The Path of Ravens (Asgard vs. Aliens Book 1) (29 page)

Like the last, this kiss ebbs, as did even the
great wave which swept away Atlantis. When it has finished, we stand
panting, I through slack jaw, she through clenched teeth, looking at
one another as  we sometimes did when we stood as mock
opponents. Her hand finds the collar of my shirt, but this time it is
not to throw me into mud. She marches toward the stairs, pulling me
along after her. In truth, she only pulls me one step, for after
that, I run. We ascend together and race to her bed, where we partake
of an activity that neither of us has been party to in this lifetime,
in these bodies.

That evening in Vanaheim, a maiden is unmade,
willingly and in total silence, and a vision of the future edges
closer to reality.

***

I awaken in a half-empty bed. Gaeira's. It was
real, then, no dream.

She is gone. The cock crows. The sky outside her
window is the pale yellow of Vanaheim's dawn. I rise,  dress,
leave Gaeira's room and poke my head into my own chamber, her late
brother's. Finding no sign of her there, I pause and listen, not that
I would be likely to hear any sound made by her, unless she so willed
it. I hear nothing, and being reluctant to snoop behind other closed
doors, I head down the stairs.

The first person I encounter, to my dismay, is
Dalla. I cannot turn back now, and so continue my descent whilst
scanning the hall for the one I hoped to see. But Gaeira is not here,
only Dalla, who sits at a table peeling and dicing root vegetables.
She looks up at me, and I smile as though there were no difference
between this dawn and the ones preceding it.

"Good morning, Dalla," I say to her on
the floor of the great hall.

"Highness," she greets me, peeling.

"I thought today was a rest day," I
say.

"We still must eat."

I come to the table, standing across from her,
feeling intently the need to maintain the illusion that I remain a
proper guest. "You should let us fend for ourselves for a day,"
I say. "We would manage. If barely."

Dalla chuckles, but I sense it is for another
reason. "Yes," she says distantly. She aims her knife at
the seat across from her. "You might at least offer to help."

"Of course." I hide my dismay at being
so waylaid by her, and I sit. Among the peels I find another small
knife and begin doing as she does.

I have been at the task for but a few moments
before Dalla says, without looking up, "I know what you've
done."

I stop—both peeling and breathing.
"What... what did I do?"

"What did you do?" she mocks, and
chuckles once more. "You took something of Gaeira's. No, I
shouldn't say that. I should say she gave it to you."

I cannot move, cannot speak. I know not what to
do. Deny it, and make of myself an even poorer guest? Or show
courage, at least, by admitting the transgression? I have not yet
decided when Dalla snorts and mutters words which cut the unseen rope
strangling me.

"It's about time," she says. "Pfft!
'Pain in my side,' indeed...!"

An immense wave of relief washes over me. I
first resume breathing, then peeling. Speech takes a short while
longer to return.

Dalla angles her bright eyes up at me and adds,
"I approve of the recipient." Returning to her work, she
snorts. "A prince, no less! Her father would not have approved,
mind you. But then, he hardly met a man he didn't hate." She
frowns, reflectively. "Harsh and unloving, that man was, with
his own daughter above all. His death caused scant change in her, you
know. Gaeira has ever been as you see her now. Even before her vow,
it was a rare thing to hear her voice in this hall."

It greatly surprises me to hear this. I had just
assumed that a daughter who would seek to avenge her father with such
ferocity as Gaeira has must have dearly loved and been loved by him.

Curiosity restores my voice. "And her
brother?" I ask.

"Quite unlike his father," Dalla
answers, waggling her little knife. "Peel!" she orders me,
for I have unthinkingly stopped. I resume. "I said Gigi never
talked much. Except to him. They were close as any siblings ever have
been. It pained them to be apart. When the war came, Gigi wanted to
go off to it, with him and her father. She was a fierce fighter, to
be sure, but young. Her father wouldn't hear of it. Nor her brother.
Didn't want to be distracted by constantly watching out for her. And
so the men went. And they never came back."

Dalla chuckles. "I tell you all this
because she will not. And well, because it's nice to have some ears
that aren't Afi's for a change. And besides, what's my job as a
nursemaid if not to stick my nose where it doesn't belong? But now
I've said enough." Shaking her head rapidly, she reaches over
and plucks the peeling knife from my hand. "You had better get
away. Off with you, before I start telling you things you really have
no business knowing, like the time I caught her— Ah! No, Dalla,
shut your mouth!" She points her knife at me. "And you'll
regret ever calling her Gigi, so don't dare try it. Even I can't call
her that to her face anymore. But it is ever how I think of her."

She shoos me away. I rise from the table and
start to leave.

"Wait!" she calls after me. I turn. "I
made you something. A feeble gift for His Highness, and of infinitely
less value than the present already received, but still—"
She points with her little blade. "It's on that table there."

My good eye goes to the indicated spot, where I
see what appears to be a handful of leather cord. I walk toward it
and pick it up. It is an eyepatch, a simple one but tough and
well-made from thick, scarred leather.

"You honor me, Dalla. Thank you."

"Put it on already," she orders
absently.

Removing the cloth which has been covering my
by-now bloodless eye socket, I tie on the patch and adjust it until
it sits as comfortably as it will. It rubs a little on my cheekbone,
but surely I am just not yet used to it, nor it to me.

"Thank you," I say again to Dalla, not
only for the patch but for her acceptance of a stranger whom she
would have every right to send packing. I hope she knows.

"'Tis nothing," she replies. "I
suppose you want to know where Gaeira has gone. Well, if I'm not
wrong,  she went to borrow a horse from the neighbors. Or two
horses, if you are fortunate enough that her plans, whatever they
are, include you."

I have barely stepped outside when Gaeira
returns riding one horse and leading a second. A smile touches my
lips on seeing her. I cannot prevent it. She does not likewise react
to seeing me, not outwardly, anyway. Inwardly, I can hope.
Dismounting, she hands me both horses' reins and throws a set of
packed saddlebags onto the back of mine before remounting and riding
away at a gentle pace. I mount and follow, though not before running
back inside to grab my cloak.

"Fortune smiles again upon a fool?"
Dalla asks as I pass her.

I answer with a laugh.

Gaeira and I ride slowly on a trail that
traverses fields and meadows and hills of Vanaheim. I start out
lagging behind her, then put on a burst of speed to come alongside.
She gives me a glance that acknowledges my presence, and no
more—except that from her it is more than that, for she might
not  have offered it at all. Her hair remains unbound from its
washing the night before, and golden wisps of it rise and fall in the
light breeze.

We ride for an hour, seeing no one except one or
two farmhands from a great distance. Our leisurely pace implies we
have no purpose, perhaps not even a destination, although a peek into
the saddlebags gives me some clue as to the latter. They contain
bread, cheese, fruits, and skins full of water or wine.

Eventually, we veer from the trail and ride
through grass that reaches our ankles. At the base of a hill, Gaeira
stops and swings down from her horse. I do likewise, not sure what
she has in mind—until I take a closer look at the hillside, and
then I do know, for I have seen it happen already.

I feel contentment. I know I could dwell here in
Vanaheim, if Gaeira would have me. And even if she would not, I could
settle here on my own, for I vastly prefer this pleasant country over
Neolympus, perched high on a windy crag, deep in giant country.
Nothing remains for me there.

Yet whatever dreams I may conjure, any plans I
might lay, are illusions. The Myriad have returned and will destroy
all of this—unless Thor truly is the doer of impossible deeds
that the Aesir believe him to be. I do not think he is. But the
desire to believe can be a powerful thing, and I wish to believe.
Here on  a hillside under the blue skies of Vanaheim, in my
present company, I wish dearly to believe that all will be well.

Having dismounted, Gaeira but stands there,
waiting. Briefly I wonder whether I would know what she had in mind
if Mimir had not told me, but I hardly care. In three great strides,
I erase the five paces  of hillside separating us and take her
into my arms, as she does me, and once more we seek to devour 
one another. We undress, and in the tall grass we lie together in
perfect fulfillment of my vision.

Afterward, we laze on our backs, gazing at the
clouds, something which as recently as yesterday I could not have
imagined Gaeira doing, whether alone, with me, or with some other. I
had thought every fiber of her being, every twitch of her every
muscle, devoted to her single-minded purpose. I could not be more
pleased to be proved wrong.

Gaeira's fingers trace the eyepatch I wear,
Dalla's gift, my only evidence that she has even noticed it, although
she could hardly fail to. She likes it, I think, or want to think.

After a while, the breeze starts to chill. I
drag my cloak over our bare flesh, and my palm happens to find
Ayessa's etched tooth pendant which, days ago, I pinned to its inner
face.

I still know not the truth of how it came into
Gaeira's possession, but I think it likely that Ayessa gifted it to
her as a token of thanks for seeing her safely to Asgard. Gaeira did
me the same favor, and what have I given in return?

Something
, yes, but not a token of
gratitude, exactly.

Worse, I stole something that was given to her.

"This is yours," I say, removing the
pendant from my cloak. They are the only words I have spoken to
Gaeira today. In fact, they are the only ones since our kiss a day
prior. They feel strange and unwieldy. We need no words, she and I. I
hold the tooth out to her and let it hang there between us for a few
seconds before realizing how poorly thought out is my gesture. She is
naked. What precisely is she to do with it?

I lower it, smiling. Suddenly Gaeira sits up,
snatches the tooth from me, and leaps to her feet. As she begins to
dress, I wonder if I have offended her. She does not appear angry,
and her movements are not angry ones, but she is Gaeira and can be
difficult to read if she so chooses. Yet I have a sense of her, I
think, and I do not sense that I could have upset her.

Disappointed as I am to see an end to our
repose, I do as she does. Soon we are both dressed and mounted and
riding again, this time at a more purposeful pace. Twenty minutes
later, Gaeira dismounts and goes on foot up a short, rocky slope.
Following her, I see that we have reached the edge of a chasm. The
other side is visible in the far distance, but looking down, the
sheer rock walls disappear into mist.

Mist-filled chasms are not uncommon in these
eight realms, it would seem.

While we both look down into void, Gaeira hands
me the pin. I take it. Once more she has made her meaning as clear as
she ever could with words. I stare at the pendant, fingering it,
silently saying farewell. It is farewell not to an object, not even
just to a woman I pursued through the abyss of death and then to a
new and dangerous land, only to learn that she despised me. It is
farewell to the man I was. I would call him a blind fool, but I
should not be too harsh. His heart and mind and two functioning eyes
were good enough to bring him here, to where he could be half-blinded
and reborn. I  have learned from his mistakes and shall not make
them again. I will not name the one whose golden hair at present
flies up and brushes my cheek my 'Wellspring' or my destiny, or any
other such thing. I will not pledge to follow her into any abyss,
although I would gladly go with her into one if she asked.

I clutch the pendant's leather thong for but a
second before opening my hand and letting it drop into the abyss at
our feet. It shrinks and becomes invisible long before the mist
swallows it, and I send my freshly emptied hand over to clasp
Gaeira's. I cannot know whether the rapport I have with her works as
well both ways, but what I mean to tell her with the touch is that if
she wants me, I am hers.

Her fingers close around mine, perhaps giving
answer.

Our touch, our communication, is brief. Taking
back her hand, Gaeira starts toward her horse. I remain looking out
over the chasm for a few seconds, wondering what realm lies across
it, before I follow.

During the short walk, I have a strange feeling,
an ominous one which drags at my high spirits. I am in the middle of
climbing onto my horse's back when it strikes me what is its cause. I
fall clumsily back to the ground and begin to run, my eye fixed on
the nearby hills.

I must see them from a different vantage. I must
be certain...

I need not go far.

"This place..." I say breathlessly to
Gaeira, who has trailed me on horseback. "Mimir's Well gave me a
vision. I saw a Myriad invasion. These hills. This... this is—"

Gaeira interrupts me by drawing the sword which
hangs in its scabbard on the flank of her mount. Her  gaze is on
a point above my head. I spin and see what she sees.