Expecting Someone Taller

by Tom Holt

  He smiled at this thought. Family is family, after all, and he had just blotted most of his out. But now he was on his own, which, bearing in mind the case of his unhappy predecessor, was probably no bad thing. It would be foolish to go looking for a consort now that the world depended on him and him alone. A trouble shared, after all, is a trouble doubled.

  Nevertheless, he wondered where Flosshilde had got to. Everyone seemed to have drifted away, and for a moment he felt a slight panic. He sat down on the stairs and tried to think calmly. To his relief, he found this perfectly possible to do.

  Wotan, he reflected, had gone to one extreme, but Ingolf had gone to the other. One had been caught up in a noisy and infuriating household which had driven him quietly mad. The other had curled up in a hole and allowed his dark subconscious to permit the world to drift into the twentieth century, with all its unpleasant consequences. He sought a happy medium between these two extremes and in particular considered carefully all that Mother Earth had told him. Then he got up and whistled loudly. To his surprise, nothing happened. Then he realised his mistake and went through to the drawing-room. There were the two ravens, huddled upon the window-sill.

  ‘Everything’s fine,’ said Thought, as soon as Malcolm had let them in. ‘All the Gods have cleared off.’

  ‘Except Loge,’ said Memory. ‘He offered us all the dead sheep we could eat if we didn’t tell you he was still around, but we thought . . .’

  ‘I’ve got nothing against Loge,’ said Malcolm. ‘But how come he didn’t go down with all the others?’

  ‘He was a bit puzzled by that,’ said Memory. ‘Apparently, there he was, surrounded by Gods one minute, all on his own feeling a right prat the next. He thinks it’s down to him being a fire-spirit and not a real God.’

  ‘Tell him he can have his old job back if he wants it,’ said Malcolm.

  ‘I’ll tell him,’ said Thought, ‘but I think he’s got other plans. He was talking about going into the wet fish business. Muttered something about he might as well do it himself before somebody did it to him. Gloomy bloke, I always thought.’

  ‘Anyway,’ said Malcolm, ‘did either of you see Flosshilde?’

  ‘Flosshilde,’ said Memory thoughtfully. ‘Can’t say I did. In fact, I haven’t seen any of the girls since before the Big Bang.’

  Malcolm suddenly felt very ill. ‘But they weren’t High Gods, were they?’ he said. ‘I mean, they couldn’t have . . .’

  ‘Wouldn’t have thought so,’ said Memory, ‘but you never know with those three. Very deep they were, though you wouldn’t think it to look at them. But they were always mixed up with some pretty heavy things, like the Rhinegold and the Ring. Could be that they had to go along with the rest.’

  Malcolm sat down heavily, appalled at the thought. He couldn’t understand why he was so horrified, but the idea of never seeing Flosshilde again suddenly seemed very terrible. Not that he was in love with her; but he knew now that he needed her very urgently.

  ‘Find her,’ he snapped. ‘Go on, move. If you’re not back by dawn, I’ll turn you both into clay pigeons.’

  The ravens flapped hurriedly away into the night, and Malcolm closed his eyes and groaned. He had just bumped into something, and it felt horribly disconcerting.

  ‘Oh, God,’ he said aloud. ‘Now look what I’ve done.’

  Alberich and the Middle Norn looked in to say goodbye, and found Malcolm in a strange mood. He seemed upset about something but would not say what it was, and his manner seemed cold and hostile. The Norn felt sorry for him, but Alberich seemed in a hurry to get away.

  ‘I don’t like it,’ he said. ‘Something’s gone wrong.’

  ‘What could possibly go wrong now?’ said the Norn coyly.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Alberich, ‘but when it does, I want to be safely underground, where it won’t matter so much.’

  They walked in silence for a while, as the Norn nerved herself to ask the question that had been worrying her.

  ‘Alberich,’ she said.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Don’t take this the wrong way, but weren’t you supposed to have foresworn Love?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Alberich, ‘but I’m allowed to change my mind, aren’t I?’

  ‘But I didn’t think you could. Not once you’d sworn.’

  ‘That was conditional on my still wanting the Ring. And now that I couldn’t care less about it . . .’

  ‘Couldn’t you?’

  ‘No.’ He felt rather foolish, but for some reason that was all that seemed to be wrong with him. An unwonted harmony seemed to have overtaken his digestive system.

  ‘To celebrate,’ he said daringly, ‘let’s go and treat ourselves to the best lunch money can buy in this godforsaken country. I’ve heard about this place where you can get very palatable lobster.’

  The Norn stared at him. ‘Are you sure?’ she said.

  Alberich smiled at her fondly. ‘Don’t you start,’ he said.

  It was nearly dawn by the time the ravens came back. They perched on the window-sill exhausted, for they had been flying hard all night. Through the open window, they could see the new Lord of Tempests sitting where he had been when they had left him several hours before. He was staring at the ground, and he looked distinctly irritable.

  ‘He’s not going to like it,’ whispered Memory.

  ‘You tell him,’ replied Thought. ‘You’re the one with the words.’

  ‘Why’s it always got to be me?’ said Memory angrily. ‘You’re the eldest, you tell him.’

  ‘How do you make that out?’

  ‘Stands to reason, dunnit? You can’t have memory before thought, or you wouldn’t have anything to remember. Well, would you?’

  Memory clearly had right on his side, and so it was Thought who tapped gingerly on the pane and hopped into the room first. Malcolm looked up, and there was something in his eyes that both ravens recognised.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Nothing, boss,’ said Thought. ‘We did all the rivers oceans, seas, lakes, lochs, lagoons, burns and wadis in the world. Even did the reservoirs and the sewers. Nothing. Looks like they’ve just . . .’

  Malcolm let out a long, low moan, and Thought stepped back nervously, expecting every moment to be turned into a small flat disc made of pitch, earmarked for certain destruction. But Malcolm simply nodded, and the two birds flew thankfully away.

  ‘Now look what you’ve gone and done,’ said Thought bitterly as they collapsed onto a fallen tree beside the trout-stream. ‘You’ve gone and got us saddled with another bloody nutter. The last one was bad enough . . .’

  ‘How was I to know he’d go off his rocker?’ said Memory. ‘He looked all right to me.’

  ‘You never learn, do you?’ continued Thought. ‘We could be well away by now, but no, you’ve got to go and volunteer us. If we ever get out of this in one piece . . .’

  In view of the threat recently uttered by the new Lord of the Ravens, that seemed improbable. Dawn was breaking in the East, and Thought regarded it sourly.

  ‘Look at that,’ he said. ‘No imagination, this new bloke.’

  ‘Come on,’ said Memory. ‘We might as well have another go.’

  They lifted themselves wearily into a thermal and floated away.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  For about a week after the going-down of the old Gods, Malcolm was kept rather busy. Minor spirits and divine functionaries called at all hours of the day and night with papers for him to read and documents to sign, most of which were concerned with trivial matters. The remaining Gods had been stripped of the last few vestiges of authority by the destruction of Wotan and, try as they might, they could not persuade the Ring-Bearer to transfer any of his duties or powers to them. In the end the majority of them accepted the new order of things, and the few recalcitrant deities who continued to protest found themselves posted to remote and uninhabited regions where their ineffectual energies could be expended without causing any real disturbance.

/>   In an effort to appear positive, Malcolm created a new class of tutelary deities. The rivers and oceans had long had their own guardian spirits, originally installed when shipping was the main form of transport in the world. In the last few centuries, however, this role had diminished, whereas the roads and railways had gone without any form of heavenly representation. Malcolm therefore assigned most of the redundant spirits to the railway networks and motorways, a system which seemed to satisfy most requirements. He commissioned the Norns to set up a system of appointments: all gods wishing to be assigned a road or a railway had to take a written exam, and were posted according to the results they obtained. Since their duties were strictly honorary, it made little difference to the world at large, but it seemed to please the divine community. It gave them a purpose in life, and when one is dealing with immortals, that is no mean achievement.

  There were also vacancies in existing posts to be filled, for many river-spirits and cloud-shepherds had perished with their master in the attack on Combe Hall. Again, the Norns were given the task of drawing up a list of unfilled posts with a parallel list of suitable candidates. Malcolm, who was unfamiliar with divine prosopography, had to rely heavily on the judgement of his advisers, but for some reason virtually all the supernatural beings he met were patently terrified of him, and this terror, combined with his ability to read thoughts, made corruption or favouritism seem unlikely.

  He found the terror he inspired in his subordinates extremely hard to understand. Admittedly, his patience was sorely tried at times, for all the gods and spirits took themselves extremely seriously even though their power was non-existent; and he had to admit that he did sometimes lose his temper with them, causing the occasional shower of unplanned rain. But the world continued to thrive and prosper, with only the epidemic of love and romance spoiling an otherwise perfect situation. One thing did worry him, however: the Tarnhelm seemed to have developed a slight fault. Occasionally, after a particularly trying meeting or a long night of paperwork, he found to his disgust that he had changed his shape without wanting to, and for some reason the shape the Tarnhelm selected for him was invariably that of Wotan. This and a curious craving for schnapps gave Malcolm pause for thought, but he dismissed his fears as paranoia, and carried on with the work of reorganisation.

  But he was not happy. Although he could not remember what she had looked like, he knew that Ortlinde was very much on his mind, and he could not help feeling horribly guilty about having caused her to cease to exist. He closed up the library at Combe Hall, but the house itself seemed to be haunted by her, and eventually he decided that the time had come to leave it for good. He sent for Colonel Booth (whose real name, he discovered, was Guttorm), thanked him for the loan of his house, and started to look for a new place to live. Somehow, he felt no enthusiasm for the task, and although the Norns, whom he found invaluable, continually sent him details of highly attractive properties all over the world, he found it difficult to summon up the energy to go and view them. Then one day the Younger Norn remarked that there was always Valhalla itself . . .

  ‘But I thought it had been burnt down,’ Malcolm said.

  ‘Burnt, yes,’ said the Norn. ‘Down, no. The shell is still intact. I’ve had the architects out there, and they say it could easily be made habitable again. Of course, the best builders in the world were the Giants, and they’re all dead now, but they were always expensive and difficult to work with . . .’

  That, Malcolm felt, was something of an understatement. Nevertheless, the idea seemed curiously attractive, and he went out with the Younger Norn to look at the place.

  ‘You could have tennis-courts here, and maybe a swimming-pool, ’ said the Norn, pointing with her umbrella to what had once been the Crack of Doom. ‘Or if you don’t like the idea of that, how about a rock garden? Or an ornamental lake? With real gnomes,’ she said dreamily.

  ‘I think I’d rather just have a lawn,’ Malcolm replied. ‘And some rosebeds.’

  The Norn shrugged, and they moved on to inspect the Steps of Unknowing. ‘How about a maze?’ suggested the Norn. ‘Appropriate, really.’

  ‘No,’ said Malcolm. ‘I think a garage might be rather more use.’

  ‘Please yourself. Anyway, you like the place?’

  ‘Well, it’s quiet, and the neighbours aren’t too bad. I lived most of my life in Derby,’ Malcolm said. ‘It’s certainly different from there. But it’s rather a long way from the shops.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought that would have worried you, having the Tarnhelm and so on.’

  ‘True,’ said Malcolm, ‘but sometimes I like to walk or drive, just for a change.’

  ‘No problem,’ said the Norn, ‘we’ll build you a replica of your favourite city. Valhalla New Town, we could call it.’

  The thought of a heavenly version of Milton Keynes was almost enough to put Malcolm off the whole idea, but he asked the Norn to get some plans drawn up and hire an architect. The work would be done by the Nibelungs, who would do a perfectly good job without making unreasonable demands, as the Giants had done.

  On the way back, they passed the charred stump of a tree, which had once been the World Ash. To their amazement, they saw a couple of green shoots emerging from the dead and blackened wood.

  ‘That tree’s been dead ever since Wotan first came on the scene,’ said the Norn. ‘It represents the Life Force, apparently.’

  ‘Get someone to put one of those little wire cages round it,’ said Malcolm. ‘We don’t want the squirrels getting at it.’

  Malcolm returned from his trip to Valhalla feeling rather tired, not by the journey but by the company of the Younger Norn. He sat down in the drawing-room and took his shoes off; he wanted a quick glass of schnapps and ten minutes with the paper before going to bed. He was getting middle-aged, he realised; but such considerations did not really worry him. Youth, he had decided, was not such a big deal after all.

  He looked out over the trout-stream and suddenly found himself in tears. For a moment he could not understand why; but then he realised what had caused what was, generally speaking, an unusual display of emotion. The trout-stream had reminded him of Flosshilde, whom he missed even more than the shoe-inspecting Valkyrie. He had treated Flosshilde very badly . . . No, it wasn’t guilt that was making him cry. He had shut it out of his mind for so long that he imagined that it had gone away, but now he knew what his real problem was.

  He had heard a story about a man who had gone through life thinking that the word Lunch meant the sun, and it occurred to him that he had been in roughly the same situation himself. Until very recently, he had not known what the word Love really meant; he had thought it referred to the self-deceptive and futile emotion that had plagued him since he first had enough hair on his chin to justify buying a razor of his own. On the night of the confrontation with Wotan, he had suddenly realised his mistake; he had loved Flosshilde then, just at the very moment when she had ceased to exist. So horrible had that thought been that he had excluded it from his brain; but now it had come back and taken him by surprise, and he could see no way of ever getting rid of it. The sorrow he had felt for Ortlinde was little more than sympathy, but he needed the Rhinedaughter. The thought of going to live in Valhalla or being the ruler of the Universe without having her there was unbearable; the thought of being alive without having her there was bad enough.

  He shook his head and poured out some more schnapps. Many momentous and terrible things had happened and the Gods had all gone down, just to teach Malcolm Fisher the meaning of the word Love. Had he paid more attention to his English teacher at school, he reflected, the whole world might have been saved a great deal of trouble. He picked up the local paper, and saw a photograph of a tall girl and a man with large ears standing outside a church. Liz Ayres had married Philip Wilcox. He smiled, for this fact meant nothing to him at all. The sooner he got out of this house, the better.

  Someone had left the french windows open. He got up and closed them, for the nigh
t was cold; summer had passed, and it would be unethical of him to extend it for his own convenience. It had been a strange season, he reflected, and it was just as well that it was over now. The world could cool down again, and he could allow it to rain with a clear conscience.

  ‘Why am I doing all this?’ he said aloud.

  Now at last he understood. It was blindingly obvious but because he was so stupid he hadn’t seen it before. The world, now God-free and generally purified, was no longer his to hold on to. He must give the Ring to his sister Bridget. She, after all, was older than him, and much cleverer, and generally better equipped to handle difficult problems. He was only the intermediary. Everything fell into place, and he felt as if a great burden had fallen from his shoulders. If only he had done it before, Flosshilde would not have gone down and he might even have had a happy ending of his own; but he had been foolish and wilful, just as his mother would have expected. He had suffered his punishment, and now there was no time to lose. As he had said himself, Bridget was the member of the Fisher family who most resembled the glorious Siegfried. It explained why Ingolf had been so surprised when he had heard his name; he had been expecting Bridget Fisher on that fateful night.

  He looked at his watch, trying to calculate what time it would be in Sydney. Hadn’t Mother Earth herself said something about the Ring rightfully being Bridget’s property, because she was the eldest? It would, of course, be difficult to explain it all, for his word carried little credibility with his immediate family; if he said something, they naturally assumed the reverse to be true. But Bridget was wise and would immediately understand, even if his mother didn’t. With luck, they would let him keep the Tarnhelm, but if Bridget needed it of course she must have it. He swallowed the rest of his drink and called for an overcoat.