Classics Mutilated (35 page)

And the pain was just beginning.

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I arrived at the school early the next morning. This is because the hours I keep are my own, and I refuse to be told when to arrive anywhere. Which occasionally leads to awkward moments where I arrive too early, or even worse, on time, without aiming to do so.

I went to the school's administration office, where a heavyset woman with a braid the thickness of my forearm looked me up and down.

"I don't recognize you. New one, then, yah?"

"Yes, yes," I said, taking sudden interest in my boots as I felt her eyes looking me up and down. 

She handed my class assignments to me and I walked off, paying no heed to her parting platitudes and empty words about how I should do my best to fit in. Were I not trying to keep away the attention of the Asgardians who wanted my head, I might well have fit my sword in her back. Had I been able to keep my sword, that is. She confiscated it from me before I headed off, telling me that weaponry was allowed only in the hands of the teaching staff, not the students. Already this school's rules were proving tough to take. Perhaps I would have been better served to follow my original plan of disguising myself as a fish and swimming in streams to avoid the vengeful eyes of Heimdall and his ilk back home.

My first class was Olde English. The teacher spat out my name with distrust as she read it upon my class assignment. "Loki Odinson." I felt all eyes from the other students on me. O, for the ability to use my magicks so that I might transform their eyes to stones, that I might then cast each and every one into the river. 

Our reading assignments in the class were handed out. As I exited the class, I assumed that the minor trickery required for me to turn it to smoldering ash in my palm would raise no suspicions. 

A voice surprised me as I brushed the ashes from my hand. "Hey, the teacher called you ‘Loki Odinson,' right? Hi, Loki Odinson, I'm Eilif!"

Gods help me. Upon turning to face this intrusive wretch, I saw that he had to be a departed soul who resided in Valhalla, the land where dead warriors were welcomed upon their passing. Eilif was obviously here as part of the school's exchange-student program. His face and hands were disfigured from burns he no doubt suffered in his final battle upon this plane. In Valhalla, such a visage would appear healed, for the warrior's shade was returned to its most beautiful upon acceptance into the hall of the dead. But here, in this school, his appearance was distracting and rather repulsive.

"Just ‘Loki,'" I said, doing my best to avert my eyes from his scarred countenance. "Although I'd prefer you not only not call me by name but also forget my name and countenance altogether."

"Hah! Good one. Anyway, I'm Eilif!"

"Yes, so it would seem, you are."

"They sometimes call me Eilif the Lost, but I'm not that bad with directions. I mean, the fire I walked into seemed like it sprung up out of nowhere. Lots of fires have sprung up lately. Seems like ever since beautiful Balder the Brave was killed by recent treachery that fire and pain have been around every corner. Well, maybe not fire here, since it's so cold and snowy and cloudy but still, wow, yeah."

If Eilif's previous utterance were to be transcribed, let me just tell you that there is no way a scribe could portray the speed with which one word followed another. Eilif needed to earn his nickname and get lost ere I pluck his tongue from his charred face and feed it to a toad of nondiscriminating palette. 

The droning timber of his voice quickly became naught but an unintelligible buzzing in my head as it soon was apparent that he required neither response nor acknowledgment in order to keep merrily prattling on.

Eilif and I shared another class, and his incessant talking continued throughout. Following that, we headed in separate directions and I thought I was through with him. But unfortunately, as I later made way to the many spits where fire-roasted lunch awaited us, he approached me once again.

It had been a long day already and not yet half-done, and the constant feeling of scorn from teachers and students alike had been mentally exhausting. I craved neither food nor the companionship of Eilif, who was as interested in explaining to me the breed of goat we were to consume as I was in trying to tune out his voice. 

It was then that my aches, my hunger, my loathing for both myself and all others ... all of these discomforts left my body in a flash, for it was there in the lunchroom at that moment that I first noticed
them
. A group of mysterious strangers across the lunching area. The rest of the world seemed to turn insubstantial and gray in comparison to what I now saw.

There were four students all hunched together, keeping their distance from everyone else. Every one of them possessed a near-translucent skin tone, as pale as anyone yet to be spirited away to Valhalla's halls. Their hair colors and body types varied greatly, yet there was something about them that made them all seem the same. I couldn't quite put my finger on it. Had I been able to, I would've saved myself the grief to come.

The smallest of them all stood a foot taller than anyone else within sight. They all had dark eyes, with deep shadows under those ebony eyes. I was nigh mesmerized by what I saw, but it wasn't because of their overall appearance.

No, I stared because their icy faces were inhumanly beautiful, like visions glimpsed in an oracle's reflecting pools. One in particular, a female. They all bore the visage of godlike beings. Yet I was myself a northern god, and familiar with the surrounding pantheons. Which begged the question ... 

"Who
are
they?" I said in a breathless tone.

By this time, Eilif and I had been joined by other students he knew. One of them was a female fire-demon named Surty, another a lowly Viking child. They ignored my query; instead, Surty spoke at length about being here in Jotunheim as part of the advance scout for some invasion or other. If I had a gold coin for every time I heard someone talk about their intent to invade somewhere, I could swim in a pond-full of gold. Besides, I could not be bothered to listen to her when there was a much more captivating scene displayed in front of me. 

Surty changed her tactic, moving from talk of impending war to a subject that actually interested me—the answer to my question of just who was the bedeviling creature in front of me. She said, "They're the Geirrods. Those blondes are Grid and Griep, the thin one is Porr, and that brunette," she paused for effect, "is Gjalpa."

I ran the name through my head.
Gjalpa
.

"They all live together with Geirrodr and his wife in the northern shadow of Yggdrasil."

"They don't look related," I said.

"Oh, they're not." Surty had clearly grown bored with this conversation, and she absentmindedly melted the leftover chicken bones in her grasp as she spoke. "Some say they moved here years ago. Some say they've always been here. Geirrodr adopted all of them, wherever they're from."

As we spoke, I glanced again at the group of over-tall strangers. From across the room, Gjalpa appeared to turn her head and stare at me. Not just look in my direction, but into mine own eyes. Is that ... is that even possible, that she should notice an outcast such as I? 

Well, let me correct that—of course it's possible that she would notice me. For am I not still Loki? But regardless of my opinion of myself, I quickly turned away. When I looked back a moment later, she and her group were gone.

"Time to get going," Surty said. "Got to study. Schoolwork before making war." She wandered off with her friends, leaving me alone with my thoughts. And Eilif.

"Where you headed next, lemme see!" He grabbed my class schedule from my hand. "Ahh, you've got Metallurgy next, same with me. C'mon, I can walk you there. I'll show my nickname isn't accurate any more! Eilif the
Found
, I am!"

I prayed that Heimdall didn't hear the sound of my eyes rolling from here to Asgard, but it wasn't out of the question.

In the Metallurgy class, my luck improved when Eilif drifted away to sit with others he knew. For an anonymous and disfigured dead Viking on loan to the school from Valhalla, he certainly seemed to know a vast array of people. He took a seat in the back of the room, his endless prattle wafting away from my ears as I headed toward the one remaining open seat. It was then that I noticed the person occupying the seat next to where I was headed—
Gjalpa Geirrod
.

I took my seat next to her. As I sat, I turned to look at her. At her shoulder, anyway—her actual head sat at least another head's length above mine. These were not small people, the Geirrods. 

She turned away from me, and her frosty demeanor was palpable. 

As the teacher, a hideous dwarf who I could scarcely stand to lay eyes on, began his lesson, I noted that Gjalpa's hand was frozen in a fist. The waves of coldness continued to emanate from her. Had I somehow so wronged her with my furtive glances earlier that she was filled with cold loathing for me? Or was this normal behavior for her? My reputation, my recent misdeed in Asgard ... those could not have followed me here so quickly, could they?

I dared not speak to her until she relaxed her fist. 

This continued on for the duration of the class. The disgusting dwarf spoke much, danced around animatedly as he spoke of smelting steel, and did his level best to keep the class engaged. I paid his foul self no attention whatsoever. Despite the perceptible chill I felt, sweat escaped my brow in a trickle and I prayed to my mother that Gjalpa not notice my discomfort. 

Finally, the clang releasing us from our lessons sounded. Better to have poisonous venom dripped on my face for all eternity than to have to experience that awkwardness again. Gjalpa arose before the bell could finish chiming and quickly exited the class.

"Loki." It was Eilif, already at my side. These people moved quickly. "Wow, did you pierce Gjalpa's heart with a mistletoe arrow or what?"

"What?! Of—of course not, why would you ask such a thing? And with such a choice of weapon? I ... whatever do you mean?"

"Hey, take it easy," he said. "I've just never seen her act like that before, that's all."

So this was not her normal behavior. I carried home that small comfort.

The night was a long one for me. My dog had yet to be sent to me, and I missed his company. But I became even more dismayed when I replayed Gjalpa's bizarre behavior over and over in my head. She didn't know me well enough to behave in such a manner. 

I was also troubled by the fact that this bothered me. I have e'er been alone but not lonely. Until now. Loki, the One, the ever-present, the independent trickster-god, could not escape the pangs of loneliness that washed over him. Er, me. The barn floor was especially uncomfortable this night, and sleep was long in coming. 

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The next day was better ... and worse. All night, I dreaded Gjalpa's angry glances to come the next day. I longed to confront her and demand to know what her problem was. It seemed somehow important to know.

It turned out that my sleepless night was for naught, as she wasn't in school at all. None of the Geirrods were. It was especially disheartening to realize this since the sun broke through a bit, making the day rather pleasant, for a land in the throes of a year-long third winter, that is.

Gjalpa and her adopted family didn't attend school the rest of the week. 

The following week, walking across the meadow to my Armament class, I noticed the Geirrods gathered around the chariot parking area, feeding their horses. They joked and laughed with one another. In short, they looked like normal kids. Taller by far than the others, yes, but lighter of spirit than I saw upon my first introduction to them. I wondered if my great sense of loneliness was what caused me to project such strange personality traits on Gjalpa upon meeting her.

Gjalpa turned suddenly, again staring across the field and, seemingly, directly into my eyes. 

Even worse, she suddenly began walking this way.

I hesitated for a moment, turning this way and that, pondering which way to go just long enough for her to appear in front of me, cutting off any escape option. Giantesses can cover a lot of ground very quickly, I noted mentally.

"Hello," she said. Her voice was like the beating of a snow owl's wings across a crisp winter's night. Unsure of myself in her presence, I said nothing.

"Hello," she repeated, not acknowledging my awkwardness. "My name is Gjalpa Geirrod. I didn't have a chance to introduce myself before. You must be ... Loki."

"H-how do you know my name? I mean, why did you call me Loki?"

"Well, in class when you sat by me, the professor called you that name. "

"Ahh, right. That vile, disgusting dwarf."

She smiled. "Yes, the teacher. You raised your hand when he referred to you as ‘Loki,' so it seemed reasonable to assume that that was indeed your name."

"In-indeed." Stupid stupid stupid. I brought my gaze up to her face, an action which required me to crane my neck nearly to its breaking point. It was then I noticed her eyes.

"Did you ... did you go sleepless last night?" As soon as I asked the question, I regretted it. Stupid stupid stupid.

"No," she said. Her eyes were blazing red right now, a contrast to the deep black the first day I saw her. I noticed she clenched her hand into a fist again. But despite that implied threat of violence upon my person, or perhaps because of it, I felt a sense of calm around Gjalpa. Calm like I had rarely known in all my days.

We spoke not again of her changing eye color—really, for one such as I who could alter his physical appearance into any living creature, what difference did variable eye color make? Our conversation continued on.

"It's good news about the snow, isn't it?"

"Not really," I said.

"You don't like the cold? You'd think that nearly a full calendar's turn of the same weather might have acclimated you."

"It's ... not my favorite," I said. I wanted to be more forthcoming with this person. I wanted to tell her how I felt a connection with her already, but I dared not say more. Yet.