Modern Goddess: Trapped by Thor (Book One) (19 page)

Thor half-swam half-walked my way. He didn't
bother saying anything. He didn't bother chortling at his victory.
He didn't bother telling me I was a total nong of a goddess for
being captured by sea monsters more often than most humans bothered
getting petrol.

He was worried. I knew he was worried. I
wasn't deriving this fact from the way his features were drooped or
stiffened. I knew the whole of the situation for what it was: a
tight, nervous, fear.

My head began to hurt again.

“
No more games. Straight to
Asgard,” Thor said. It was the first time I’d heard him just say
something. He didn't boom it, he didn't thunder it, and he didn't
laugh it. He simply spoke.

For my part, I pressed two fingers into my
forehead and tried to push away the heavy pain settling there.

A pain that told me this situation was
only going to get worse.

I didn't bother asking how we were going to
get to Asgard – whether we were going to retrofit his yacht and set
it bombing along the sea until it slipped into inter-dimensional
space.

Things were happening too quickly. The pace
of the situation was arcing up like some great crackle of lightning
as it darted its way down to Earth.

As the head god of two-and-a-half
pantheons, Thor knew secrets I could never know. Maybe he was privy
to the secret great-god bus timetable. Perhaps he had a jetpack
tucked into his belt next to Mjollnir. Or maybe he was genuinely
good at flying – good in the way that could get us from Earth,
through space (though not in the literal sense), and to the home of
the Nordic gods.

We didn't open a door in the seabed, or spin
around in circles until the centrifugal pressure created caused a
nice wormhole. No. Thor sung. I don't mean he cracked out Neil
Diamond while under the ocean dressed in full Nordic-god garb. He
didn't hum a catchy ad jingle.

He sung a single note. One resounding,
ear-splitting, vibrating, oscillating, shuddering note. He hardly
opened his mouth when he did it, too. It was only by the fixed look
of concentration on his face that I knew he was the one producing
the hum.

Mjollnir started to hum the note, too.
Though, that wasn’t right. It wasn't that Mjollnir began to sing
the same tune – the hammer was resonating with it. It was somewhat
like striking a key on a piano in a room full of other pianos, and
hearing them all begin to play the same note.

It was spreading. First Mjollnir, then the
rocks around us, then the sand. My own body began to pick up and
translate the vibration too. The water all around us shuddered with
the same tone.

It all... shifted. The note was all it
took. No jetpacks, no wormholes, no god-bridges. One
consistently-sung, powerfully held note changed the location around
us to Asgard.

One note.

I felt the depth of the tone move through
me. It felt like I was being pushed backwards from every point in
space. Except I wasn't moving anywhere. It also felt as if every
single part of me – every single particle, every single detail –
was all chiming into the same, primordial, powerful song.

Suddenly reality shifted, and the sea
slipped away.

I noticed the glittering, great buildings
before me. I noticed the ice-white path we stood on. I noticed the
turquoise-blue sky above shot through with colors no mortal could
see. I noticed the great tower before us – the one that twisted and
spiraled like a double helix of DNA as it rose into the impossible
sky.

I’d never been to Asgard. I wasn't a Nordic
god.

The details... were divine.

The place was still and yet was shifting
through space at the speed of light. That, or it was made of
nothing more and nothing less than light itself. It wasn't the kind
of light you could wave your hand through or use to illuminate your
kitchen or the book you were reading. It was the light that formed
objects. It was matter. Unlike the matter that made up Earth and
most of the rest of the universe, it was matter that hadn’t
forgotten its illuminated origins.

Whenever I shifted my head, I caught
rainbows of color glinting off every building and window.

Thor began to stride forward towards the
great twisting tower before us. “Come, Details,” he spoke, but the
arrogance didn’t shift through his voice anymore. All it was, was
loud.

I pushed forward, though the effort of
doing so pulled me away from the details that were swirling around
and through me. I didn't want to move, I didn't want to follow. I
wanted to watch, I wanted to take in every feature there
was.

“
It will all be there when
we are finished,” he intoned, “Trust me, it is forever.”

We walked along the path and up into the
great tower, though through most of it I was lost in a daze. Here,
here I could count the rays of the sun. The rays were trapped
within each object. Each leaf of each plant, each side of each
building, all was light.

Being a small-time goddess, I didn’t get
to hang out much at the homes of the powerful divinities. Here I
was, walking through Asgard of all places....

“
Details,” Thor rumbled from
my side, “Pay attention: you are about to walk into a
pillar.”

I blinked up at the pillar Thor was
indicating – the one I was about a centimeter from. I smiled back
at it, a touch giddy.

Thor sighed heavily. “Why do you have to be
the goddess of details?” he mumbled to himself. “Couldn't you be
something manageable, like forests or knit wear?”

I didn't answer. I stared up at the great
ceiling above us and counted the light.

As I did, I felt the divinity and power
swell within me.

“
Stop gorging yourself,
Details.” Thor shook his head, beard glinting in the light, eyes
shining. “While the pillar won't mind if you walk into it, step on
father's beard, and we'll see how many details you can pull in
before he stabs you with his spear.”

I laughed melodically.

I sounded like I was on drugs.

The doors before us – the gilded, arched,
carved ones that depicted, in unimaginable detail, all the realms
of the gods – opened. They didn’t grind, nor scratch against the
floor. They flowed like breath on the breeze.

They revealed a simple room. A dark room.
Black, save for a single throne in the center. On the throne sat
Odin, one golden eye glinting out through the gloom.

The contrast from the room of light outside
was startling.

The act of standing before a staring,
hardly-amused, mostly furiously-annoyed looking Odin was
sobering.

As the doors closed behind us and the light
was cut off, I felt my pall of wonder close with it. I rapidly
became aware of where I was and who I stood before.

I sucked in a breath though there wasn't
technically air in Asgard.

Odin, sitting on his simple throne, was
all I could see. He looked mad. Furious in that way that only a
king of the gods can. His gaze promised some world-destroying fury
and smashed-up frost giants.

“
What have you done?” he
asked, voice a slice through space.

I shivered and shook. My lips jutted
forward, but I didn't speak a word.

Did Odin think this was all my fault? Did he
think I’d somehow organized to be kidnapped by a range of sea
monsters and evil gods? Did he think I’d brought it all on myself
by centuries of working for the Immigration Office?

“
Father,” Thor began, voice
so sedate and softened I hardly recognized it.

“
Thor, Zeus, Jupiter – what
have you done? How did you let this happen?” Odin shifted forward
in his chair, his single eye not directed anywhere in particular,
but somehow directed everywhere at once.

I realized he wasn't talking to me. I slowly
slid my eyes to the side to stare at Thor. His face was ashen, his
gaze directed towards his feet.

“
You let him escape. You had
him, yet you let him go,” Odin's voice scythed through the paltry
distance between us.

Loki. That's what he was talking about.
Odin was admonishing Thor for letting his wayward former best buddy
escape. Odin was genuinely annoyed at that. Loki had confirmed on
more than one occasion that he was going to bring down Asgard –
Odin included – at Ragnarok. For a god who had lived as long as
Odin/Cronos/Saturn, I doubted the guy was too pleased at his
impending doom.

Thor didn't answer.

“
How did we let it come to
this?” Odin rested one arm on the side of his throne, one on his
knee, and stared down at Thor. “How have we let it come to this?”
he repeated.

I had the distinct impression his words
belied far more than I could imagine.

Thor lifted his chin. “I don't know,” he
answered.

Odin let his own head dip, and when he
brought it back up, his single eye stared fixedly my way. “Goddess
Officina,” he intoned powerfully.

I nodded, but didn't answer.

He let the silence draw on for some time,
enough time for me to grow powerfully uncomfortable.

“
You are involved,” he said,
“Beyond what I once thought.” He leaned back in his chair. “They
seem to want you for some other purpose.”

“
Want me?” I found the
courage to speak up. The topic was one of particular importance to
me, after all.

“
They have plans for you,”
he clarified without clarifying the situation at all.

“
Plans? What plans? Who are
they?” I stopped myself from flapping my hands around in a frazzle,
though the sentiment was there in my high-pitched tone. Being told
by one of the oldest and greatest gods of Earth that 'they' had
plans for me wasn't a comfortable, peachy experience.

“
The ones who are rising,”
Odin mumbled, hand still resting on his knee.

Oh, those guys...? Rather than point out
to Odin that his definition wasn't illuminating, I let my eyes
widen.

“
You, I feel, are at the
center of this. They require your power to fulfill their ends,”
Odin continued, his single eye glinting and sparking.

Oh... that wasn't good. It did explain the
unusual number of kidnappings in my recent past, though.

I took a small swallow.

“
I should have foreseen
this,” Odin appeared to admonish himself. His gaze shifted from his
one outward-staring eye, disappearing behind his eye patch to stare
at the world within. “I didn’t. We cannot, however, let them
succeed. They threaten our existence.”

This had gone way beyond me being the
mildly-disliked Immigration Officer. I was just the small-time
goddess of details! I didn't have magical weapons, and it took a
great deal for me to muster enough strength to fight off one measly
sea monster. I was hardly likely to be the center of some evil plot
to destroy the gods.... Not unless it was by systematically
demoralizing them every time I rejected their visa applications to
do inappropriate things on human beaches.

I stared up at Odin, not wanting to point
out that he had the wrong goddess here. He meant Artemis or Freya
or Venus – someone who stood for something greater than a couple of
details and facts.

“
We cannot let them win.
They will take all.” Odin sat back in his chair, though slumped was
a more accurate description. His body was heavy with a great
visible weariness.

Whatever could make a powerful god weary was
heavy. More than enough to squash me flat.

I looked over at Thor. He seemed caught up
in something. A feeling, a notion, a possibility, a potential. Some
imagined circumstance was playing across his face like light
playing across the surface of the ocean.

My head started to hurt again.

I wasn't good with situations like this
(not that many would be all that great when it came to being stuck
in the middle of god-destroying plots, apart from German
philosophers). I couldn't deal with the unsaid or mysterious. I
needed facts, I needed details, I needed information. I couldn't
hope for a vague impression. I couldn't stand back and try to form
the whole picture from the wisps of mystery that lapped all around
me.

“
What is going on?” I found
my voice again, pressing a hand to my forehead as I spoke. “Why me?
I'm a small-time goddess of details. I don't have power—“ I
began.

“
All have power.” Odin
stared straight ahead. “In all there is the same. Every divinity is
divine. We are all equal – we are all gods.”

It was a strangely socialist statement for
a king, and it was one that didn't ring true for me. Though I did
know that, yes, technically all gods were god-like, I still knew I
could never hope to have as much power as Thor, Odin, or
Loki.

That
's when Odin closed his one remaining
eye. “A god does not make themselves, they are made. The belief of
their followers endows them with meaning – with power. When the
belief shifts, so too does the power.”

Was Odin suggesting that, all of a sudden,
the people of Earth would start worshiping details like never
before? Was he suggesting there would be a sudden and explosive
proliferation of weather-watching nuts or maths-loving boffins?
Would people everywhere start trawling through pages of computer
code and staring at each pixel of every picture their computer
screens offered? Would gallery-goers start counting how many brush
strokes made up their favorite art works? Would bankers nip into
their vaults to count every single note by hand?