American Gods

The knots were good. The ropes were strong, and they held, and soon he exhausted himself once more.

In his delirium, Shadow became the tree. Its roots went deep into the loam of the earth, deep down into time, into the hidden springs. He felt the spring of the woman called Urd, which is to say, Past. She was huge, a giantess, an underground mountain of a woman, and the waters she guarded were the waters of time. Other roots went to other places. Some of them were secret. Now, when he was thirsty, he pulled water from his roots, pulled them up into the body of his being.

He had a hundred arms that broke into a hundred thousand fingers, and all of his fingers reached up into the sky. The weight of the sky was heavy on his shoulders.

It was not that the discomfort was lessened, but the pain belonged to the figure hanging from the tree, rather than to the tree itself. Shadow in his madness was now so much more than the man on the tree. He was the tree, and he was the wind rattling the bare branches of the world tree; he was the gray sky and the tumbling clouds; he was Ratatosk the squirrel running from the deepest roots to the highest branches; he was the mad-eyed hawk who sat on a broken branch at the top of the tree surveying the world; he was the worm in the heart of the tree.

The stars wheeled, and he passed his hundred hands over the glittering stars, palming them, switching them, vanishing them . . .

A moment of clarity, in the pain and the madness: Shadow felt himself surfacing. He knew it would not be for long. The morning sun was dazzling him. He closed his eyes, wishing he could shade them.

There was not long to go. He knew that, too.

When he opened his eyes, Shadow saw that there was a young man in the tree with him.

His skin was dark brown. His forehead was high and his dark hair was tightly curled. He was sitting on a branch high above Shadow’s head. Shadow could see him clearly by craning his head. And the man was mad. Shadow could see that at a glance.

“You’re naked,” confided the madman, in a cracked voice. “I’m naked too.”

“I see that,” croaked Shadow.

The madman looked at him, then he nodded and twisted his head down and around, as if he were trying to remove a crick from his neck. Eventually he said, “Do you know me?”

“No,” said Shadow.

“I know you. I watched you in Cairo. I watched you after. My sister likes you.”

“You are . . .” the name escaped him. Eats roadkill. Yes. “You are Horus.”

The madman nodded. “Horus,” he said. “I am the falcon of the morning, the hawk of the afternoon. I am the sun, as you are. And I know the true name of Ra. My mother told me.”

“That’s great,” said Shadow, politely.

The madman stared at the ground below them intently, saying nothing. Then he dropped from the tree.

A hawk fell like a stone to the ground, pulled out of its plummet into a swoop, beat its wings heavily and flew back to the tree, a baby rabbit in its talons. It landed on a branch closer to Shadow.

“Are you hungry?” asked the madman.

“No,” said Shadow. “I guess I should be, but I’m not.”

“I’m hungry,” said the madman. He ate the rabbit rapidly, pulling it apart, sucking, tearing, rending. As he finished with them, he dropped the gnawed bones and the fur to the ground. He walked farther down the branch until he was only an arm’s length from Shadow. Then he peered at Shadow unselfconsciously, inspecting him with care and caution, from his feet to his head. There was rabbit blood on his chin and his chest, and he wiped it off with the back of his hand.

Shadow felt he had to say something. “Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” said the madman. He stood up on the branch, turned away from Shadow and let a stream of dark urine arc out into the meadow below. It went on for a long time. When he had finished he crouched down again on the branch.

“What do they call you?” asked Horus.

“Shadow,” said Shadow.

The madman nodded. “You are the shadow. I am the light,” he said. “Everything that is, casts a shadow.” Then he said, “They will fight soon. I was watching them as they started to arrive.”

And then the madman said, “You are dying. Aren’t you?”

But Shadow could no longer speak. A hawk took wing, and circled slowly upward, riding the updrafts into the morning.

Moonlight.