by Tom Holt
He looked quickly in the mirror to make sure that his hair was neat and tidy (his mother was most particular about such things) and saw to his astonishment that he didn’t look like Malcolm Fisher at all. Then he remembered that he was still wearing the Tarnhelm. He would need that to get to Australia, but he might as well stop pretending to be somebody he wasn’t.
‘Right,’ he commanded, ‘back to normal.’
The image in the mirror didn’t change. It was still the Siegfried face he had been wearing for so long.
‘Back to Malcolm Fisher,’ he said irritably. ‘Come on, jump to it.’
No change. Angrily, he felt for the little buckle under his chin, which he hadn’t even noticed for so long now. It came away easily, and he pulled the chainmail cap off and tossed it onto the sofa.
No change. The face that stared stupidly at him out of the mirror was the face of Fafner’s Bane, Siegfried the Volsung. He groaned, and knelt down on the floor. Once again, his mother had been proved right. He had stuck like it. From now until the day he died, he was going to have to go around with the evidence of his deceit literally written all over his face.
Worse, he could not even remember what he really looked like. If he knew that, he might be able to get some sort of clever mask made. But the picture had completely vanished from his mind. He picked up the Tarnhelm and gazed at it hopelessly, feeling as he had done when, as a child, he had broken a window or scratched the paint. He had done something awful which he could not put right, and it was all his fault.
The next morning was bright and cold, and Malcolm woke early with a headache, which he prosaically blamed on the schnapps. To clear his head, he strolled down by the trout-stream and stood for a while kicking stones into the water.
‘Do you mind?’ said a girl’s voice.
He knew that voice. He tried hard not to recognise it, because the girl it had belonged to had gone up in a cloud of theology, along with the rest of the High Gods. He had sent his two ravens out looking for the owner of that voice, and they had searched the earth for many days without finding her. She no longer existed, except in the memories of a few unusual people. So what was she doing in his trout-stream?
‘Is that you?’ he said stupidly.
‘Of course it’s me,’ said the voice irritably. ‘Who do you think it was, the Bismarck?’
He scrambled down the bank, slipped, and fell in the water. As he did so, it occurred to him that he couldn’t swim, and he had forgotten that the trout-stream was only two feet deep. In his panic, he also forgot about the Tarnhelm, and had already resigned himself to the prospect of death by drowning when Flosshilde fished him out.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Did I startle you?’
That was one hell of a leading question, and rather than try and phrase an answer that might not be held against him in future, he replied by throwing his arms around her and kissing her, clumsily but effectively. It had not entered his mind that she might object to this; luckily, she seemed to like it.
‘Where the hell have you been?’ he said at last.
Flosshilde grinned. ‘Did you miss me?’ she asked superfluously.
‘I thought you’d been zapped,’ he said.
‘Oh. So you have missed me.’
‘Of course I’ve bloody missed you. Where have you been?’
‘On holiday.’
‘On holiday.’
‘Yes,’ said Flosshilde, and she could not understand why Malcolm found this so strange. ‘We’d planned to go to the Nile Delta again this year, but then that Ortlinde business blew up and by the time it was all over everywhere was full. So we went and stayed with our cousins on the seabed. It was rather boring actually. They’re terribly stuffy people, and they’ve got a pipeline running right through the middle of their sitting-room.’
‘So that’s why Thought and Memory couldn’t find you.’
‘Were they looking?’
‘They’ve been doing little else since you vanished. You might have let me know.’
Flosshilde grinned again. ‘I didn’t know you cared. Honestly, I didn’t. I only came back to look for a comb I’d left behind.’
That was not strictly true, except for the bit about the comb, but she hoped he wouldn’t notice. It had been no fun at all on the seabed and she hadn’t been able to get him out of her mind. His reaction to her last remark was therefore likely to be rather important.
‘Well, I do care. I care a whole lot.’
‘Yes,’ said Flosshilde, remembering the scramble down the bank and the kiss, ‘I think you probably do. Snap. By the way, you’re all wet.’
‘Am I?’
‘Yes. Perhaps it would be a good idea if we got out of the water.’
Malcolm could see no reason for this, for he was happier standing in two feet of water with the girl he loved and needed than he had ever been on dry land. But if she thought it would be a good idea, he was willing to give it a try. They climbed out and sat down under a tree. It so happened that it was the same tree that Ortlinde had been standing under when he had first kissed her, but he could-n’t be expected to remember everything.
‘Let’s not talk about it,’ Flosshilde said. ‘You know what that leads to. Let’s just have a nice time for the rest of our lives.’
Put like that, it seemed perfectly simple. Malcolm leaned back against the oak tree and thought about it for a moment. Whatever he felt like doing was probably right. He had that on the very best authority.
‘Fair enough,’ he said. ‘But first I must give the Ring to my sister Bridget.’
‘Don’t be silly.’
‘But I’ve got to. You see . . .’
‘Don’t be silly.’
‘All right, then,’ Malcolm said. ‘I’ll give it to you.’
He took off the Ring, looked at it for a moment, tossed it up in the air, caught it again, and slipped it onto the fourth finger of her left hand. Then he waited for a second. Nothing happened. Flosshilde stared at him with her mouth wide open.
‘It suits you,’ he said.
‘What did you do that for?’
‘First,’ said Malcolm, ‘because it was originally yours. Second, because you’re much older and cleverer than I am. Third, because I love you. Fourth, because it’s worth it just to see the look on your face.’
Flosshilde could think of nothing to say, and Malcolm savoured the moment. It was probably the last moment of silence he could expect from her for many, many years.
‘Are you sure?’ said Flosshilde.
Malcolm started to laugh, for it had been Ortlinde’s favourite phrase, and soon Flosshilde was giggling too. ‘No, but honestly,’ she said, ‘it’s the Ring. Be serious for a moment.’
‘Serious?’ Malcolm grabbed her arm and pulled her close. ‘Don’t you see? That’s the last thing in the world I can afford to be. Ever since you went away, something terrible has been happening to me. I couldn’t think what it was, even though everyone was trying to tell me. Even the Tarnhelm. I was turning into Wotan. I was starting to become just like him.’
‘Never,’ said Flosshilde. ‘You couldn’t be. For a start, he was taller than you.’
‘I could, and I nearly did. When I realised it, my first reaction was to give the Ring to my sister Bridget, because everyone always said she was so much more responsible than me. But you were right, that would have been the worst possible thing I could have done. Then you came back, and I suddenly understood. The only person in the world that that thing is safe with is you.’
‘Me? But that’s impossible. I’m not a nice person at all.’
‘Not you as well.’
‘No, I mean it. I’m probably not cruel or malicious, but I’m thoughtless and frivolous. I wouldn’t take the job seriously, and the world would get into an awful mess. I’d forget to make it rain at the right time, because I’d always want it to be fine for sunbathing, and if I was bored with it being January, I’d make it July again, and then everything would get out of gear. I’d be hopel
ess at it, really.’
‘That’s what I thought when I started. And it hasn’t turned out too badly, has it?’
Flosshilde frowned and bit her lip, a manoeuvre she had often practised in front of the mirror. ‘Oh, go on, then,’ she said, ‘just to please you I will.’
‘That,’ said Malcolm triumphantly, ‘is the best possible reason. You’ve passed. Congratulations.’
‘I still think,’ said Flosshilde, holding up the Ring to the light to admire it, ‘that you’re being a bit hasty . . .’ She tailed off. ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘It does suit me. It’ll go very nicely with that gold evening dress I got in Strasbourg.’
She took one more look at the Ring and promptly dismissed it from her mind, for she had more important things to think about. ‘Why the sudden change of heart?’ she asked. ‘I mean, when I left for the seabed, you were still madly in love with that stuffy old Valkyrie with the interesting shoes. You aren’t going to change your mind about me, are you?’
‘I hope not,’ said Malcolm. ‘We’ll have to see, won’t we?’
‘Did I ever tell you the story . . .?’
‘Later.’
‘It’s a very funny story.’
‘Did I ever tell you the story of the idiot who ran over a badger?’
‘I know that one.’
‘But I tell it very well, and it’s the only really funny story I know.’
‘Go on, then.’
He told her the story and she laughed, although she knew that she could have told it rather better herself. In fact, she could have done his voice rather better than he could. But it didn’t matter. This was happiness, she realised, even more than sunbathing or the parties they used to have at Camelot. She was slightly disappointed with herself for being made happy so easily, for she had always thought of herself as a rather glamorous, sophisticated person. Nevertheless, it would do very nicely to be going on with.
Malcolm listened to her laughter, and for the first time in his life he knew that everything was going to be all right. Niceness, he realised, was not enough, and Love was only part of the rest. You had to have laughter, too. Laughter would make everything come out right in the end, or if it didn’t nobody would notice. He started to tell her about his plans for the new Valhalla. She liked the idea, and started making suggestions about how the place should be redecorated. These mostly seemed to consist of swimming-pools, flumes and ornamental lakes, and he realised that sooner or later he was going to have to learn how to swim. The thought made him shudder, but he put it on one side.
‘By the way,’ he said. ‘I suppose you’re immortal.’
‘I think so. Why?’
‘Isn’t that going to make it rather difficult for me? You see, I’m not.’
Flosshilde shook her head. ‘I solved that one some time ago,’ she said.
‘Did you now? That was thoughtful of you.’
Flosshilde blushed, spontaneously for once, and realised that she hadn’t quite timed it right, which was unusual for her, since she was unquestionably one of the three best blushers in the world. But Malcolm didn’t seem to have noticed, and it was nice to be with somebody who didn’t criticise when you got things wrong.
‘I looked it up in all the books,’ she went on, ‘and there’s no problem. Every time you feel yourself getting old, you just turn yourself into someone younger.’
Malcolm shook his head. ‘I don’t think the Tarnhelm works any more,’ he said sadly, and he told her about his attempts to go back to being Malcolm Fisher. She laughed, and told him not to be so silly.
‘Haven’t you learnt anything?’ she said. ‘You tried to turn yourself into Malcolm Fisher. You are Malcolm Fisher. Of course it didn’t work.’
Malcolm didn’t quite follow that, but he was reassured. There didn’t seem to be anything else to worry about now, so he suggested that they went in and had some breakfast instead.
‘Just a moment,’ said Flosshilde.
She looked hard at the Ring, held her breath and pointed at the sky. A small pink cloud appeared out of nowhere, rushing across the sky until it was directly overhead. There was a blinding flash of pink lightning, and the cloud had vanished. The air was filled with pink rose petals, and a flight of flamingos climbed gracefully into the air.
‘No,’ said Flosshilde, ‘maybe not. It seemed like a good idea at the time.’
‘It’s the thought that counts,’ Malcolm said. ‘Come on, I’m hungry.’
They walked into the house, and the two ravens who had been eavesdropping from the branches of the oak tree looked at each other.
‘I think that’s nice,’ said Memory.
‘Idiot,’ said Thought. ‘Is that a dead rabbit I can see over there?’
‘Where?’
‘Just by that patch of nettles.’
‘Now you’re talking,’ said Memory.
They glided down and started to peck. It was a good, meaty rabbit, and they were both hungry. When he had finished, Memory wiped his beak neatly on his leg and stood thoughtfully for a while.
‘Did you ever see that film?’ he said.
‘What film?’
‘Can’t remember. Anyway, it reminds me a bit of that. Happy ending and all.’
Thought shook his head. ‘Don’t like happy endings,’ he said. ‘They’re a cop-out. Life’s not like that.’
‘I dunno,’ said Memory. ‘Sometimes it is.’
‘You’re soft, you are,’ said Thought scornfully. ‘Come on, time we were on our way.’
They sailed up into the sky, and began their day’s patrol. Wherever life was stirring and brains were working they flew, their bright round eyes missing nothing, their ears constantly alert. But today was going to be another quiet day in the best of all possible worlds. After a while they grew bored, and turned back. As they flew over the little village of Ralegh’s Cross, they saw three workmen with pickaxes trying to break up a strange outcrop of rock which had appeared in the middle of the road some months earlier. But their tools would not bite on the hard stone, and they had given it up for a while.
‘What I want to know is,’ said one of the men, ‘how did it get there in the first place?’
Memory dived down and perched on the rock which had once been the Giant Ingolf. ‘It’s a long story,’ he said.
But the man wasn’t listening.
