“Anita," she says, a faint spell curling the corners of her lips.
“Thor told me about you,” I say, somewhat awkwardly.
“Indeed.”
“So. Uh. What is it like?”
“What is what like, child?”
“Being a goddess?”
Her eyes brighten a little in the moonlight. “You are an uneducated little thing, even your own secrets remain hidden to you.”
Well, that seems like a rude response. Maybe goddesses lack social graces because the rest of us are beneath them. Maybe talking to me is like talking to a worm. I think I would be more polite to a worm, though.
“What are you mulling?”
“If I would be nice to a worm.”
“Seems like you might know what being a goddess is like after all,” she smiles.
“But you’re here, all alone in this house. It seems boring. If I were a goddess, I would be out doing cool goddess things. I’d probably try to rule over something.”
“I am sure you would,” she says patiently.
“Do you love Thor?”
“Like a son.”
“Me too. Not like a son. But I love him.”
“How nice for you.”
I am shivering. I wrapped myself in a coat I found at the front door as I went out. I think it might be Thor’s. It smells like him.
“What do you do?”
She looks down at me from her great height, and for a moment I see her not as a woman, but as a tree, stretching from the Earth to the Heavens above. She’s more like a node of connection than a person, a being of great, ancient power. She branches. She creaks. There are a few places where her ice cold bark drips with rich sap. She is wounded. She is perfect. She is eternal.
Asking her what she does is like asking what the sky does. She does not need to do. She just needs to be.
“Woah!”
“Indeed," she says.
“I suppose my concerns seem petty to you.”
“They are transient, but important. You have been brought to a place of great power, Anita. There are forces all around you, confluences of fate and intention that will wrap themselves around you and use you like a puppet if you are not careful. You should listen to Thor, and worry less about love. It will not serve you here. This is not a place for romance. It is a place for the dead.”
I stare at her, and as I stare, her pretty face begins to wither away until I am looking into the dark holes of a skull. I scream, but the wind takes it away. I am alone. I am lost. I am facing my end…
***
I open my eyes to morning. I am in the bed Thor left me in. Alone. That was a very powerful dream, though I am not convinced it was a dream at all.
I get up, put yesterday’s clothes on, and go downstairs in the hopes I’ll find Thor. I end up following my nose, which is directed by my stomach to find food. At the end of a hot, buttery trail of scent, I find everything I am looking for.
“Sleep well?”
He asks the question while sitting behind a stack of toast the likes of which only people in eating contests have ever seen.
“Yep. You?”
“Fine,” he says.
I take some toast and butter it in the heavy silence that inevitably follows a tiff. He's not talking. I’m not talking. We’re just aggressively chewing. Sakthi isn’t here, which is probably good seeing as she's a goddess ghost tree who haunts my nightmares and warns of doom. That would be a bit much over breakfast.
“Coffee?” He offers.
“Please,” I accept.
We may be in Norway, but this is all very British and incredibly awkward.
“I do not know what to do with you,” he announces at length. “You seem to have no natural conscience at all. This is a place of last resort. If I cannot tame you here, there will be nowhere you can be controlled.”
“Maybe you should worry less about controlling me.”
“I’d love to, but history has shown you cannot be trusted.”
“What am I going to do here?”
“I don't know,” he says. “That’s what I am afraid of.”
“Morning!”
We both startle as a blue haired man with a reckless grin walks in wearing boxer shorts and a vest with a dragon on it. He looks like he’s just rolled out of bed. He's obviously very much at home. Maybe another one of Skathi’s children?
“Cosmos. What are you doing here?”
Cosmos, apparently that’s his name, yawns. “I came to see Skathi for some career advice.”
“You’re supposed to be dealing with Fleisch.”
“Who says I haven’t?”
“So you’ve conquered the trade in angel blood?”
Cosmos drops into an open seat next to me and winks, ignoring Thor’s question entirely. Unlike Thor, who occupies vast amounts of space with his breadth and presence, Cosmos is leaner, but I’d wager no less powerful or dangerous. There’s something mysterious about him. “Hello,” he says. “You must the one driving Thor mad. Nice to meet you.”