The Afterlife Series Omnibus: Heaven, Hell, Earth, Wasteland, War, Stones

by Mur Lafferty

  Verdandi took it from her and peered at the pathetic knitted square as if it were tea leaves. “Well. I never would have guessed. I didn’t think the old man could surprise us anymore.”

  “Who? What has changed? What do you mean?” I asked.

  Verdandi smiled at me. “If you had perhaps another millennium, you could learn how to read the threads. But Odin is a crafty god, and he wove himself a little destiny loophole.”

  I looked out on the field of battle, feeling helpless and hating myself for being weak, for failing my sister. And as with her death I was now destined to be a pathetic, useless witness once again.

  I rubbed my face once again with the foul rag and took a deep breath. “I’m going out there. If there’s nothing we can do, then I can’t do any harm by trying to help.”

  “It isn’t wise.” Verdandi held Odin’s red square to me. I took it without thinking.

  Kate frowned and crossed her arms. “What are you trying to do? Remember what you told me? This isn’t our battle. We’re witnesses. Travelers. Nothing more.” Despite her words, she looked thoughtful.

  I took the square and ran it through my fingers. It was poorly made, with lumps and dropped stitches. “Ragnarök is all about the prophecy, right, Kate? Everyone here is meant to be here, everything that happens is predestined. Except,” I continued, handing the square to her, “for whatever Odin wove out of the Fates’ yarn. He made a change at the end. I don’t know what it was. But I’m pretty sure we were not destined to be here, which means we can be part of that change.”

  I rooted around in my backpack for a weapon, a helmet, something. “I’m not going to be helpless forever, Kate. I couldn’t help Megan when my mom killed her. But I can help here.” I found nothing in my bag beyond my bedroll and the empty lacquer box. “Or I could help if my fucking backpack had something useful in it!”

  “What, you think you can save him?” Kate asked me, still thoughtful.

  “I have to try,” I said.

  “That big dog is Fenrir, you know. He eats worlds. He will eat gods. He may eat you.”

  I frowned for a second. “Look. God said I’d know what I needed to do, and I need to do this.”

  Kate chewed on her lip and then took Odin’s knitting from me. She looked at one side, then the other. She glanced at Urd. The woman smiled.

  “You see it, don’t you?” she asked.

  Kate’s face gave away nothing. “I am not sure what I’m looking at.”

  “You are sure, girl. You just don’t believe it.”

  Kate handed the potholder back to me. She walked over to the large metal bowl that held the balls of yarn. She looked at Skuld. “He’ll need protection,” she said. “May I?”

  The old woman cackled. “You’re smarter than I took you for, girly! Take it with my blessing.”

  Kate dumped out the yarn and that’s when I saw the handles. It wasn’t a bowl; it was a massive shield. She handed it to me.

  “I’d go with you, but there’s only one shield,” she said, and smiled slightly.

  “Hah!” Skuld cackled again. “You’re not going anywhere, girl. You’re staying here with us. We have things to discuss. The world will end just fine with the saner folk sitting on the sidelines.”

  I hefted the shield, wincing as I gripped it tighter and the cut on my palm stung.

  Skuld shambled to me, age bending her. Her eyes twinkled. “Listen, boy. You don’t need to fight. Just reach the All-Father. He’ll be on the far side of the battlefield, incidentally. Look for the giant wolves.”

  I ventured a look at Kate. “I’ll be back. I promise.”

  “I know,” she said.

  #

  I’d never seen a real battle before. War movies seemed so choreographed; this was brutal and bloody and chaotic.

  Odin was easy to spot. He stood well across the field, spear in hand, calling down lightning from the dark sky. In the flashes of light, Fenrir leaped and danced around Odin, impossibly tall, but kept at bay by the electricity. It was clear his hide was so tough that the lightning couldn’t penetrate him, and it was little more than an annoyance. He bore down on the All-Father.

  I couldn’t watch so closely, though. To get to him, I had to get across the battlefield with my shield.

  Giants, bigger than Fenrir, swung their great clubs, grunting and lumbering onto the battlefield, clearing the way of heroes and monsters alike. With a swing of their clubs, bodies went flying, spraying blood over the battlefield and creating a gruesome, coppery rain. They made their way slowly toward where I guessed Odin fought the wolves, and I groaned when I realized our paths would cross.

  I took a deep breath and then ran, holding the shield in front of me, trying to reach Odin before the wolf got him. I couldn’t see very well, and with more blood splattering around me, I raised the shield above my head for an instant.

  I’d like to say the gods were smiling on me, but they were too busy slaughtering each other to notice. Regardless, I was able to stop short of running onto the side of a thrashing, dying wolf. Its body was a small hill to me, forcing me to run around it.

  The giants were directly between Odin and me. I dodged the blow of a monster with three arms and way too many teeth, and raced straight for the giants.

  They didn’t notice me until I was right underneath them. Trying to remember what I’d learned from my one year as a failed junior varsity football running back, I dashed around the stomps and kicks aimed my way. I didn’t notice the club though, as I couldn’t see directly above me.

  The club caught Skuld’s shield, which sent me flying as the giant knocked me away like a golf ball. I held tight to the shield and closed my eyes as I flew through the air away from Odin, my stomach twisting with vertigo. Just as quickly, I realized I wanted to see where I would land, so I fought instinct and cracked them open again. From my high, soaring vantage point above the battlefield, I gasped, distracted momentarily from my fear by the sight of the blood, the monsters, the heroes, the arrows streaking below me.

  I still held Skuld’s shield. Miraculously, as the side of a hill drew closer, it slipped underneath me. I landed and the shield flashed brightly, absorbing most of my momentum. I rolled down a hill and came to rest, unhurt (though pretty sure I was going to puke), outside the battle.

  “Damn. Handy shield,” I said, shaking. I flexed my bruised but otherwise unharmed limbs.

  I struggled to my feet and looked again for Odin. The air hissed as the sky opened and fire rained down on the field of dying. The battle had slowed, with more dead than live combatants. I held the shield above my head again and spotted Fenrir, the massive wolf, surrounded by cheering giants.

  I was too late. Blood rained from his jaws as he devoured heroes and gods, silencing their screams as he tore them apart. My stomach threatened to rebel but I clamped my jaw shut and ran on.

  Odin lay behind Fenrir, beaten and discarded. The wolf and giants moved on, the fire causing bright red patches on the giants’ bald heads, and I was able to run past the groaning and dead, shield held aloft, to get to Odin’s side.

  Fenrir hadn’t devoured him entirely; Odin looked as if he’d been chewed on, found too tough, and spat out. Gore coated him; the blood-soaked robes, the pointy bits of bone sticking out of his shattered arm, and the blood that streamed from a severed leg did me in, and I turned from him and puked.

  Unbelievably, he was still alive. Pale from loss of blood, but conscious. He fixed me with his one-eyed stare when finally I knelt beside him, shame making my face burn.

  “Traveler. Herald of my doom. You’re not the first to vomit on battlefield. May be the last, though,” he wheezed, bright blood on his lips.

  All I could think to do was comfort him. “You’re going to be all right,” I said, cleaning the blood from his face with the red scrap he’d knitted. My cut hand stung, and I hoped illogically that he didn’t have hepatitis or HIV or something.

  He coughed a laugh. “Don’t lie, boy; you have no skill at it yet. I ha
ve known my destiny for thousands of—” He broke off, coughing again. Blood spattered from his lips onto his face. I ran the rag over it again.

  “My son will kill the wolf. Loki will meet his doom. The world will end and begin again. In truth, it’s good to be done with. You may be stupid, but you have done your job well.” He blinked then (or was it winked?) and closed his eye. One more wheeze, and then he was gone.

  “What did I come out here for, then?” I asked him. The spear had reverted to scissors beside him, so I picked them up. Better a lame weapon than nothing, I guessed. I wiped the blood, Odin’s and mine, off my hands, and stood up.

  Off in the distance, the huge Fenrir circled a glowing armored man – Odin’s son? Despite the man’s relatively puny size, the wolf looked less cocky and more careful. The fiery rain came down harder now; the scent of burning blood and flesh made my stomach turn.

  I didn’t see Loki, and I didn’t recognize anyone else.

  No, wait. I blinked, and the knowledge came to me like a tidal wave. I was glad I still knelt, else I would have fallen from the swoon that nearly took me over. I raised my head again, focusing.

  Loki. Odin. The gods, the heroes, the Valkyries (one of them had supplied me with this shield), the monsters. I recognized them all.

  Tyr, the one-handed, stood nearby at the bottom of a hill at the edge of a shimmering sea. I took Odin’s floppy hat and covered his craggy, still face with it before I stood. “Rest well, you clever bastard,” I said.

  I walked down the hill and joined Tyr.

  “She will arrive soon,” I said, wondering at first what the hell I was saying with such conviction, and the knowledge hit my conscious mind immediately. He waited for a ship that carried his death.

  He nodded without looking at me. His left hand flexed around his sword as his right arm carried his shield and protected his stump. He had not gotten entirely used to using his left hand in battle, even in all the years since Fenrir had bitten it off, but he didn’t tell anyone that.

  But I knew it. I knew it as well as I knew all the names of the gods in the field above me, the prophecies of how they all were to die, and what would happen after Ragnarök.

  Tyr waited for Hel, goddess of the underworld, and her people to arrive by boat. He would battle with Garm, the guard dog of the underworld. They would kill each other; Tyr’s sword in the dog’s heart with the dog’s jaws latched onto his neck.

  “Be strong, Tyr,” I said. I felt slightly ridiculous, but I patted him on the shoulder and he nodded to me again, grateful for the contact. A sail appeared on the horizon, and I left him there to his fate. I knew now I wasn’t supposed to go on the battlefield to save Odin. I went there so I could bring something back. I returned to Yggdrasil, the World Tree, where the three fates and Kate sat talking.

  Kate looked up when I approached. She smiled, unsurprised to see me. “Did you do everything you needed to do?”

  “I’m okay, none of this blood is mine, thanks for asking,” I said.

  She laughed. “I knew you’d be fine, Daniel. I have been talking to the Fates while you were gone. But I’m glad you made it through.”

  The irritation loosened in my chest. I wiped some of Odin’s blood from my face and hands, then handed Skuld her shield back. “Thank you,” I said. “I’m sorry, Odin died.”

  The old valkyrie laughed in my face. “You say it like we expected you to save him.”

  “Didn’t you?”

  “Of course not. If you turn a gear slightly in a clock, it doesn’t look like you’ve made much of a change, except that it moves another gear, and that moves another gear, and so on. Only one thing happened here than was not prophesied. And perhaps that is all we needed.”

  I nodded slowly.

  “I was with him when he died,” I said absently. “I did what I needed to do. I think.” I looked at my hands, the two-eyed perspective seeming slightly off to me. Something inside me expected only one eye.

  I blinked, snapping out of my disorientation. “Did you see the battle?”

  Skuld smiled. “No, boy, we had work to do. We were summoning the Valkyries. They should be here soon.”

  I looked from her to Kate, who had a small smile on her face. “The Valkyries?” I was about to make a clever comment about “ride of the” but suddenly I knew.

  Kate told me anyway. “Legendary Norse warrior women. They visited the battlefield to take the greatest heroes to Valhalla, sometimes slept with gods or heroes, or sometimes just served them mead out of horns.”

  I nodded. “Did you summon them to clean up after the battle?”

  Skuld harrumphed. “No, boy, the days of battle mopping up are over. The Valkyries, your friend reminds us, are unnamed in the final Ragnarök prophesy. There are many missing players in the prophecies regarding Ragnarök, stories that have not yet been told. They have a role to play in the aftermath.”

  She stood and took her shield from me. She still looked old, but considerably less frail. “Do you have Odin’s spear?”

  I handed her the scissors. “I am pretty sure I have more of him than that.”

  She winked at me and pulled a horn from the folds of her robe. “I have no doubt, boy. I do know if I were to take on my old role of leading the dead gods from the battlefield, Odin’s body would be an empty husk. His essence remains with you.”

  Kate nodded slowly. “Wow. I really did read that knitting piece correctly. So he’s there in your head?”

  “His knowledge is; not quite his personality, though. Or he hasn’t grumbled at me yet. I’m not sure.”

  “Amazing,” she said.

  I grinned at her. “I think Skuld and the others can handle the rest of Ragnarök. I’m done here. Do you want to hang out any more?”

  She looked over the battlefield, at the ghastly boat that neared Tyr’s shoreline, and shook her head. “No, if you’re good, I think I’m happy to leave.”

  We shook hands with the three Dates and wished them luck. We turned our back on Ragnarök. Skuld still blew her warning to her sisters, the horn echoing over the hills as we approached our small skiff to sail back to the crossroads.

  “She’ll be able to take the reins once it’s all over,” Kate said. “We talked about it. She’s an amazing woman.”

  I leaned over the side of the boat to wash some blood off my arms and face. I looked up at her, dripping pink drops into the water. “So what did you guys talk about?”

  Kate guided the skiff carefully. “We talked about the prophecies, the destinies, the Valkyries. They showed me some of their tricks with knitting, saying I had a knack. They’ve had amazing lives.”

  I rubbed my head, trying to choose my words carefully. I tried to sound nonchalant. “So, uh, why didn’t you mind I ran off alone into battle?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. Odin told me to trust my first instincts. I figured you’d be okay. The knitted bit told me that he would be going on an unforeseen trip with a young man. So I took it to mean you’d be bringing him back, one way or another. I have to admit I didn’t expect you to put him in your head.”

  She looked at me, head cocked. “So how did you manage to get him in there?”

  “I have no idea. I just tried to comfort him, wipe up some of his blood, you know…” I didn’t say all the things I didn’t do for Megan, but I think she knew.

  “Wiped up his blood,” she said thoughtfully.

  “Yeah.” I looked at my cut hand, the edges already drawing together. The scars on my hands and arms were gone as well. Odin was the god of healing after all.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I was finally able to break Kate’s calm exterior and impress her with the fact that I owned Odin’s knowledge.

  “Can you name all of Loki’s children?” she asked, challenging me.

  I counted them off rapidly on my fingers. “Hel, Fenrir, Jörmungandr, Nari, Narfi, and Vali. He is also the mother of Sleipnir. The fact that I know how he is the mother of an eight-legged horse disturbs the hell out of
me, by the way.”

  She laughed and shook her head. “I’m sorry, I’m just boggled. You always hated mythology.”

  “It’s blowing my mind too,” I admitted. “I feel like I need to go somewhere and just sit and have a good think. There’s a lot of stuff in my head. But it’s not like I have him talking to me. I think I just have his knowledge.”

  She laughed. “‘Just.’”

  “Hey,” I said, trying to catch her eye. She looked at me calmly. “I’m sorry I had to run off into the chaos. I just… had to.”

  “It’s okay. I understand what you had to do. It was another destined thing. I learned a lot about the Valkyries, Ragnarök prophecies, and even how to knit and read a little of the prophecies in the creations of the Fates. And hey- I knitted a bookmark.” She grinned sheepishly and showed me a small strip of yellow fabric, loose but better put-together than Odin’s first knitting attempt.

  I fingered the soft yarn. Odin’s knowledge whispered at me as I looked over her stitches, each loop a tiny hint about Kate, her past, and her future. I swallowed and handed it back to her, smiling weakly.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Nothing. You really don’t have a future in crafting,” I said, laughing.

  She made a face at me. “You try to learn a new skill while the battle to end the world is going on in front of you, not to mention your best friend ran out into it!”

  I held up my hands in defeat, giving up, and she laughed. The tension eased and she forgot, I hoped, the haunted look on my face when I had tried to hide what I’d read of her future on that strip of knitted cloth.

  #

  I was quite pleased I didn’t have Odin himself in my head. I didn’t think I’d want a crafty, cranky god trying to steer me to knit or go wolf hunting or something. But as we sailed, I flipped through the new knowledge like I had a large encyclopedia with me.

  My thoughts about Megan came into sharp focus when I uncovered the information about Orpheus, the Greek bard who lost his beloved on their wedding day. The persistent bastard had gone to Hell – or Hades, as my grandmother and the Greeks called it – to persuade the god Hades and his wife Persephone for her return. They agreed to grant his request as long as he didn’t turn around on his way out of the underworld, but the idiot looked back right when he got to the mouth of Hades, and she was lost to him forever.