The Valkyrie

by Charlotte Vassell

  Bea strode into the kitchen as if she had been waiting for that moment for eternity, leaving Glory to reread the spidery written invitation with a stiff upper lip that barely contained her contempt. The room was surprisingly clean, but as gods don’t eat anything bar ambrosia in its varying forms, this should not surprise too much. The cupboard doors were labelled curious things including but not exclusively: skunk; ethanol; hand grenades; weapons-grade plutonium, uranium and other nukes; condoms; and Coca-Cola (blood stains). Honour was sitting at the table with three laptops and a shit load of stationary covered in fluffy unicorns from Paperchase. All around her were reams of charts and graphs, and beneath the table were a few choice prototypes of military hardware that no one outside of The Pentagon could even dream was possible let alone be a reality. Honour was tapping her feet and wobbling her head along to Beyoncé, wondering why no-one had deified her yet.

  “I can’t read my own blasted writing. NK Boom? What was Liberty on about? Ah yes. Now how am I to mobilise bloody North Korea with such a rubbish economy. The whole nation is geared towards it thanks to Valour but has bugger all resources. Kim Jong-whatshisface may have wangled some plutonium but he hasn’t tuppence to rub together to do anything with it. I’m not a fucking miracle worker.” Honour said aloud. She had yet to notice the arrival of Glory and Bea.

  Glory entered the kitchen, headed straight to a cupboard labelled ‘opiates’ and began rifling through it until she appeared satisfied. She leaned against a kitchen counter and took in the scene.

  “Still working? It’s 3pm on a Saturday why aren’t you prowling STI clinics in Soho?” Glory asked Honour, she felt like causing some mischief. Bea watched this little vignette with interest.

  Out of the corner of her eye Honour finally saw Bea and was taken aback that she hadn’t noticed her before. “I only did that once.” Honour pouted.

  “Best orgasm you ever had yeah?” Glory asked. This was an anecdote Honour always told.

  “Oh lordy where to begin?” Honour said looking at Bea, trying to gauge whether she was one of them, one of the good time girls “My logic is that only girls who really, really know what they’re doing hang out there. Her tits were marvellous.”

  “Well I suppose meeting at the clap club is cooler than online.” Bea said wondering at the misogyny.

  “Exactly, it makes me interesting to talk to at parties. Who are you by the way?” Honour asked.

  “I’m Bea: new recruit.”

  “We’re hiring? Oh Val’s not rocking up earlier. Was she KO’d by that elf?” Honour asked Glory.

  “Yup, the floor fell as if from beneath her.” Glory said to Honour as the pair of them took that thought in and wondered who would be the next unfortunate soul to get married. “As your commanding officer I think I should be obliged to enquire as to your workload?”

  “I’m just analysing APac economies for potential funds for escalating conflicts. Not looking too good at the moment: ageing populations and housing bubbles. Liberty did her hokey cokey vision thingy and said a wonderful big war is now or never.” Honour said before switching the conversation back to Valour “So what happened with Val, I noticed she came and got her stuff? Lib couldn’t get her sight straight this morning, said it was a little cloudy.”

  “The usual ‘I love him, we’re buying a cottage in the country, I’m going to breed’ bollocks. She only met him a week ago. £50 says that either Eros or Freya got an arse kicking for being behind schedule on the number of romances they’ve caused for the month and went for a trophy shot.” Glory went over to the fridge and poured herself a big glass of ambrosia.

  “Ha. So Bea, why’d Glory hire you? Call Thor a bad word?” Honour enquired.

  “Actually yes.” said Bea.

  “You need a certain sort of sassy/bitter attitude to work here. You’re a water nymph right? Sea or river? Well either way you’re in good company we’re all nymphos in this house.” Honour had made a conscious decision three decades ago that she was going to reclaim the word nymphomaniac for the nymphs. She wore it as a badge of pride as one rightly should. Plus it was factually true Glory, Liberty and her were all nymphs, and nymphomaniacs.

  “My mum’s a sea nymph.” Glory twiddled a strand of her hair, “It has had little effect on me bar an irrational fondness for boats. I bloody love an armada. Liberty’s mum is a river nymph.”

  “My dad’s the Zambezi. Glory, I can’t stop thinking about naked girls now and it’s your fault entirely. Bea let me show you your new room and then I can give you a tour of Valhalla. Have you sent home for your things?” Honour asked to which Bea merely nodded. Honour wasn’t fond of the shy; she hoped that Bea would liven up later. “We should even be able to go and train the new recruits for a little bit.” Honour led Bea out of the kitchen and up the stairs to Bea’s new room/Valour’s old room. She had gone in there once she’d done her shift that morning to see if Valour was asleep after she hadn’t shown up. After Liberty had had a bad morning trying to predict the future, Honour had assumed that Valour had just gone home with that elf like Glory said she had, although she hadn’t expected her to shack up with him. The room had been removed of all of Valour’s possessions. Her vanity table was stripped bare, neither a lick nor a slick of mascara was to be found. Her books had migrated from the book shelf and her dresses had breezed away. The naked room had made Honour feel morose. She imagined that that must be how mortals felt when a relative died and they looked at their empty chair, you know because they had always sat there and it was their chair, although sometimes she wondered whether mortals had feelings at all.

  ***

  Bea sat down on her new bed and took the room in. She thought it would do quite nicely, quite nicely indeed. She’d made her judgement of Glory and Honour and was pleased that everything was as she thought it would be.

  Going Blind

  Glory waved Honour and Bea off to Valhalla from the doorway, went back into the kitchen and made a cup of tea. Not that she could drink tea – gods were limited to ambrosia, wine and hard liquor – but she understood that the act of making tea would make her feel intrinsically better. She kept a secret stash of UHT milk and Tetley’s tea bags at the back of the barbiturates cupboard for such purposes. Glory sat there and sniffed the creamy colonial liquid whilst she listened to the Shipping Forecasts on BBC iPlayer.

  “There are warnings of gales in Viking, Forties, Cromarty, Dogger, Fisher and Trafalgar, Sole, Lundy and Shannon.” The nice man from the wireless said. Glory loved ships; she’d even made it the basis of her mother’s erstwhile empire. Ships brought hope. Ships brought goods, people and ideas, they also brought war. Was there anything as splendid as the sound of cannon fire? As much as she tried her damned hardest to suppress her nature, Glory thrived in situations of destruction. She was irresistibly drawn to those who destroy. That was why she liked being a Valkyrie: she was close enough to all the action without always committing it herself. She was testing her limits by putting herself in there and savouring it. In the shallow depths of her was a killer and her restraint was drowning.

  Glory heard Liberty unlock the door and so she poured her clandestine cuppa down the sink and swilled the mug out. Liberty walked into the room all of a fluster. She put her bags down on the counter having evidently ram-raided Bond Street in a flurry of angst. Not that Liberty had any money. Money was far too human for her to contemplate. Liberty only had to look at the poor shop assistants and they bagged things up without even thinking about it.

  “So what did you get?” Glory asked.

  “High heeled shoes.” Liberty said. She had just sat down in the chair next to Glory and had rested her lovely head on Glory’s shoulder “I am still investigating why mortal women wear them. It’s a conundrum I can’t solve.”

  “I think it’s because they push your arse and tits out. I think men must also encourage them so that women cannot run away.”

  “That is a logical proposition.” Liberty sighed “I’ve had a really shit morning.”r />
  “Yes I can tell sweetie. So you couldn’t get a clear view of Val? She sounded fine on the phone when I spoke to her so there really isn’t a need to worry.”

  “No it was odd. I went sideways almost and saw that you would be where you were making that speech, but I couldn’t zoom and see Val make the call. It’s most odd, it’s never happened before. I’m going to speak to my dad about it later. Obviously I can’t see everything all of the time, I have my blind spots but Val was never one of them. She’s still not picking up my calls. This doesn’t sit well with me.”

  “Perhaps you’re tired.” Glory knew full well that gods don’t really get that tired, but she thought that in such situations it was the established social protocol to say something of that sort.

  “Yes, perhaps I am. And the new recruit, what do you think of her so far?” Liberty asked.

  “I think she’s rather shiny. I adore her which is a little disconcerting. I can’t stand most people, I can barely tolerate you.”

  “Are you joking?”

  “No.”

  “Are we going to the pub post-Valhalla?” Liberty changed the subject.

  “Of course double whammy tonight; karaoke after the pub quiz. We can turn up at Valhalla at 6pm pre-drink, chat a bit to everyone so Freya remembers we were there and fuck off to the Queen’s Head before 7.30pm.” Glory had risen out of the gloom that Liberty had found her in.

  “Cool, I’m going to go and have a wander. You wouldn’t believe my morning. The fuckers were asking to go to heaven again.”

  “God in the singular.”

  “I can see the allure of it. An omnifather who knows everything, does everything and adores everything about you no matter how bloody awful you are. What does the average mortal actually get out of death: eternity as a shade under Hades or Osiris or whoever else’s list they end up on. Instead of really living they temper their appetites in futile hope. The ‘weakness’ of one man is most likely his very reason to be: such condescension. If I were mortal I’d swallow, I’d gorge and I’d vomit it all back up. No glass undrunk from, no girl unkissed, no song unsung.” Liberty said with sheer conviction.

  “If you were human, you’d be bloated.” Glory was contemplating the idea of an ‘omnifather’ and was slightly terrified by the idea, particularly if this ‘omnifather’ was anything like her actual father.

  “There’s a certain meaning to human lives because they are so short and so very pointless. Well no, they have no intrinsic meaning in their own right but their ephemerality reminds me of how bloody long eternity is going to be.” Liberty said.

  “The mortals are background noise. Well flowers really and we’re bored housewives rearranging their cut stems to make our tables look prettier. Sweet williams and daisies and roses and lilies all in bloom, until they are no longer sweet smelling. They start to rot, their petals fall and the water at the bottom of the vase begins to sludge. You get that happy-sad feeling watching them turn decayed over a warm afternoon. Yet the decent few do act like they’ll live forever. Have you ever really loved a mortal?” Glory asked.

  “Not really, how can you? I thought a few very sweet, but love, no. You?”

  “I could never love anyone. Even attempting such emotion is impossible for me, let alone it all being so fucking tedious. I was fond of George until, you know…” Glory said tailing off.

  “Apollo kicked him out of London.” Liberty said.

  “Yes, poor, poor George Gordon. Apollo can’t bare competition in the over-sexed poet stakes. On that note have you got a restraining order on Apollo yet? I’m worried he’s going to try and have you shot by Artemis or you know, propose. Poor George Gordon banished to the continent to die of a paltry fever.”

  “He keeps writing poetry for me. How the heck do I get out of it unscathed?” Liberty asked.

  “Lie back and think of England. Actually no, don’t think about my mother. You’re going to have to let him fuck you again which leads to three scenarios:

  1. He knocks you up. You’d have adorable, musically talented children and eventually he’ll get bored and will wander off to women new as long as you don’t shag other people for a while.

  2. He shags you, doesn’t knock you up and gets as equally bored.

  3. He shags you and puts a ring on it and then you’re stuck with him forever.

  The first one is probably the most likely statistically speaking.” Glory said. This was something that she’d clearly considered before.

  “He’s such a freak: a hot freak but a freak nonetheless.”

  “Talking about freak, I’m thinking of getting a GoPro for my vagina.” Glory said deadpan.

  “Sometimes I forget how classy you are. I’m going for a walk.” Liberty blew Glory a kiss as she walked to the doorway. She hesitated before continuing “Glory, everything changed today.”

  “Everything changes every day darling. Life is infinite variety disguised as the mundane. Enjoy your walk poppet.” Glory said, attempting profundity for a change. It didn’t suit her.

  ***

  Liberty trekked upstairs to her room and switched her shoes to a sensible pair of Nikes. Glory’s suggestion that shoe choice is a vital one in escaping rapists had disturbed her. Not that wearing heels was inviting rapists, but there were enough amoral immortals out there that she felt the need to give herself the best possible head start. Heavens forbid that these gods would have gained respect for females (immortal or mortal) over the centuries. Goddesses were just folly to gods, let alone the poor mortal women. Some were consorts most were conquests (willing or unwilling), all were victims. Or were they? Was Liberty being too fatalistic? She fucking hated men.

  ***

  Despite her flippancy Glory too knew that everything had changed that day, but the seismic nature of the change and its consequences were as yet unknown to her. She had felt the new epoch begin too, although she decided to play dumb until anything concrete appeared. Glory checked her phone and saw that she had a further text message that she didn’t know how to respond to and she still hadn’t even dealt with the first. She could feel everything escalating. Glory went to her room, sprawled across the bed, read her copy of The Collected Works of Wilfred Owen and felt guilty, again, maybe. Every time her name came up she felt a wave of despair crash about her and drag her further into the swell. What is glory but a triumph at the expense, rightly or wrongly so, of another? Everyone mortal and immortal wants to be glorious, all those wretched marriage proposals were testament to how many wanted to have Glory to themselves and yet here she was, desolate in her own very nature. Eventually she got up and stood on a chair opposite the elegant full length mirror and having memorised the stanzas of the poems that implicated her personally, screamed them at her own reflection; a paean to her own vile conceit:

  “If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

  Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

  Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

  Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,

  My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

  To children ardent for some desperate glory,

  The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est

  Pro patria mori.”

  The Changing Rooms

  A few hours later Honour and Bea were sitting on the wooden benches in the Valkyrie changing rooms in Valhalla. A gentle steam was wafting in from the showers and they could smell something floral: like how an Herbal Essences advert looks like it should smell. This changing room had more in common with a spa retreat than your local council verruca pool. Freya had to be given her dues when appropriate: she was really bloody good at picking complementary toiletries.

  Despite protestations that she had never really fought before, Bea killed it. On the agility tasks it looked like she was about to take flight. Her strength was insane; she picked up a double decker bus and threw it like a hammer toss. She then went on to commit acts of carnage against a group of Viking marauders who had seen and/or done some
awful things on their travels. Honour had just stood there in awe. She’d never seen anything quite like it.

  “I’ve got to say Bea, you were a little crazy out there. How did you take out thirty berserkers in a row like that? Where did you become such a pathological killer?”

  “Cheers mate, just a natural I guess. That was fun. I need to work on a few areas though. These guys regenerate before we get sloshed tonight right? I feel bad. Those were some really bad axe wounds.”

  “Yeah they’re already dead, besides they were only human before.” Honour watched another Valkyrie walk in from the training arena and go straight to her locker. The girl was tall and slender. She was also pretty, pretty useless and pretty mean.

  “Astrid, how are you? I haven’t seen you since D-Day. Heard you’re leading the 212s now?” Honour asked.

  “Alright mate? Yeah, yeah I am. It’s not a bad unit. We’ve jurisdiction over firemen throughout North America. Nice little gig, not much going on though at the moment what with all this health and safety nonsense. Anyone would think the mortals don’t want to die.” Astrid said shrugging her delicate shoulders “How’s Glory by the way, still a mentalist? I heard she started a bar fight amongst some rock giants the other week.”

  “Centaurs actually but she will be pleased that a variant has gotten around. Awfully proud she was. Forgive me for being rude. Astrid this is Bea, Bea this is Astrid. Bea just started in the 401s today.” Honour said, trying to be polite.

  “Nice to meet you.” Bea said.