Home for the Howlidays, page 4
I wanted to learn to swim.
I wasn’t against accepting a helping hand when the situation required it but I didn’t want to turn dependence into a lifestyle choice.
I shook my head. “I just need to know what you know.”
Erik smiled, and I saw an expression of something akin to pride flash over his face before he wiped it off and gestured to the barstool beside him once more. This time I sat.
“Short version,” Erik said, “is that the apples are what make us immortal. Once, there was a whole orchard of them but Loki—”
That’s what he called my dead boyfriend. I knew him as Lyle but to the All Father he was Loki. The trickster. The sly one. The pain in the ass.
“—did what Loki did best and now there’s only one tree. One tree whose fruit needs to be shared among many. It’s why only a select few of us remain, why we’ve diminished. If this woman, whoever she is, knows about the fruit she’s more likely to be a demi-god than a nature spirit. And if she gets her hands on an apple it would increase her powers and extend her lifespan. At the expense of someone else.”
Lyle/Loki had also been demi-god—the son of a god and a giant—though I hadn’t known that until after he’d died. I’d assumed that if he hadn’t been murdered, he’d have lived forever, though. After all, didn’t that just come along with the whole “god” gig?
“So all you gods aren’t immortal?”
Erik shook his head. Daniel snorted and said, “I wish.”
“And the giants?”
“No,” said Erik. “The apples are what allow us to live so long but, as you should know by now, Autumn, we can all die.”
“Why don’t you just plant more trees?” I asked, momentarily distracted from my immediate problem by the obvious solution to theirs.
“The apples don’t have seeds,” Daniel said, at the same time Erik said, “It doesn’t work that way.”
Of course it didn’t. Magic never worked in a nice straightforward way that made sense. If it did, it wouldn’t be magic.
“So, if I can’t give her what she wanted even if I wanted to—which I don’t,” I hastened to clarify. “How do I get my dog back and make sure she leaves me alone from here on out?”
“Kri—” Erik began and then stopped, correcting himself. “Ms. DeBall has a book that makes all oaths sworn on it unbreakable. Maybe you could make a deal with her to borrow it.”
“Except that I can’t imagine a world where she’d let me borrow her stuff. Especially her magical stuff.” Ms. DeBall ran the old folks’ home where my Omma lived. She and I had a bit of a complicated relationship. We were allies, of a sort, but neither one of us liked the other. “Besides, how would I make the antler woman swear an oath to leave me alone?”
“You’d have to force her into it,” Daniel said, and when I looked at him for the first time since sitting down, I saw excitement lighting his face. There was very little in the world Daniel liked more than a good fight. He used to occasionally join Lyle and me when we watched Monday Night Raw. Lyle’s favourite wrestlers were always the ones who were really good on the mic, witty and sharp. Daniel preferred the big, bulky type of wrestler who won their matches based on sheer size and brute strength.
“Her arm turned into a sword, Daniel,” I said. “My sword skills are nowhere near good enough to take on someone whose sword is literally a part of their body. How am I supposed to force her?”
“I could come—”
I mean, maybe. Bringing some brawn with me to a confrontation didn’t feel quite the same as just asking Daniel and Erik to take care of the problem for me, but it wasn’t too far removed either.
“Nah,” I shook my head. “I guess I’m going to see Ms. DeBall.”
MS. DEBALL LOOKED human—middle-aged with pale skin and white hair she wore in a super adorable mini-beehive-type thing. Despite how she looked, however, she was neither adorable nor human. As far as I could tell she was some sort of giant. Of the frost variety, if the temperature she kept her office at was any indication.
I was sitting across her desk from her and she was, quite literally, looking down her nose at me.
“You want to borrow my book?” she sniffed.
“Erik said you might lend it to me. So I can make the deer-woman demi-god whatever leave me alone.” I looked her hard in the eye, holding her gaze steadily and trying to impress upon her with my eyes the sincerity of my next words. “I really just want to be left alone. But she has my dog.”
That’s the other thing Erik had told me last night. Ms. DeBall might be a complete hard-ass, but she was also a sucker for dogs. I was surprised to hear that, but I was absolutely going to milk it for all it was worth.
Her eyes narrowed. She obviously knew I was trying to take advantage of her soft spot, and I almost felt bad for Erik because she was most definitely going to know where I’d gotten my information from. But Erik could take care of himself and I didn’t know if Ulf could.
“Please,” I added.
She sighed audibly, and I knew I’d won but forced myself not to smile because that was a sure way to make her change her mind. And though this plan wasn’t actually much of a plan, it was the only one I had. “Fine,” she said. “But I’m going to need something for collateral. And you’ll owe me one.”
The surge of happiness I felt was immediately squashed down. The last thing in the world I wanted was to owe Ms. DeBall a favour. Or, I corrected myself, the second last thing in the world I wanted was to owe her a favour. The last thing I wanted was for the deer bitch to have my dog.
“Fine,” I said. “Will the arm ring do as collateral?”
“That’ll do fine,” she said.
“And I’ll get it back when I return your book to you?”
“You will,” she said.
The arm ring in question was magical, and if she was lying to me, it would have pinched me. Painful but helpful. Anyway, it hadn’t pinched me so she wasn’t lying.
I reached under my sweater and tugged it off while she unlocked a drawer in her desk and opened it. As I handed the ring over to her, still warm from being worn, she passed me a beat-up, dog-eared copy of a paperback book.
“Seriously?” I said, as we made the trade.
“What?”
“Twilight?”
She rolled her eyes, dropped my arm ring in her drawer, and slammed it shut with a resounding bang. “It doesn’t matter what it looks like on the outside, it just matters what it does. Any oath sworn on that book is unbreakable upon penalty of death.”
I put my winter coat on and jammed the book into one of the oversized pockets. “Right. Got it. Thanks,” I said.
“And don’t forget,” she said as I was leaving her office. “You owe me one.”
“Goody,” I mumbled.
“What?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Thanks.”
MIDNIGHT FOUND ME back in the park waiting for antler-face to show up again. Bjorn was with me, pressed tight against my leg. I had the book in my coat pocket and my sword in my hand. Honestly, if someone mundane were to come across us just then it would have been pretty difficult to explain myself.
Thankfully, I suppose, no such person just happened to stumble across us. I did, however, notice one of Erik’s ravens looking down at us from a nearby treetop. It was better disguised than usual, which told me that Erik was trying to hide the fact he was spying on me, but he was still definitely spying on me. It was endearing in a way, that he cared enough to want to keep an eye on me. But also felt sort of like pressure. Like he was checking up on me as well.
I tightened my grip on the hilt of my sword and then relaxed it again. In part because I was super nervous, but also to keep my hands from totally freezing up. Using a sword while wearing winter mittens was not something we’d covered in my sword-fighting classes yet.
I’d actually thought about leaving the sword at home—I have a lot of practice with hand-to-hand combat and self-defence and only the barest of broad strokes with swordplay—but honestly, I thought it made me look a bit badass. And if I was going to try and force this woman to swear to leave me and the dogs alone, I was going to need every bit of badassery I could summon up. So the sword came.
But it was fucking cold.
Then, in the space between one heartbeat and the next, something changed. Bjorn, the raven, and I were alone in the park waiting for Hornhead to show up, and then the raven was gone and Bjorn and I were in a totally different park.
When I’d watched the woman vanish before it had been like parting a curtain in reality and slipping through it. In this case, however, it was as if Bjorn and I had fallen through that same opening.
I hadn’t noticed the low-key sounds of the city around us until they were gone, but one moment they were there and the next they weren’t. The trees looked exactly the same but the streetlamps were gone, leaving the moon and stars as the only sources of illumination. I heard an owl hoot somewhere in the distance and much closer, the scream of a fox.
Bjorn began to growl.
“Did you bring me an apple?”
The voice came from behind us and Bjorn and I turned at the same time. The woman with the antler crown was sprawled out across a throne which looked like it was made of bones and antlers, a white fur blanket-type thing tossed across its seat. She definitely had an aesthetic, I’d give her that.
She was still wearing her crown and the brown bodysuit-type thing. And the way she was lounging crossways over the seat of her throne let me see that the ridiculously high heels she’d been rocking before were still on her feet and also made of antlers.
“Do you really like deer or really hate them?” I asked.
She blinked, slow and controlled, and I was surprised to realize that her eyes were just a little bit too big. A little bit too dark and luminous. How had I missed that under the light of the streetlamps back in reality? How was I able to see it now with only the moon to light the scene?
“What?” She sounded sincerely taken aback.
“Do you really like deer, and that’s why you’re copying their aesthetic everywhere and covering yourself in their bones and shit . . . or do you really hate them so you sit on their corpses and wear them as a warning to others?”
She rolled her eyes hard—really, this woman could teach Ms. DeBall a thing or two about eyerolling—and then slowly unfolded herself from the throne. She was quite beautiful. The way she moved, silently, elegantly, despite the huge crown of antlers from her head and the stilettos on her feet. And she had the longest legs of any woman I’d ever seen ever. Even without the heels. Her legs definitely make up a disproportionate amount of her body. It was eerie but lovely.
“Did you bring my apple?” she asked.
“Where is my dog?”
If we were just going to sit and ask each other questions I was at least going to change them up now and then.
She quirked one eyebrow and then raised her arm and pointed at Bjorn. Again without bending her elbow.
“My other dog,” I said, dryly.
“Ran off as soon as we got here,” she said.
“An answer. Fantastic. Now we’re getting somewhere,” I said. I think I sounded nonchalant but I didn’t feel it. Ulf wasn’t here. How was I supposed to find him now?
She took a step toward me, and I watched her right forearm elongate and transform from a flesh hand to a single, lethal-looking horn.
“My apple?” she said.
“Why do you need an apple?”
“Because I don’t want to die.”
“We all die.”
“Have you seen death?” she asked, snarkily. “Have you? Because I’ve seen it. I’ve seen its ugliness. Its finality. I don’t want to experience it.”
I thought of Lyle. Thought of the horrible way he’d died right in front of me. And I nodded. “Yes.” I didn’t trust my voice to say more.
“I need the apple,” she said simply. As though that explained everything.
And in a way, I guess it did.
But I couldn’t help her and I said so.
“I don’t want to die!” she screamed. And in that moment, she was terrifying and terrified. I could hear it in her voice, the raw, brutal fear.
She attacked.
She was really good with that horn. I was significantly less good with the sword.
Bjorn helped though, lunging forward again and again, trying to bite her, to knock her off balance. It was working, too. She couldn’t keep her sword/horn thing pointed at both of us at the same time, but the cold was making my movements sluggish, and the sword was really heavy. Plus, she had home court advantage.
I’ve heard people describe fights as a dance but dances are coordinated and choreographed and beautiful, and this was the opposite of that. It was primitive and ugly and dirty.
And it ended most anticlimactically when she drove me backward until I tripped over something buried in the snow and spilled to the ground. A star burst before my eyes as the back of my head bounced off the ground and my sword slipped from my numb fingers, landing somewhere in the blanketing white with a soft fwump sound.
Then her horn sword was pressed against my throat, and Bjorn was crouched just behind me, his stinky dog breath warm against my face.
“Stay,” she snapped, pointing a finger at Bjorn. Then she pressed the bone sword against me just hard enough to break the skin and repeated for emphasis, “Stay.”
I suspected he was going to listen. I hoped he was. He was fast but not fast enough to reach her before she ran me through.
The way she was towering over me on her tippy-toes in those fucking shoes just added the perfect little cherry of humiliation on my defeat. As if laying on my back in the snow with her sword against my throat wasn’t enough, she’d beaten me on high heels. In a bodysuit.
And now I was going to die with a copy of Twilight in my pocket and whoever investigated my death was going to think it was mine.
At least she had the good grace to look a little bit winded. I could see her chest moving as she panted at about the same rhythm as me.
“I need an apple,” she said between big, gasping breaths. The beauty I’d seen in her face before was erased by her desperation. “You need to bring me an apple.”
“I don’t have a fucking apple,” I said.
“You can get one.”
“I can’t. I really, really can’t.”
“I will kill you if you don’t,” she shouted. And I believed her. But there was nothing I could do about it.
“I can’t,” I said. And for a moment I wondered if it might not be better if she killed me. If everything just ended. But then Bjorn growled and I remembered that I had things to live for. I had dogs to live for. And friends. And family, small and broken as it may be. I shook my head, hoping to distract her while my hand felt around for the sword I’d dropped. “I just can’t. But maybe I can help some other—”
She lifted the sword, drew it back, and I knew she meant to run me through. Her patience was done, and it was time for me to die.
But then a flurry of tawny fur burst out of the darkness, tackling her and knocking her to the side.
Ulf!
I didn’t waste any time with relief or glee but scrambled to my knees and dug around in the snow for the sword. I couldn’t tell where it had fallen and was forced to flounder blindly for it.
Meanwhile Ulf and Bjorn were fighting with the deer woman. I could hear their snaps, snarls, and growls mixed in with the heavy sounds of her breathing, the meaty sounds of their struggle. When one of the boys yipped, I gave up on recovering the sword and threw myself into the fight unarmed. No one hurt my dogs and got away with it.
Bjorn, Ulf, and I fought together like a well-practiced team. We weren’t, but we gave a good impersonation of it. They kept her pinned against the trunk of a tree, dodging her sword hand and creating just enough chaos to keep her off-balance, while I punched and kicked her like any opponent I’d ever faced in the ring.
Soon she was bleeding and her attempts to defend herself were slowed and half-hearted.
What two of us hadn’t been able to manage, three of us did handily.
The dogs darting in and out at her had uncovered something shiny and silver half-buried in the snow. I thought about picking it up, about using the sword to end her life, to eliminate the threat she’d posed to the dogs and me, but then I remembered the pathetic way she’d sobbed and screamed, “I don’t want to die.” And I stayed my hand.
Aside from that one moment of weakness when I lay on my back and thought all was lost and so I may as well be too, I also wanted to live. The last few weeks had been hard and depressing. I’d been sad and struggling, but I wanted to live. I wanted to live with a ferocity I didn’t even know I’d possessed until I’d been faced with Lyle’s loss.
I didn’t want to be the one to kill this woman. Goddess. Deer. Whatever.
I reached in my pocket and pulled out the copy of Twilight.
Despite her wounds and her weariness, the woman looked from the book to me and, with disdain dripping her from voice, said, “Really? Twilight?”
I half-laughed. In other circumstances I think I might actually have liked this girl.
“You’re going to swear an oath,” I said.
BACK HOME WITH the boys, I couldn’t bring myself to do Christmas carols. I just wasn’t ready. But I cleared a space in the book-filled living room, streamed Monday Night Raw on my phone, and set up the Christmas tree.
As the wrestlers on Lyle’s favourite television show pretended to beat each other up, I took my time decorating the tree, and the dogs supervised.
When I was finished, the tree was a bit more sparse than any of the trees Lyle and I had shared—his style was much more grandiose than my own—but it was sparkly and colourful.
When I turned off all the other lights in the house and switched on the tree’s, it shone like something in a movie, filling my heart with warmth and bringing a smile to my lips. And, when I reached down to where Ulf and Bjorn stood at my side and scratched their ears, for a moment, just a moment, it almost felt like Lyle was there with us. Looking over us.
