that doesn’t have any armor on it. He stops but doesn’t look at her.
Jaw tight he says, “I think you should know, I have tangled the branch of the world tree we came through. Neither Odin or Heimdall will be able to follow it and find you — ” He stops, closes his eyes, takes a deep breath and disappears. For an instant Amy feels him beneath her hand, warm and solid, but then that’s gone, too.
Fenrir barks in the garage. Amy just stands staring in the empty alley, feeling hollow and empty.
