Part 2 (1/2)

”Just keep walking,” he muttered. ”Doesn't matter. None of it matters. It's got nothing to do with me. I'm a pedestrian.” And for a while he managed to lose himself in the rhythm of his footfalls. This is what he was good at. He'd successfully let entire decades pa.s.s this way. Centuries, even.

Rounding a corner onto Venice Boulevard, he caught a faint whiff of hot pepper in the air. Winston growled irritably. At a strip mall, a pair of workers were replacing the front window of a laundromat. From the gla.s.s shards and the remnants of riot-control gas, Hermod figured there'd been some action here recently. Random acts of stupidity were becoming even more common as the months pa.s.sed and winter refused to release its grip. And as bad as things were in Southern California, other parts of the planet were taking worse punishment. People blamed the freak weather on the cascade effects of global warming and retreating glaciers, and who was to say they were wrong? Hermod had experienced many long winters. Even ice ages. Just because things were cold in California and everywhere else didn't necessarily mean it was Fimbul-Winter.

Hermod spotted a plywood sign across the street, wired to an ivy-choked chain-link fence: IRONWOOD NURSERY.

He wondered how the people who lived around here experienced this place. Maybe to them it was just where they purchased their begonias. But some places looked different, depending on the angle from which you encountered them. Hermod spent a lot of time within these strange angles. It was the only way to approach the seams between worlds.

”You stay put,” he said to Winston, reaching down to scratch behind the dog's ears. ”Find yourself a nice, plump squab to munch, if you want. But you don't cross the street after me, understand? And if I'm not back in an hour, you're on your own.”

Winston whined and rubbed his muzzle against Hermod's pant leg. About a year ago, Hermod had picked him up in Churchill, Manitoba, the last survivor of his litter. They got along pretty well. Winston was a good traveling companion; he didn't ask questions.

Jaywalking across Venice Boulevard, Hermod checked the zipper of his duffel bag to make sure it wasn't stuck. It would be just his luck to die of a snagged zipper. Death was inevitable, but there was no sense in dying stupidly. Rusty hinges screeched as he pushed open the gate and entered the cover of the nursery. Marking the way toward a tangle of bushes, barren ornamental orange trees flanked a narrow path of cracked concrete paving stones. A hand-scrawled cardboard sign indicated the daily price increases on vegetable seeds. Withered potted plants raised on wooden pallets showed more evidence of the cruel weather. A few people went about their business here-a silver-haired j.a.panese man arranging bonsai trees and a boy setting rattraps by a palm tree-but otherwise the nursery felt abandoned. Hermod continued on through cottony fog.

Something called him off the path-instinct, or a spell, or a doom-and he stomped through ivy, whistling ”Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy.” When the sour tinge of urine touched his nose, he again checked the zipper of his duffel.

He came upon a peach-colored metal Quonset hut edged with rust, like a flower past its bloom. Vines crawled up the sides and arched over the top, studded with yellow flowers and white fungal colonies and fly-specked spiderwebs. It was an entire ecosystem, an entire world.

From the duffel, he removed a bundle of stolen motel-room towels and unwrapped his sword. Its double-edged blade was scratched and stained, but he reckoned it would still do its job. He didn't require emerald-inlaid runes or curlicues, he just needed something that wouldn't shatter against swung steel and was sharp enough to bite through flesh and bone.

He wrenched open the door of the Quonset and took a step inside. The entrance behind him vanished in the gloom, as he'd expected. He coughed and batted at clouds of tiny flies with his sword, the reek of long-confined p.i.s.s hanging in the steamy air. Sounds came out of the darkness. Snuffling. Mewling. Hermod lowered to a crouch as blotchy darkness gradually resolved into shapes, then into details.

In the center of the hut sat a giant, with a round spongy head like a mushroom and two dark little eyes, filmed over like those of an old fish. An irregular welt of a nose spread across her face, and, below that, thin, wet lips formed a ventlike mouth. Her flesh gleamed, clammy as wet clay.

Hermod counted five wolf pups clutched to her chest, suckling on floppy teats as long as his fingers. The pups pawed and nipped at one another to gain better access, and the giant stroked their coats of white and gray.

”Is it true what they say about a mother guarding her children?” Hermod said.

”Do you plan to earn fame that way, lesser son of Odin?” Her soft voice gurgled. ”Oh, the songs they'll sing about you: Hermod the Nimble, mighty slayer of nursing mothers.” She pressed the head of her smallest pup tight against a teat.

”I'm not here for that,” Hermod said. Sweat trickled down the back of his neck. ”I'd just like to talk.”

”A visit to enjoy the warmth of my hospitality? I don't think so, when you barge into my mound, uninvited, sword in hand. So much for the vaunted manners of your tribe. No, the Aesir are cunning, and their city is built on a foundation of murder, and they offer the hand of fellows.h.i.+p only to their own. So why should I offer you mine?”

In truth, Hermod couldn't supply her with a reason. His kind had made war against giants and trolls since the earliest days. The Aesir had taken slaughter and made it a sport. Thor's hall was decorated with the mounted heads of this giantess's kin.

”If I had a hall in which to host you,” Hermod said, ”I'd offer you a seat by my fire.”

”That is an empty offer.”

”Yes. I'm afraid so.”

Scratching sounds came from the matted roots at Hermod's back. His skin itched, but he wouldn't step away from the wall, wanting as much distance between him and the giant as possible.

The giant nuzzled her misshapen nose into the furry brows of her pups. ”They say that when you returned from Helheim, having failed in the only significant task ever set before you, you left Asgard. You've never returned?”

”I've been traveling.” He'd packed a sack with his pipe, a tankard, and a spare s.h.i.+rt, and though he'd lost all three many years ago, he'd never returned to his city. It wasn't home anymore.

”You must have seen much, given the length of your absence.”

”Oh, you have no idea. And just when I think I've seen everything ... This morning, for instance. There was a girl on the beach. She offered to sell me a wolf pup.”

The giant's dark eyes narrowed to slits. ”Are you saying I would allow my own babies to be sold, like pets?”

”Oh, I know they're not pets.”

She sniffed, making a sound like a vacuum cleaner clogged with Jell-O. ”If that's the most remarkable thing you've seen, you're touring the wrong places.”

”Well, you know, the girl got me thinking,” Hermod said. ”She reminded me of an old song. I guess you wouldn't really call it a song. It was more like a prophecy. It was about a woman who raises wolves.”

The giant s.h.i.+fted a little on her haunches. Muscles the size of basketb.a.l.l.s bunched in her thighs. She hadn't seemed that big before. ”Your kind are always making a villain of wolves. Another distasteful trait you share with men.”

Hermod waved a fly from his mouth. ”In the song, they're not actual wolves. They're other things, shaped like wolves, of a line belonging to Fenrir. You know of Fenrir, right? The great wolf son of Loki? There's a song about him, too, how at the end of days he devours Odin.”

The giant did something that might have been a smile. Several hundred teeth lined her mouth, like pebbles. ”I haven't heard that one, but I like it.”

”Anyway, so this song I remembered this morning, it goes: There lives a woman in Ironwood, who raises the wolves of Fenrir's kin, and one will grow to swallow the sun and moon. So, the girl, the pup, the song, a path that leads to Ironwood, and here you are. You and your wolf-thing pups. I suppose it's all a coincidence.”

”And if it's not, what is it to you? Some songs are sung not of a voice but of a truth that grows from the very soil of the World Tree. Some songs are older than us. Older than your All-Father, the gallows G.o.d himself. You were there when the Ragnarok doom was sung and your brother fell in blood. It was foreseen. It was prophesied. How you mighty Aesir must have quailed and wept to see the first hour of the end of the world struck. And yet you yourself journeyed to Helheim, and on your knees you begged before the queen for a reversal of fortune. Did it work? Did it set everything to rights? Hermod, little messenger, find the wisdom to see that the song will be sung, bray and flail as you might, and it will be sung to its very last note.”

”Thank you,” Hermod said, raising his sword. ”That's all I needed to know.” He charged and swung for a pup's head-any of the pups would do for the first blow-but the giant turned to protect them, and his blade bit instead into her shoulder. She threw back her head and roared. Twigs and clumps of dirt shook loose from the ceiling and clouded the air with filth. With the fury of an avalanche, she sprang forward, covering the distance between herself and Hermod in a single earthshaking step.

If there had been somewhere to run, he surely would have, but with no room at his back and the giant blocking any escape before him, he set himself into a stable stance and thrust his sword forward. The blade sliced neatly between two of her ribs, and she staggered backward, yanking the sword from his grip. Hissing in pain, she withdrew it like a splinter, inspected the blood-slicked steel, and then bent the blade across her leg until it shattered with a terrible gla.s.sy peal.

The giant hunched her shoulders and faced Hermod, panting a dank wind. ”I take it you've really never slain a giant before?”

”You were going to be my first.”

”You have to put more muscle behind a blow like that. That's why Thor was so good at giant-killing. He had the arms to swing that hammer of his. And he usually went right for the head, just dashed our brains out. Flesh wounds with us count for little.”

”If only I had another sword.” Not for the first time, it occurred to Hermod that many of his relatives knew how they were going to die. Odin in Fenrir's jaws, Thor poisoned by the Midgard serpent, Frey killed by the fire giant Surt. There was no verse about Hermod's own end. Usually he considered this a great blessing. But there were advantages to knowing how things would catch up with you in the end: For every other menace you encountered, you knew you'd get out with your skin intact.

Hermod sprang forward and dove to the ground, rolling and reaching for the largest of the shards of his sword, about the size of a butcher-knife blade. The edge cut into his palm, a new addition to his lifetime collection of wounds. Using the giant's own knee for a foothold, he vaulted up and thrust the shard into her eye, smacking it home with the heel of his hand. The giant struck him on the side of his head, and Hermod crumpled to the ground.

The mound held still for a moment. Then the giant sat down slowly. ”My babies,” she said, only the last inch of the sword shard emerging from her eye socket. The pups returned to her, climbing up her body, sucking the very last milk she had to give them, even for a few moments after she'd died.

Climbing down, they approached Hermod, too much like puppies. But then they yawned, their maws growing wider and wider. Hermod pitched forward, and eventually all he could see was a gaping black chasm, and he was falling into it.

During his struggle with the giant, the roof of the mound had collapsed. It had been daylight when he'd entered, but now it was night. The moon shone yellow and fat, and the pups stretched their jaws yet wider and reached for it.

HERMOD GROANED and opened his eyes to see an elongated muzzle and sharp yellow teeth inches from his face. He scrambled away in a panic, his hand grasping for his sword but finding only mud.

Winston barked, and Hermod let out a gulping breath of relief. ”Good boy,” he croaked. Then the ground spun out from under him and he vomited.

He closed his eyes and made himself breathe. His head was frightfully painful to the touch, and his fingers came away b.l.o.o.d.y, but his skull seemed to be holding his brains inside. He fished a bandanna from his jacket and bandaged his sliced-open palm.

A few yards away, the Quonset hut lay in ruins, all crumpled metal tangled in vines. He was sure if he dug through the wreckage, down deep, he would find the giant's corpse, but he was content to leave it there. Paw prints circled him in the mud.

Why hadn't the wolves killed him? They'd seen him murder their mother, and once they'd opened their mouths, he'd been entirely at their mercy. But, then, the moon still shone, a pale disk struggling to push its light through the clouds. Maybe the pups weren't quite up to sky-eating or G.o.d-slaying yet. The girl on the beach had said her wolf still had a lot of growing to do.