“Good,” Moon nodded. “Press the soles of your feet against the ground.”
Sally was all too happy to rest her weary feet on the cool, mulchy dirt. She thought of the patches of snow they’d passed on their madly winding path to this spot, and she tried to imagine submerging her toes into those remnants of winter. She closed her eyes. She wiggled her toes in the soil and smiled at the idea of snow crystals sliding between them. She was probably supposed to be concentrating on the exercise, listening to the song of the dirt or the language of the earthworms or something, but all she cared about right then was the soothing relief of the exposed ground against her hot blisters.
A few feet away, Opal giggled. “It tickles.”
Sally blinked her eyes open.
Moon’s face softened. “That’s right. Pay attention to that.”
Moon rose from her crouched position and walked away from the clearing. Even among the tall, skinny trees, she was out of sight after just a few paces, like she had simply disappeared.
Sally peered into the woods, looking for some movement or sound that would betray Moon’s position. Nothing. She turned to Opal. “How long are we supposed to sit here?” Sally whispered.
“Shh!” Opal hissed. “She’ll hear you.”
“But what are we supposed to be doing?” Sally asked, raising her voice a small fraction. “And where did she go?”
“Just close your eyes and feel the Earth, Sally,” Opal replied in a sharp whisper. “It’s not that complicated.”
Sally wasn’t worried about what was simple and what was complicated. She was more concerned with the personality change in their guide. Moon had seemed gentle and encouraging when they met by the sweat lodge, but the deeper she led them into the wilderness, the more abrupt and demanding she became.
Sally stretched her toes in the dirt and watched an ant climb up her instep to wander across the top of her foot. Now that tickled. Sally pressed her lips together to keep from laughing. She focused her attention on the tiny insect as it explored the foreign terrain of her foot. She wondered if the ant felt as lost on her bare skin as she did in these woods.
She took a breath and closed her eyes. She brought her awareness to the soles of her feet. She didn’t feel anything out of the ordinary. She cracked open one eye and peered at Opal, who wore an expression of quiet bliss. Sally wondered if Opal had truly connected with the spirit of the Earth already or if it was just her friend’s wishful thinking or stubborn determination.
Sally waited for the ant to wander back down to the ground, then she brushed away the dry pine needles and bits of bark from under her feet. She closed her eyes again, resettled her soles against the soil, and took in a long breath through her nose. She mentally ticked off the mingling scents of the surrounding conifers, tree sap, and subtle but unmistakable body odor. Her thoughts wandered to her shower at home, and she worried about how ripe she’d inevitably smell after four days in the woods without a bath. But then she exhaled in a long sigh, willing the escaping breath to take the tension out of her shoulders and back.
Okay, Moon Witch. Just relax and let the Earth speak to you . . . Sally rested against her pack and tried to open herself to whatever experience she was supposed to be having, but she felt pretty stupid sitting barefoot in the woods in some kind of shamanic meditation just because a mean lady told her to.
“This is ridiculous,” Sally grumbled aloud. She leaned forward and wrapped her arms around her knees. Her toes dug into the loose dirt.
“Don’t ruin it,” Opal whispered, impatient and irritated. “Just turn off your brain for once, if you think you can manage that.”
Sally turned to Opal with a biting remark of her own ready on her lips, but before she could make a sound a great tingling whoosh raced across the soles of her feet and wound around her legs. The prickling electricity spiraled tightly through her torso and poured down her arms and up into her scalp. For a few exhilarating and terrifying seconds, Sally struggled for breath until the energy relaxed its startling grip and settled over her like a warm cloak.
“Whoa!” Sally exclaimed when her lungs released. She lifted her arms and looked at her fingers, fully expecting to find them glowing. Despite the gentle cocoon of energy she felt enveloping her body, she was disappointed to find that she looked completely normal from the outside. Still, Sally smiled. “This is incredible!”
“Quiet, Sally!” Opal shushed her again. “Seriously. I’m trying to concentrate over here.” The hint of a frown marred the quiet, hopeful smile on Opal’s face. She was working hard to make her own connection, and Sally felt an instant of guilt for having closed her circuit with so little effort.
Sally hugged her arms close to her body and sat in silence. Trying to talk to Opal about what she was feeling was pointless until Opal experienced it, too. Otherwise, Opal would probably think Sally was showing off or even making it up, just to make Opal feel small.
Sally rested her hands in the dirt and sighed. Frigga shouldn’t have set them at odds with each other. Now Sally couldn’t think of anything to fix it.
She closed her eyes and breathed into the warmth that tickled every inch of her skin. It was like a million friendly ants dancing across her body at once. In the next breath, Sally felt the rhythm of wordless song, countless voices in thrilling harmony.
This must be what it’s like for Freya.
Sally’s eyes popped open in revelation, and a new surge of energy rose from the Earth through her palms. Her mind flashed to the small jars of dirt stashed in her pack. This long wilderness weekend was the perfect setting for Freyr’s memorial. For once, she had chosen wisely.
In a euphoric daze, Sally gazed up at the tall trees standing over her. She glanced again at the clump of moss Moon had been so concerned about. Something shifted in her connection to the ground, and she felt a little woozy. Moon was right about Sally needing to concentrate. She had to learn how to form deliberate, conscientious connections, especially on her home turf.
She studied the little patch of moss and tried to hear what it wanted to tell her. But she was soon distracted by something deeper in the woods. There, in the shadows, Sally saw Moon’s face as the guide watched her. Her hazel eyes shone a darker black, and she smiled. Sally felt the Earth’s energies shift again, and she shivered.
Thor rubbed at the lump forming on top of his head, where Hugh had just cracked a branch over his skull for the third time. He sat cross-legged on the forest’s dirt floor and tried to catch his breath.
“What will it take for you to pay attention?” Hugh roared in the thunder god’s ear. “You’re getting denser as we go along, which I didn’t think was possible. Definitely not getting any smarter.”
Thor bit back a crude remark about Hugh’s mother and a drove of brain-damaged pigs. Under normal circumstances, he would have pounded the little man into the ground for daring to strike him, but these were far from normal circumstance. So, instead, he ducked his head and climbed to his feet.
“What was the question again?” Thor asked, expending significant effort to keep his tone mild and polite.
“Where are you?” Hugh repeated with a sharp sigh. “Right here and now, where are you?”
“Right here and now?” Thor asked, trying to get a handle on the question. He guessed Hugh was looking for some kind of zen answer. Thor wished he could reach out to Freya, who would doubtless have a pithy koan at the ready that Thor could spit back at Hugh. But Thor was on his own.
He was about to respond, again, that he had no idea what Hugh was talking about, but his guide broke into a wide smile.
“That’s right,” Hugh guide said with a toothy grin. “Right here and now is where you are. So you’re not too bulky to learn after all.”
Thor squinted up at the skinny guide. That was the answer? His head hurt from so many cracks across the skull—and from swallowing his temper over and over again—and he was desperately thirsty. Practically swooning, he looked around for a place to sit down—comfortably�
�but everything was trees and moss and pine needles and Hugh’s wide grin staring back at him.
“I don’t feel so good.” Thor rested a hand on his belly, and his insides churned painfully with hunger and something that felt disconcertingly like illness.
Hugh watched Thor waver on his feet. Carefully, Thor lowered himself to the ground and sat in the dirt.
“I need something to drink. Water.” Thor doubted Hugh would conjure a bottle of enchanted, god-quenching elixir from thin air, but he hoped the guide would at least point him in the direction of a nearby spring.
“Good,” Hugh replied with a serious nod. “So. This is where we will begin.”
“Begin?” Thor’s thoughts were getting cloudier. He forgot for a moment why he was sitting in the dirt. He tried to get up but promptly landed back on his generous rump. Then he worried about retching all over his guide’s leather boots. “No, I think . . . I need some water before we do anything more.”
“Anything more?” Hugh crossed his arms over his chest. “We’ve not done anything yet, you big oaf.” Hugh pushed at Thor’s knee with the toe of his boot. “You want water? Earn it, when you can answer one question.”
Thor rested his head in his hands and tried to block out everything: the forest, the smell of the soil, the sound of Hugh’s raspy voice, the inescapable pain in his gut. They were just getting started? Thor had already had more than enough. He didn’t want to hear what the question was. His brain pounded inside his head and his tongue was dry leather against his teeth. “I can’t even think straight.”
Hugh erupted in a triumphant howl. “Then you should have no trouble with this first question!”
First question? What happened to “one question and I’ll give you water”? Thor groaned. How long until the part where Hugh left him alone for a couple of days to sit with his thoughts and contemplate the meaning of the universe? Couldn’t they skip ahead to that? He didn’t know he was going to be quizzed. Or beaten with sticks.
“The first question is this: When is a god not a god?”
Thor looked up at Hugh and tried to make out the features of his face. Hugh stood with the sun at his back, and the light filtering through the tall evergreens cast Hugh in perfect silhouette against the forest. Thor thought he looked especially wicked, this bony little imp who was disturbingly good at using a stick as a whip.
Hugh rested his hands on his hips and waited. Thor thought long and hard about simply snapping the guide in two over his knee. But then he imagined the stern disappointment of Bonnie’s grandmother, and his angry resolve melted.
“A god is not a god,” Thor grumbled and rubbed the back of his neck, “when he is thirsty.”
Hugh sighed his loud disappointment. Thor hunched his shoulders in preparation for another stinging blow to the head, but Hugh kicked at the dirt instead.
“You’ve given in to your own weakness,” Hugh said. “You identify yourself with the needs of this physical body you’ve been hulking around for too many centuries.”
Thor made the same argument himself from time to time, but it was always directed at someone else—usually the Western, 21st-century humans who seemed almost pathological in their zeal to pamper and indulge themselves at every turn. But despite Iduna’s Apples and a steady stream of mythological adventures, Thor had to admit he was closer than ever to becoming just like them.
Still, it wouldn’t do him much good to be driven mad by thirst. Thor looked up at Hugh. He thought of Bonnie and kept his tone light. “So, is there a water source close by? I think I might be able to walk a little farther.”
Hugh crossed his arms over his chest again and took a step closer. His long, narrow shadow fell over Thor. “When is a god not a god?” he breathed into his face.
Thor’s shoulders sank. He squinted up at the sparse clouds in the brilliant blue sky. He glanced at the trees towering over him and even studied the thin carpet of pine needles on the dark soil around him. He looked everywhere for any clue as to what the skinny Indian wanted from him.
Thor realized just how much power Hugh had over him. Forget Bonnie’s grandmother and her blessing. If Thor did manage to drive off Hugh, it could be days or weeks before he found his way back out of the wilderness, assuming hunger and thirst didn’t get the better of him. He might never see his family again. Never see Bonnie again. She would never have her wedding day.
Thor suddenly worried that he really was going to die out here, that some magick in the forest was already robbing him of the long life he’d been granted by Iduna’s last harvest.
“A god is not a god when he’s dead,” Thor sighed.
Hugh threw his head back and cackled. Ravens high in the trees cawed down in reply. “Dead gods? That’s what you’re thinking of?” Hugh leaned forward and braced himself against his knees as he kept laughing.
Thor squirmed in the dirt and tried to dislodge a rock that was digging painfully into the back of his left thigh. Hugh finally recovered himself and turned to Thor with a smile.
“You’re quite the comedian. But you’re headed in roughly the right direction.” Hugh paused. “Roughly.”
Hugh picked up a fallen branch about an inch in diameter and nearly two feet in length. He weighed it in his hands. Thor stiffened and waited for a fresh crack across the skull. Hugh pointed the stick at Thor. “Why don’t we have a story.”
Thor blinked up at Hugh, waiting for the guide to elaborate, but the silence hung in the air. Thor shifted uncomfortably as he tried to come up with a short and painless tale he could stumble through. The standoff with Jormungand off the coast of Greenland? Or maybe the time Freyr spiked the Norns’ vision-inducing tea with a fast-acting laxative? He closed his eyes and grimaced. His fallen brother Bragi was the storyteller, not Thor.
“Raven cried the world into existence, many generations ago.” Hugh smacked the stick against his open palm.
Thor looked up with relief, and then relaxed a bit on the ground. He made the decision to pay attention to Hugh’s story, in case there was a test later.
“It was a bold, happy song,” Hugh continued, his eyes closed as he lifted his face to the tree branches above. “Punctuated by solemn notes that were almost mournful as they shaped the oceans and continents into being. A lilting chorus created the heavens, and brought clouds and weather to churn and nourish the life that would thrive below. The moon and sun came on the bridge of Raven’s song, to alternate light and darkness in this new world, just as the song was filled with both brightness and shady calm. Raven’s melody brought forth trees from the rich soil, and stirred the first creatures in the warm waters.”
Hugh paused and smiled, his face still turned toward the sky. For a moment, Thor thought the guide might break into song himself, but then Hugh opened his eyes and began to pace slowly in a circle.
“After many rounds of calling out this song, adding new verses and allowing the melody to evolve along with the burgeoning creation, Raven grew quiet and waited. Only when the last strain of its echoing call had faded did Raven take flight.” Hugh tapped the stick against his thigh in time with his steps. “Leaving the lonely perch atop the new world’s highest mountain, Raven spread its wings and soared over its domain. Raven circled round and round the land and sea, each teeming with life brought into being through song.”
Thor watched the guide circle around and around. Ignoring his own dizziness and nausea, he puzzled over Hugh’s words as they poured out. Thor had heard a few creation stories in his years, but this was a new one. The only ravens he’d been acquainted with were Huginn and Muninn, but those had been his father’s birds. He felt his breath slow as he listened to Hugh’s story. His eyelids started to droop. He thought about lying down and taking a nap.
Hugh’s voice brightened. “Raven laughed in delight, and the first flowers pushed up from the earth and turned their petaled faces to the sunlit sky. Raven flew over the newborn majesty for a full turning of the seasons. When the spring dawned after the first brutal, beautiful winter,
Raven alighted on the highest branch of the tallest evergreen tree and closed its eyes against the gentle rain misting down on the thick forest and neighboring mountains. Raven listened to the distant crash of the cold sea against rocky beaches. After taking a few moments to preen and to settle its feathers, Raven enjoyed a satisfied sigh.”
Hugh paused again, and Thor blinked himself awake at the abrupt halt of the story’s cadence. Hugh stood still and looked up into the tangle of tree branches. Thor was surprised to find himself almost fully reclined on the ground, but Hugh didn’t seem to notice. Or he didn’t care.
Hugh titled his head to one side and gradually resumed his circular pacing. “This is my world, Raven cried in a voice that carried throughout its creation. I give this world to itself, to grow and thrive—always under my watchful eye.”
He turned and winked at Thor, who forced himself to sit up straight so that he wouldn’t doze off.
“Raven cawed again in pride and pleasure, and heard the hails of its Earth-bound brothers calling back. Raven scratched at the tree bark and got comfortable on this high post. Raven began its watch.” Hugh slapped the stick against his thigh with more force, and Thor started to worry again about his own skull.
Hugh shrugged. “Of course, this is only one of many stories about how the world came into being,” he offered as an aside, “but it’s the one Raven liked best.” He stopped in place and seemed to consider the dirt at his feet, then gave himself another sharp slap to the leg. “Too many generations to count passed beneath Raven’s tree-top vigil. Once, Raven made a tour of the mountains. Another time, Raven stretched its wings over the wide rivers. Nations rose and fell, and Raven waited. Cities and highways carved through the once pristine landscape. Trees disappeared as the human population surged.”
Hugh’s voice had grown hard, and Thor lifted his chin in a show of strength when the guide turned to him with a dark scowl.
“Raven watched.” Hugh’s frown darkened, and Thor thought he caught a flash of a sinister smile. But then Hugh plastered a wide, easy grin on his face and hopped in time with the rhythm he beat against his leg. “The time had come for Raven to sing its song again.” Hugh laughed aloud and finished his impromptu, staccato jig. He turned to Thor and gave him a deep bow.
Raven Quest (Valhalla Book 4) Page 5
