The Valkyrie (4 page)

“I’m just
analysing APac economies for potential funds for escalating
conflicts. Not looking too good at the moment: ageing populations
and housing bubbles. Liberty did her hokey cokey vision thingy and
said a wonderful big war is now or never.” Honour said before
switching the conversation back to Valour “So what happened with
Val, I noticed she came and got her stuff? Lib couldn’t get her
sight straight this morning, said it was a little cloudy.”

“The usual ‘I
love him, we’re buying a cottage in the country, I’m going to
breed’ bollocks. She only met him a week ago. £50 says that either
Eros or Freya got an arse kicking for being behind schedule on the
number of romances they’ve caused for the month and went for a
trophy shot.” Glory went over to the fridge and poured herself a
big glass of ambrosia.

“Ha. So Bea,
why’d Glory hire you? Call Thor a bad word?” Honour enquired.

“Actually yes.”
said Bea.

“You need a
certain sort of sassy/bitter attitude to work here. You’re a water
nymph right? Sea or river? Well either way you’re in good company
we’re all nymphos in this house.” Honour had made a conscious
decision three decades ago that she was going to reclaim the word
nymphomaniac for the nymphs. She wore it as a badge of pride as one
rightly should. Plus it was factually true Glory, Liberty and her
were all nymphs, and nymphomaniacs.

“My mum’s a sea
nymph.” Glory twiddled a strand of her hair, “It has had little
effect on me bar an irrational fondness for boats. I bloody love an
armada. Liberty’s mum is a river nymph.”

“My dad’s the
Zambezi. Glory, I can’t stop thinking about naked girls now and
it’s your fault entirely. Bea let me show you your new room and
then I can give you a tour of Valhalla. Have you sent home for your
things?” Honour asked to which Bea merely nodded. Honour wasn’t
fond of the shy; she hoped that Bea would liven up later. “We
should even be able to go and train the new recruits for a little
bit.” Honour led Bea out of the kitchen and up the stairs to Bea’s
new room/Valour’s old room. She had gone in there once she’d done
her shift that morning to see if Valour was asleep after she hadn’t
shown up. After Liberty had had a bad morning trying to predict the
future, Honour had assumed that Valour had just gone home with that
elf like Glory said she had, although she hadn’t expected her to
shack up with him. The room had been removed of all of Valour’s
possessions. Her vanity table was stripped bare, neither a lick nor
a slick of mascara was to be found. Her books had migrated from the
book shelf and her dresses had breezed away. The naked room had
made Honour feel morose. She imagined that that must be how mortals
felt when a relative died and they looked at their empty chair, you
know because they had always sat there and it was their chair,
although sometimes she wondered whether mortals had feelings at
all.

***

Bea sat down on
her new bed and took the room in. She thought it would do quite
nicely, quite nicely indeed. She’d made her judgement of Glory and
Honour and was pleased that everything was as she thought it would
be.

Glory waved Honour and Bea off to
Valhalla from the doorway, went back into the kitchen and made a
cup of tea. Not that she could drink tea – gods were limited to
ambrosia, wine and hard liquor – but she understood that the act of
making tea would make her feel intrinsically better. She kept a
secret stash of UHT milk and Tetley’s tea bags at the back of the
barbiturates cupboard for such purposes. Glory sat there and
sniffed the creamy colonial liquid whilst she listened to the
Shipping Forecasts on BBC iPlayer.

“There are
warnings of gales in Viking, Forties, Cromarty, Dogger, Fisher and
Trafalgar, Sole, Lundy and Shannon.” The nice man from the wireless
said. Glory loved ships; she’d even made it the basis of her
mother’s erstwhile empire. Ships brought hope. Ships brought goods,
people and ideas, they also brought war. Was there anything as
splendid as the sound of cannon fire? As much as she tried her
damned hardest to suppress her nature, Glory thrived in situations
of destruction. She was irresistibly drawn to those who destroy.
That was why she liked being a Valkyrie: she was close enough to
all the action without
always
committing it herself. She was
testing her limits by putting herself in there and savouring it. In
the shallow depths of her was a killer and her restraint was
drowning.

Glory heard
Liberty unlock the door and so she poured her clandestine cuppa
down the sink and swilled the mug out. Liberty walked into the room
all of a fluster. She put her bags down on the counter having
evidently ram-raided Bond Street in a flurry of angst. Not that
Liberty had any money. Money was far too human for her to
contemplate. Liberty only had to look at the poor shop assistants
and they bagged things up without even thinking about it.

“So what did
you get?” Glory asked.

“High heeled
shoes.” Liberty said. She had just sat down in the chair next to
Glory and had rested her lovely head on Glory’s shoulder “I am
still investigating why mortal women wear them. It’s a conundrum I
can’t solve.”

“I think it’s
because they push your arse and tits out. I think men must also
encourage them so that women cannot run away.”

“That is a
logical proposition.” Liberty sighed “I’ve had a really shit
morning.”

“Yes I can tell
sweetie. So you couldn’t get a clear view of Val? She sounded fine
on the phone when I spoke to her so there really isn’t a need to
worry.”

“No it was odd.
I went sideways almost and saw that you would be where you were
making that speech, but I couldn’t zoom and see Val make the call.
It’s most odd, it’s never happened before. I’m going to speak to my
dad about it later. Obviously I can’t see everything all of the
time, I have my blind spots but Val was never one of them. She’s
still not picking up my calls. This doesn’t sit well with me.”

“Perhaps you’re
tired.” Glory knew full well that gods don’t really get that tired,
but she thought that in such situations it was the established
social protocol to say something of that sort.

“Yes, perhaps I
am. And the new recruit, what do you think of her so far?” Liberty
asked.

“I think she’s
rather shiny. I adore her which is a little disconcerting. I can’t
stand most people, I can barely tolerate you.”

“Are you
joking?”

“No.”

“Are we going
to the pub post-Valhalla?” Liberty changed the subject.

“Of course
double whammy tonight; karaoke after the pub quiz. We can turn up
at Valhalla at 6pm pre-drink, chat a bit to everyone so Freya
remembers we were there and fuck off to the Queen’s Head before
7.30pm.” Glory had risen out of the gloom that Liberty had found
her in.

“Cool, I’m
going to go and have a wander. You wouldn’t believe my morning. The
fuckers were asking to go to heaven again.”

“God in the
singular.”

“I can see the
allure of it. An omnifather who knows everything, does everything
and adores everything about you no matter how bloody awful you are.
What does the average mortal actually get out of death: eternity as
a shade under Hades or Osiris or whoever else’s list they end up
on. Instead of really living they temper their appetites in futile
hope. The ‘weakness’ of one man is most likely his very reason to
be: such condescension. If I were mortal I’d swallow, I’d gorge and
I’d vomit it all back up. No glass undrunk from, no girl unkissed,
no song unsung.” Liberty said with sheer conviction.

“If you were
human, you’d be bloated.” Glory was contemplating the idea of an
‘omnifather’ and was slightly terrified by the idea, particularly
if this ‘omnifather’ was anything like her actual father.

“There’s a
certain meaning to human lives because they are so short and so
very pointless. Well no, they have no intrinsic meaning in their
own right but their ephemerality reminds me of how bloody long
eternity is going to be.” Liberty said.

“The mortals
are background noise. Well flowers really and we’re bored
housewives rearranging their cut stems to make our tables look
prettier. Sweet williams and daisies and roses and lilies all in
bloom, until they are no longer sweet smelling. They start to rot,
their petals fall and the water at the bottom of the vase begins to
sludge. You get that happy-sad feeling watching them turn decayed
over a warm afternoon. Yet the decent few do act like they’ll live
forever. Have you ever really loved a mortal?” Glory asked.

“Not really,
how can you? I thought a few very sweet, but love, no. You?”

“I could never
love anyone. Even attempting such emotion is impossible for me, let
alone it all being so fucking tedious. I was fond of George until,
you know…” Glory said tailing off.

“Apollo kicked
him out of London.” Liberty said.

“Yes, poor,
poor George Gordon. Apollo can’t bare competition in the over-sexed
poet stakes. On that note have you got a restraining order on
Apollo yet? I’m worried he’s going to try and have you shot by
Artemis or you know, propose. Poor George Gordon banished to the
continent to die of a paltry fever.”

“He keeps
writing poetry for me. How the heck do I get out of it unscathed?”
Liberty asked.

“Lie back and
think of England. Actually no, don’t think about my mother. You’re
going to have to let him fuck you again which leads to three
scenarios:

1. He knocks
you up. You’d have adorable, musically talented children and
eventually he’ll get bored and will wander off to women new as long
as you don’t shag other people for a while.

2. He shags
you, doesn’t knock you up and gets as equally bored.

3. He shags you
and puts a ring on it and then you’re stuck with him forever.

The first one
is probably the most likely statistically speaking.” Glory said.
This was something that she’d clearly considered before.

“He’s such a
freak: a hot freak but a freak nonetheless.”

“Talking about
freak, I’m thinking of getting a GoPro for my vagina.” Glory said
deadpan.

“Sometimes I
forget how classy you are. I’m going for a walk.” Liberty blew
Glory a kiss as she walked to the doorway. She hesitated before
continuing “Glory, everything changed today.”

“Everything
changes every day darling. Life is infinite variety disguised as
the mundane. Enjoy your walk poppet.” Glory said, attempting
profundity for a change. It didn’t suit her.

***

Liberty trekked
upstairs to her room and switched her shoes to a sensible pair of
Nikes. Glory’s suggestion that shoe choice is a vital one in
escaping rapists had disturbed her. Not that wearing heels was
inviting rapists, but there were enough amoral immortals out there
that she felt the need to give herself the best possible head
start. Heavens forbid that these gods would have gained respect for
females (immortal or mortal) over the centuries. Goddesses were
just folly to gods, let alone the poor mortal women. Some were
consorts most were conquests (willing or unwilling), all were
victims. Or were they? Was Liberty being too fatalistic? She
fucking hated men.

***

Despite her
flippancy Glory too knew that everything had changed that day, but
the seismic nature of the change and its consequences were as yet
unknown to her. She had felt the new epoch begin too, although she
decided to play dumb until anything concrete appeared. Glory
checked her phone and saw that she had a further text message that
she didn’t know how to respond to and she still hadn’t even dealt
with the first. She could feel everything escalating. Glory went to
her room, sprawled across the bed, read her copy of
The
Collected Works of Wilfred Owen
and felt guilty, again, maybe.
Every time her name came up she felt a wave of despair crash about
her and drag her further into the swell. What is glory but a
triumph at the expense, rightly or wrongly so, of another? Everyone
mortal and immortal wants to be glorious, all those wretched
marriage proposals were testament to how many wanted to have Glory
to themselves and yet here she was, desolate in her own very
nature. Eventually she got up and stood on a chair opposite the
elegant full length mirror and having memorised the stanzas of the
poems that implicated her personally, screamed them at her own
reflection; a paean to her own vile conceit:

“
If you
could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling
from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as
cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile,
incurable sores on innocent tongues,

My friend, you
would not tell with such high zest

To children
ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie;
Dulce et Decorum est

Pro patria
mori.” 

A few hours later
Honour and Bea were sitting on the wooden benches in the Valkyrie
changing rooms in Valhalla. A gentle steam was wafting in from the
showers and they could smell something floral: like how an Herbal
Essences advert looks like it should smell. This changing room had
more in common with a spa retreat than your local council verruca
pool. Freya had to be given her dues when appropriate: she was
really bloody good at picking complementary toiletries.

Despite
protestations that she had never really fought before, Bea killed
it. On the agility tasks it looked like she was about to take
flight. Her strength was insane; she picked up a double decker bus
and threw it like a hammer toss. She then went on to commit acts of
carnage against a group of Viking marauders who had seen and/or
done some awful things on their travels. Honour had just stood
there in awe. She’d never seen anything quite like it.