Addictive Rimeshade (8 page)

Looking around, I believe he has, mastered these shadows that is. He is the master of the shades, the coldest, iciest, rimeshade.

Slipping down the curved side of the tube we ride like a long lace of licorice, I let him hold my hand, walking down an off-shooting passage where the wind whistles so cold and shrill it's disturbing. The contrast is vast.

Chaffing his palm over the stubble on his head, as if agitated, he twists to face me while we're walking with our hands intertwined, him muttering, “You're not dressed appropriately. This will be a shock to you.”

I'm not dressed appropriately? I'm so overdressed I feel like I'm in a fat sweatsuit.

The passage narrows, the end in sight because the piceous ambiance has surrendered to twilight, the opening coming closer with every footfall, the breeze so chilling it's etching the skin off my face, my eyeballs are stinging, and I can't feel my nose.

Stepping onto a wide ledge, I'm awestruck. We're high up in a mountain, the world scrolled out before us in the silence of night. The sky is glazed with festive aqua, gleaming bright bands in long wakes across the cosmic vista, ribboning the night with wide swells of aurora borealis. It makes the snow glisten and glow, mirroring the sky. It's an alien world, one where the earth is blacker than coal, the underbrush and stones scarring the perfect white with black, turning the ground as far as the eye can see perfectly and depressingly monochrome. The only color is in the sky, and it's glorious.

I'm accustomed to cities and towns, where when you look down from up high, at night, every place looks like a constellation of stars. Our planet shines as luminously as the galaxy does, but we're too close to see the beauty, to map the constellations of city lights, to read the roads in between the way a sorcerer reads fate and personality from the blisters and lines on a palm.

The sky has a fever and she's burning down the night, she's the pyre on the sea of dreams, she's the daughter of Elysia and she's breathing her qualms over the spectrals of calm, ravishing the darkness with radiance so vivid it fires the imagination while simultaneously dousing passion.

It's soporific, better than strong ale after a wet cold day. It's like watching our own dream spun out like a treatise of energy, left to unravel across the utopian fields, planting seeds for the next light harvest.

And I think I've been hanging out with Yoda for too long. I'm not a minstrel, I'm the broken string. And I'm staring at a landscape scorched black with rage and powdered over with snow the way talc once was sprinkled to mask the stench of a sweaty wig.

“
Where are we?” I ask, finally sucking my focus away from the bitter environment to look up at my companion, back in his guise as a black haired hunter.

“
You're looking at the
Valley of Doom,” he smiles, and it's wry.

“
Beg your pardon, where?” I've never heard of it.

“
We're outside of Reykjavik. This valley is harsh, almost impossible to traverse, and it ends right here. We're standing above the Torfajokull glacier. This is a region of fire and ice. The land is deathly black because it's volcanic sand you see down there underneath the snow. It's alchemical to watch lava flow into ice.
” Stepping closer, closing his arms around me to cradle me against his front, he tucks his chin in the crook of my neck, sounding like a proud father when he says, “We have ice caves created by the steam of the hot springs bubbling up from below. The hot springs of Hvergelmir. This plane is covered in ash from the eruption of Mt Hekla, and we call the Valley of Doom, Dómadalur.”

“
And you live here?” I ask, aghast.

“
Sometimes, yes. It is one of my homes. I brought you here to keep you safe. There is much to tell you, but that's a tale for another day. Right now we need to get you warm, grab some shuteye, and we'll cover the rest after. First you must master ice the same way you have adopted my fire. Then you'll be ready for the tales of old, and new.”

I'm not sure what to make of that statement, other than he's right. I'm cold and could seriously use a strong drink or a scorching cup of coffee. He's warm, but he's not enough to stave off the iciness in the air.

It's bizarre to see lines and ranges in the snow, so black they are an anomaly to the powdered perfection masking its lack of the painter's palette. But the sky is glorious, the aurora having a wind buffering sound. It sounds angry which is at odds with its mesmerizing flares.

There's a tale here - here the magic is evil, the white writes on black, and once I cross that bridge there's no going back.

Chapter 9

Snake oil is slippery indeed

Use it as ink, not to drink

~  The Gemini Journal

Leug:

Watching her eyes, it strikes me that she's cried so much she has bleached her irises.

How much pain has she weathered to stare at this world with eyes rinsed of color? Is she so desperate to go unnoticed that instead she's turned herself into an anomaly through sheer willpower? Or are her eyes the living testament to her heritage, or perhaps to the pain she endured at the hands of Steven and Marcy Smith?

My life suddenly has more questions than answers. I must get her to slumber as I require time alone before introducing her to the rest of the family. Fenrir has located the desecrator of the temple and I'm keen to deliver karma directly, without a messenger to ferry my ire.

And yet, like my kindred (and familial nemeses), I hear her musings. She thinks ahead, she sees right through all illusion and glamor, and of that I am both jubilant and wary. It means I cannot hide a thought, a feeling, no slight or nuance will go unnoticed, and she records it all with eyes as faded as time.

She called me the master of shades. How did she know that? Master of Skadi to be exact, the master of every monochrome shade, both black and white. Skadi means shade, to cast shadow, to shield from light, from harm. I am her addictive rimeshade.

My soul is a black and white checkered board where the valkyries play hopscotch. They damned my children, they damned me, and now they send me this one. Why overlook a goddess because of patriarchy? Was that prudent, or was that the most fatal maneuver in this game yet?

If Fenrir is right, I'm currently looking into the eyes of the Trojan horse. She is living subterfuge, a live grenade thrown into the fray to destroy the son's system from the inside.

She speaks of books being spells, she is more right than wrong for it once was alchemy reserved for the elite few. Odin's book of the living is truly a book with consciousness, and regardless of the rumors you've heard there is no book of the dead.

The Egyptians attempted that one, instead they simply ended up creating portals to stare into psychotic fear. They found no peace in their knowledge, and all of it was to prepare for a god who is a zombie, raising his army of dead after he raises himself from the dead. If the gods cannot die, why then do they fear
Ragnarök
? Because they know
I
know they can die, but only by my hand or that of my bloodline. I am the balance they've sought to nullify. Hush money might have worked but they never did try to bribe my silence, instead they chose to obliterate my family and cast us all out of their precious Asgard. I'm
æ
sir too, lest they forget.

My god, my progenitor, he was the second. No one remembers the first. How convenient this propaganda is. How much more convenient is it that humans are so terribly susceptible to reverse psychology
and
propaganda.
I alone am your god.

Odin refused to be superseded or preceded, the masses recall only him as almighty. He is 'alone' as the heathens god, before the Christians burned down our holy churches to build theirs over the ashes, adopting our portals, our psychic signatures, renaming the same.

Odin being mankind's first god is partly true, but everyone forgets to ask, if you are ours, then pray tell who is
yours
? For to be god you'd first have to know a god to consider yourself one. Otherwise you'd just exist, and be happy in your existence, not requiring to enforce a pyramid scheme with you at the top, the one all look up to.

It stands to reason that you can only call yourself god if you've been forced to recognize one greater than yourself, one more powerful and omnipotent.
Everyone
forgets to ask, if you are ours, then pray tell who is
yours
?

I know this answer, I've already won this game of truth or dare, but I cannot educate or illuminate until it's into my enemy's eyes I stare.

And he comes.

The wrath is wretched, the wind is taunting, and the bones of this world shake their shields in the rattle of change.

She follows him. Why would an owl fly after an eagle?

When she comes, who will I be? Victim of fate, or player of her cards? I'm a gambler, and I've not lost yet. As they love to point out, I have the luck of the devil.

My children were cast out with me, yet Skadi hurt me with the toxic venom from my own son Nari. I know her kin come with the harii-shadow warriors, but again I surmise I shall not lose. This time
I
win. Not because I will engage in conflict, but because this time Odin can't stop me from revealing the truth.

Ewan, I lost my home and my status when your grandfather ousted me from his kingdom of 'heaven'. Asgard is reserved for the gods, even his legion do not enter it, they're forced to reside in Valhalla outside its gates, and nary were they pearly. They are gold. Gold and glorious like the fruit keeping the gods alive. Taking away the keeper of the
læraðr golden apples was my first transgression against 'god'.

I'm not sure quite how I got the blame for that one because I'm the one who got her back. It was Skadi's father who abducted Idun, he ended up dead because of it, Skadi was icy with rage, and I ended up alone in a cave with her feeding me poison. How she could marry Odin after that is beyond me. He left her without a father, tricked her into a marriage she didn't want, and in the end she found love for him even though we all knew she secretly had a thing for Baldr. My one consolation is I got to fertilize her first, before any of them ever did. Maybe that's the real reason why Odin had her torture me, to break that bond.

I was always so eager to please that it made me a good scapegoat. How much wisdom is in hindsight...

Odin doesn't forgive and he doesn't forget. That's why he has the book, it's not used by him to know the past or the future, it's his scorecard.

True to his name, wrath is his game. He yoked me with his own shame, and they chose to believe him. He's a pathetic god who doesn't warrant the title, except he gains it by default due to his lineage. It's a story the world knows too well, yet still they're afraid of hel. Ignorance is not bliss little bird, it clips wings and prevents flight. Why so? To keep his seidr might, and of it he's most possessive.

I must educate my v
argynja or she'll believe Ewan's warped version of the 'truth'. It's only truth because he thinks Odin is capable of telling the truth; if that's truth then I'm the galaxy and you all live in me.

Exactly. The cruel narcissist makes the devil look like a good guy. Why does this pathetic population,
his
creation, believe he is benevolent and loving, that he has their best interests at heart? How did time twist his visage into that of a saintly guardian?

And now I'm worrying a hole in my head for fear that the liars and distorters will turn her eyes away from
me
and to his kindred. That when faced with the truth she won't want to hear it, instead deafening her ears, embracing lies simply because they are familiar. They'll slay her to wear her fur for battleskin; they can never protect or respect her as I will. They're the Úlfhéðnar
-berserker
legion and they have no business touching a she-wolf.

This one is mine, you hear me! I'm a
shifter
, not a
disguiser,
and fuck you all but I was never a trickster either
.
The difference is blatant as much as it is subtle.

Pointing out flaws is not trickery. Why is the one who seeks to remove the cataracts from the masses the one who is accused of treachery? Why cling so desperately to the anchor of ignorance.

How can they not see they have all drowned in the sea of deceit, where hope wallows with hollow eyes so it cannot recognize defamation. He blames me for trickery, which is bold, for if ever there was a parental source of it, he is it.

Bloodbrother? Thor are you hearing me? You and your goats and your uselessness without gloves, stop shouting through the sky, you cannot fly, you are just an errand boy for his infernal majesty. Your father, the one who lied from the very beginning.

He turned best friends into immortal enemies, and yet you don't question his motives. None of you warrant the title god; that kind of mindless faith has ruined this world and its people.

*

Lara:

It takes another hour on the moving tube before we reach our destination. Knowing we're close to a volcano makes sense of the heat. How odd that underground is so warm when outside the temperature is brutally numb with below freezing winds.

Leug's labyrinth has me fascinated. I believe he is who he says he is, who I guessed he was, but what I cannot fathom is why a god would waste his time with the likes of me. I'm sure it must be easy enough for him to get laid, and even then I was willing, but he didn't have to bring me home. He owes me nothing, and quite frankly I prefer that dynamic. No strings attached means no one gets hurt. Not that this feels like a real home, it feels more like a dungeon of rock. What is his motivation? If it's to impress me, I'm not. I'd rather be in my own space, where I make the rules.

The tube keeps moving through the tunnel while Leug stands with me in front of three enormous doors. They're mammoth, as high as the cavern we're deposited in by the Leug train.

The doors are wooden, pale as fear, elaborately carved with snake dragons and a pretty woman with cleavage deeper then the Grand Canyon.

I feel like I'm standing at the front door to hell and Satan will be answering when we ring the doorbell. Not that I think they have a doorbell, a barrier this ominous requires a hefty door knocker, (a guillotine perhaps?), but I can't spot one.

Good thing there's no mail slot for the post, I imagine flipping the flap on that will get you a pin in your eye for snooping.

Leug changes, becoming larger than life, using his new form to shove the giant doors open. My feet refuse to move while I gawp at the changeling.

Holy cow that's big!

I'd heard he was a shapeshifter, but hearing a tale and seeing it in the living flesh is still blowing my mind. The little display of shifting in the kitchen could easily have been shrugged off given time, when distance to an event makes one question ones own recollection, but now I'm gaping at him, ready to scream.

This is the stuff of nightmares.

Glancing away, averting my stare, trying very hard to rein in my runaway heartbeat and imagination, to summon a semblance of courage, I see the end of the stagecoach slither into the adjoining tunnel. It's no tube or train, it's a gigantic snake! Oh my fucking god! We rode a viper! A snake that big, shit what does it even eat? We're just fodder in here! Am I to be dinner, the sport for the granddaddy of every serpent chaffing scales over this earth? A snake! Oh my god! Its scales are bigger than my head! Am I here for the worst game of hide and seek? There's no hiding from that thing!

Does it have babies? Forget this door opening to hell, I'm in it, for sure! Haydes has lava and volcanoes, and ice-burn and hundreds of enormous asps multiplying to swallow you alive and squeeze your bones to a pasty pulp, shitting you out to be used for the high priest's warpaint; ergo
here
! This is it and they don't have a welcome mat, or a fuck you mat, or a secret knock, or –

“
Lara, you panic too much. If you have a concern, voice it, or you'll force me to invade your privacy to allay your fears.”

“
A
concern
!” I shout at him, snapping my focus back to Leug. “
That
is not a concern, that's a fucking gargantuan problem. No, scratch that, it's a colossal problem!”

Shrinking midway back to a semblance of my idea of normal, he smirks down at me, the danger in his eyes belying his congenial expression, “That is my son, and he is
not
a problem.”

Withering against the Grecian-temple sized doorframe, I wish fervently that I could escape the way a phantom can.

I want out!

Oh my word, he's a serpent! He's the father of Leviathan himself! He's the evil one after all! I'm stuck in his burrow inside rock blacker than kohl, with no escape, for what....? Why the fuck am I here!

Visibly shaking, I point at him, seeming futile in the face of so much tall and wide and able, built like the original demon, all muscle and strength and gorgeous good looks to con the stupid girls lost in glades at full moon because someone decided they just
had
to have mushrooms in tonight's stew, sending the innocent out to cloven groves so old forked tongue himself can come to whisper his silver sweet nothings into a willing ear and seduce them into thinking this won't end badly. It always ends badly! I should
know
that, goddamn these walk a mile in my shoes-isms are getting tiresome. I've walked in the bad luck shoes for so long I've worn the heels down to stumps.