Inside my mind, I felt her shrug. Because she’s nice, she told me. And because I’m not a liar.
Well, excuse me, I said. I happen to be the Father and Mother of Liars, and I can tell you right now that honesty is both overrated and, in our position, frankly, the pits. So I’ll thank you to keep to the script, if you don’t mind, and quit with the confessions, right? Remember, we’re here to have a good ti—
But Jumps cut me short. “Listen, Meg,” she said. “I really, really like you. But I’m not sure getting involved with someone new is a good idea. Not right now, at least.”
“Why’s that?” Meg lifted an eyebrow—but her eyes were still kind.
“Because I’m—not myself,” said Jumps.
I interjected. What the—
“When we were at the Blaze,” said Jumps, “I was someone different. Trust me, I’m not like that all the time. And I don’t want to have to pretend around you.”
“I get it,” said Meg. “You’re new to this.”
Jumps looked at her and nodded.
“It’s fine,” said Meg. “You know, I can tell. We don’t have to do anything more than talk. Or dance. Or eat cake. It’s all good. I can take it as slow as you need.”
I gave an inner howl. Ye gods. I can’t believe you’re doing this. I thought you were my wingman. You’re like the world’s biggest gooseberry. It’s like being trapped in a ménage à trois with someone who doesn’t even want to watch—
Meg went on, “How does that sound?”
For a moment I felt Jumps hesitate. She liked Meg. I could tell. More than that, she was drawn to her much as I’d been drawn myself. There was something about her, that’s all. Something warm and kind and sweet. I tried to work out what it was. She wasn’t really my usual type. No makeup, no jewellery. Just that wooden necklace, and her hair in little corkscrew curls that stood out all around her face. I mean, she was okay. But I’d seen more beautiful women by far. And yet somehow this one was different. Somehow this one outshone them all.
Finally Jumps sighed. “Okay.”
“That’s good,” said Meg, smiling. “Because although I liked you last night, I like you even better now.”
“Really?” said Jumps.
Er, what?
“Last night, it was like you were putting on an act. I could tell. It was fun, but that was all. I want to get to know the real you.”
Jumps looked up and gently raised her hand to touch Meg’s face.
Oh. So you’re playing a deep game. Well, okay, if you think she’ll—
“Just as long as you know,” said Jumps.
Oh. Okay.
Shut up, said Jumps.
Meg’s mouth was warm and sweet. Her skin smelt faintly of almonds. My own—strictly speaking, Jumps’s skin—felt prickly with her closeness.
It feels weird with you here, said Jumps. Can’t you stand back, or something?
Well, it isn’t often that I’m rendered speechless. But in this case, I made an exception. It wasn’t just the fact that Meg seemed to prefer Jumps to me—thought she was more sincere, for gods’ sakes—but now that I was finally getting to see some action, Jumps was suddenly taking my place—
You’re still there, said Jumps accusingly.
I sighed. Okay. Whatever. It wasn’t the time or the place for me to get into an argument with Jumps. And so I retreated as far as I could from the delicious seduction scene, with all its sensations and feelings and joys, and instead stood like an idiot in a dark corner of Jumps’s mind, and tried to identify the emotions that now came rushing in on me. Human emotions. So messy, so bleak, so fundamentally unnecessary. Why did they even have them? They served no useful purpose. Around me, there were directories marked LONELINESS and longing and loss. All of them seemed to welcome me like the serried ranks of the dead. A cheery thought. Very human. I turned instead to thoughts of cake, but found myself feeling slightly sick. I turned my attention back to Meg, and found that she was standing up.
“I want to show you something,” she said. “Is that okay?”
Jumps nodded. “Of course. Where are we going?”
Meg smiled. “It’s a surprise. Trust me, I think you’ll like it.”
So far, there’d been nothing about Margaret that I didn’t like. I saw no reason for this to be different. And so we followed her into the street, and through the town towards Castle Hill, where the sun was starting to set in a giant bowl of fire.
5.
I’ll admit it. I’d been assuming that the surprise might be sexual in nature. Most of the best surprises are, which made it all the more startling when we arrived at the top of Castle Hill to find it already occupied. Three young people were sitting there around a shallow fire pit. A number of metal canisters and coils of rope and bundles of wire were stacked up in the vicinity.
An orgy? I wondered hopefully.
Don’t be ridiculous, said Jumps. Just let me do the talking, all right?
The three young people greeted Meg with smiles and hugs. A boy, a girl, and one who didn’t seem to be either; two brown-skinned like Margaret, one pink-haired with dark eyes. Meg introduced them as Mossy, Alisha, and Katsu, and then she said, “This is Jumps. She’s cool.”
I tried not to feel left out as everyone said hello to Jumps. I could see that they were curious, even maybe a little impressed. I thought to myself that if Jumps was cool, I was the one responsible, then, feeling unaccountably cross, took a back seat while the others got acquainted. I was bored, and annoyed, and the worst of it was, I didn’t really know why. The night was warm, there was Meg, there was fire—there were even snacks, which at any other time I might have found appealing. But Jumps was the one she’d invited, not me. I was just an onlooker.
I need to get out of this body, I thought. This World is far too confusing.
And then finally, as Meg’s friends prepared for the next part of the entertainment, I realized the purpose of the cans and wires and ropes that they had brought to the top of the Hill. Meg had prepared me for this in her way. Fire-spinning, she had called it. It had sounded cool at the time, but I hadn’t imagined how much it would chime with my special interests.
“These are called poi,” Meg explained to Jumps. “You can make them out of all kinds of things, as long as they’re not too heavy. This one’s made of oil-soaked rags in a cage of wire mesh. You swing it like this—” She demonstrated, starting gently at first, and then stepping to a safe distance before starting her dance in earnest.
Gods help me, it was beautiful. Meg moved with a natural rhythm, the fire moving around and beside her as if fire were her element. The poi moved in long, lazy arcs, then in loops and circles that narrowed and widened like the pupils of a dragon’s eye. I hadn’t seen anything so beautiful since the birth of the Middle Worlds. Order and Chaos, in balance, dancing and moving in harmony, like a firebird in flight—
Jesus, will you stop with the commentary?
So shoot me. I like fire, I said. Are you going to give it a try?
Jumps said nothing, but watched the dance.
Go on. Please. I let you be alone with Meg.
Meg came a little closer, letting the poi swing loosely by her side. “Wanna try?”
“Hell, yes,” said Jumps.
“Okay. Swing it gently. Be careful—”
I took the reins of the fire-beast. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I got this.”
What a feeling. What a rush. Of all the human sensations I’d enjoyed, endured, disliked, or puzzled over, this was the best. Better than sex or drunkenness, better than Sigyn’s jam tarts. It was like being back in Aspect, like having my glam back, like being at the head of an army. I danced with the fire, and the fire danced back, recognizing a kindred soul. I was better than Jumps would have been: I flung the poi into the air, leapt over it like an animal, twisted it into a double helix that spun and spun through the glamorous air like the World Serpent with its tail in its mouth—
And when the fire had died at last, and I turned to
look at Meg, wide-eyed, her pupils all pinned with reflected fire, and her friends, all watching, began to applaud, and I was almost a god again, there came the sound of an all-too-familiar voice coming from behind me.
“So this is where you got to,” it said, and there was a note in the voice that somehow raised the hairs on the back of my neck. I turned and saw Stella standing there, watching the scene as if it were the funniest thing she’d seen in years.
I was pleased to see Jumps did not overreact. Instead she said, “Stella? What do you want?” with a passing degree of nonchalance, even though I could tell that all her senses were on the alert.
Freyja gave a tinkling laugh, like someone’s idea of a Disney princess. She was perfect. Little print dress, sunset hair, legs that went on forever. And in the light of the fire pit, there was something else: something dangerous, an aura, I thought, of menace.
“New friend, Jumps?” she said.
I shrugged. “Are you jealous, or something?”
That laugh again, like sleigh bells wielded by an evil Santa. “Not remotely, sweetheart,” she said. “Because when I call, you always come. Just like a little lapdog.”
Lapdog. That made me think of Thor, and of Odin, whose warning about not talking to Stella I had hitherto forgotten. Still, what harm could it do? I thought. She was hardly a threat to either of us.
“I see you found the Hill,” she said. “Not that you could have missed it, lit up as it was like a Christmas tree. You took your time, didn’t you?”
I thought back to the previous day and to my embarrassing outburst in Jumps’s English exam. The strange new runemark over the hill. That feeling of exhilaration. But that was a mistake, wasn’t it? Just an accidental meeting of vapours in the sky?
She must have read my thoughts. She smiled. “That was no accident,” she said. “That was the Hill.” She gave it a capital letter, the way the Folk distinguish their new God from the old ones. I remembered that galvanic jolt the first time I had seen the Hill. Then, that feeling of certainty at the runemark in the sky. And now, the new sensation of being more alive than I had been in over five hundred years, alive and strong and full of power. I’d assumed that the fire-dance was responsible, but now that I came to think about it, wasn’t there something else in the air, a resonance that came from beneath the ground, humming like a hive of bees?
“What is it?” I said.
She smiled at me. “Freedom. Freedom from her—” She made a gesture that seemed to convey the insignificance of my host. “And from him.”
“The General.”
Her blue eyes shone. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”
I shrugged. I wasn’t about to reveal how desperately I wanted it.
“How so?”
She smiled again. I thought there was something about that smile that I recognized from long ago—something I didn’t associate with Freyja, or any of the Vanir. And now I could sense a charge in her, like a powerful source of glam. It felt good—somehow dangerous, like a really good bonfire. And I was drawn to it, of course. After all, it’s my nature.
I looked up at the dark sky. Down in Malbry, the streetlights were on, white and yellow against the dark. The Hill loomed like a giant, rising up from a patchwork of fields. I realized that in my excitement, I’d missed the General’s meeting. I didn’t expect him to be pleased about that. But there was something about the Hill. Something irresistible—
I’ve always had pretty good instincts in the face of danger. Now my instincts were screaming. Meg and her friends were still standing there around the glowing fire pit, their faces golden in the light, their eyes wide and incurious. They looked slightly stunned, in a dream—and if that wasn’t some kind of glamour, I thought, I might as well hand back my demon credentials right now.
“Does the General know you’re here?” I said. “Did he send you after me?”
It was certainly possible, I thought. The Old Man was subtle. Too subtle, sometimes, for his own good. It was totally possible that this was some kind of trap to force me to cooperate. But the idea that he might be excluded—and by Freyja, whose esteem for me was placed somewhere rather lower than the World Serpent’s nether parts—was surely an indication that said scheme was not designed to benefit Yours Truly.
I shook my head to clear it. It felt a little clouded, as if I were imperceptibly drunk, with that drunkard’s confidence in his own invulnerability. My blood hummed; my head span; my arms were suddenly burning—
“You may feel a little discomfort at first,” said Freyja, seeing my expression.
I pushed up my sleeves. “Dammit, that hurts.”
“You’re bleeding,” said Meg quietly. Sure enough, the scars on my arm—the ones that formed the runemark Kaen—had broken open, and the blood was running freely down my wrist, blood that seemed slightly luminous in the dying firelight. Hot droplets fell, and spackled the ground with fitful luminescence.
And then, at last, it came crashing home. Drunk? I must have been blind, I thought. I should have known the truth from the first I laid eyes on Stella’s runemark. Hagall, the Destroyer, was never Freya’s favoured rune, but it did happen to form part of the name of an old associate. Gullveig-Heid, the Golden One, the Sorceress of the Elder Age, the Vanir rebel whose treachery sometimes even exceeded my own, and whose power, linked with Chaos, had brought down Asgard and the gods as easily as a house of cards—
I looked at Stella. Her face was alight with greedy anticipation.
“Heidi?” I said.
She smiled at me. “Oh, Loki. You used to be quicker off the mark. Or were you distracted by your new friend?”
I looked at Meg. “You need to go. Take your friends and leave. Now.”
“She’s quite attractive,” Heidi said. “But is she really your type?” That smile again, like a flower ringed with the sharpest, whitest of teeth. My mouth was dry, my throat was tight, my arms were braceleted with fire. I was vaguely aware of Jumps protesting in our shared space, but there was no time to explain. I had to get Meg out of the way before the Sorceress realized just how much I could be hurt if any harm befell her.
“Well?” said Heidi, still smiling.
“She’s nothing. No one. Forget her,” I said.
“I don’t understand,” said Meg. “Who’s this? And what did she just call you?”
I cursed inwardly, trying to ignore both Jumps’s protests, and the cascade of feelings my words were unleashing inside me. There was fear, and sorrow, and regret, and impatience, and something approaching dread, all which had to be expertly hidden from the thing inside Stella, or risk exposing Meg to the kind of peril that always followed Heidi around.
Meg put her hand on my arm. “Jumps? Are you all right?”
“We’re done,” I said. “I want you to go.”
The golden eyes flashed. “Just like that?”
My heart was breaking. I made my voice harsh. “Just go,” I told her. “Fuck off. Now.”
6.
I turned back to Stella, trying not to see the expression on Meg’s face as she picked up her things from the fire pit. Her friends, too—the people who until then might have been my friends—were watching me with anger and scorn.
Katsu muttered, “What a bitch!” And although I was being noble, which ought to have filled me with pride (as well as a certain amount of surprise, it not being behaviour I was generally known for) I felt a sick kind of unfairness that I hadn’t felt since my Asgard days.
Jumps was protesting. What the hell? But I didn’t have time to explain. I sent her the image of a pit, lined with pieces of broken glass. The sides were crumbling and dry, a faded sign read DANGER. I felt her anger shift into wariness and anxiety.
Please, I said. Trust me. Just this once. I wished I could say the same thing to Meg. But Stella was watching. A flicker of doubt—a single word—would betray me.
Meg seemed about to say something. But Katsu grabbed her by the arm and led her away towards the path. “Don’t give her the satis
faction,” she said. “There’s plenty more where she came from.”
I wasn’t going to turn. But I did. I saw Meg in the firelight. The flames from the dying fire pit masked her face in liquid gold. The gold drowned her eyes and ran down her cheeks, and I cursed myself, and Stella, and Jumps, but most of all, the General, who must have known who Stella was, but who, for reasons of his own, had chosen not to tell me.
So much for being noble, I told myself. Remind me not to bother next time. And then I turned back to my enemy, and saw her watching me like a cat playing with a cornered mouse, and thought, I guess it serves me right for giving in to feelings.
“Well. It took you long enough to work it out,” said Gullveig-Heid. “You really believed I was Freyja? Even for a minute? I thought you were more perceptive than that.”
“I had other things on my mind,” I said, with an attempt at insouciance. “And you, sweetheart, weren’t exactly going out of your way to advertise.”
She shrugged. “Call me paranoid, but I thought perhaps you might not be altogether pleased to see me.”
“You mean, after you lied to me and betrayed me, not to mention murdering my wife?”
Heidi laughed. “Oh, Trickster, please. Lying and betrayal are two of your favourite qualities. And as for the wife, I don’t recall you being overly distressed at the time.”
I gave a sigh. She had me there. I’d been too busy enjoying myself to think about the details. Food, drink, and merriment, with a lot of demon sex thrown in and the prospect of the Worlds going foom. And yes, before you ask, she was very, very alluring. But now I was at her mercy, unarmed, bleeding, and alone, now that Meg and her friends were safely out of the way, and it occurred to me that perhaps I shouldn’t have been so quick to drown Jumps’s phone in the fish tank.
“So, what is it you want?” I said. “I’m guessing it’s not just the pleasure of watching me bleed.”
Heidi smiled. “No, not just that.”
Inside the mind we shared, I heard Jumps questioning me furiously. What’s happening? she repeated. Why did you say those things to Meg? I thought you liked her. I thought we were friends. And what the hell’s wrong with my arm? Is it something to do with runes?
The Testament of Loki Page 11
