Part 7 (1/2)
Fog thickened in the cove, simplifying the world to the fundamental elements of sea and land. Shrieking wind raised whitecaps over the water like floating ice. Minutes pa.s.sed, clouds roiling above. The sky took on a cold, metallic sheen, and Mist lost track of how long they'd been standing there.
A wave came over the debris wall, and suddenly Mist found herself chest-deep in a churn of water that took her legs out and pressed her to the sand. With no time to draw a breath, she clenched her jaw tight and struggled to regain her footing. Magic demands knowledge, she remembered Radgrid telling her once, and knowledge demands sacrifice. Odin gave his eye for knowledge, had hung on the World Tree for knowledge, and some said he'd died there.
Hands lifted her by her armpits, and she opened her eyes to find Hermod holding her up. He was as soaked as she was, as were Grimnir and Winston. She coughed and sputtered.
They weren't alone. An old woman stood in the center of the rune ring, naked and red-eyed, with gray ropes of wet hair plastered to her fat b.r.e.a.s.t.s, like some primeval Venus statue. Mist felt that she knew this woman somehow, as though she were a figure from a recurring dream.
”Sibyl,” Mist croaked.
”Oh, d.a.m.n,” Hermod said. ”You weren't supposed to speak first.”
Mist coughed. Salt water dribbled out her nose. ”Why not?”
”Now she'll talk only to you.”
”You could have warned me.”
Hermod had no answer to that beyond a sheepish expression.
Despite the waves, the runes still stood out clearly in the sand, as though carved in cement. The sibyl began rubbing them out with her heel. ”You're one of Odin's little lovelies, aren't you? Daughter, lover, or both?”
”Employee would be more accurate,” Mist said. ”I'm a Valkyrie.”
”We're all in his employ. Even me. Who else but Odin could have dared call me from death and kept me in thrall 'til he knew all I knew? Well, you dared, I suppose.”
Mist pointed to Hermod. ”He dared, actually.”
Hermod dug a brown paper bag from his duffel and handed it to Mist. ”She won't talk to me. The rune spell's not designed that way. Give her this gift, and maybe she'll tell us what we want to know.”
Mist unrolled the soggy paper and peered inside. ”This is supposed to be a gift?”
The sibyl frowned at her with a scrunched apple-doll face. ”Gifts?”
Mist removed a ziplock freezer bag from the recesses of the sack and withdrew an object the size of a walnut.
The sibyl sniffed. ”What's that?”
Hermod told Mist, and Mist repeated it to the sibyl: ”This is a prince who died in the body of a mouse.”
”Not bad,” the sibyl said, reaching out to grab it from Mist's hand. She clutched the mouse to her bare chest. Seawater dripped from her hair and ran in rivulets down her belly and thighs. ”You are not entirely without manners, little corpse-chooser. What is it you wish to know from me? If true love lies in your path? If life grows in your womb? If the cows will give milk this year?”
Mist's nose was running. She sniffed and looked expectantly at Hermod.
”Let's see,” he said. ”Okay, try asking her this-”
The sibyl seemed to take notice of him for the first time. ”I don't like him,” she said to Mist. ”He has the stink of bad news.”
Grimnir laughed. ”You got that right.”
”Ask her about the wolves,” Hermod said. ”Where can we find them, how do we kill them all? And what about the other Ragnarok portents? What can we do about the Midgard serpent? And ask her about the s.h.i.+p of dead men's nails, and can we find Loki and kill him before he busts loose and pilots the s.h.i.+p of Hel's soldiers? And what about the sons of Muspellheim? And also find out if someone's controlling all this, manipulating events, and so forth.”
”Anything else?”
”That's it, for starters.”
Mist took a deep breath and repeated Hermod's laundry list of questions.
Crabs scuttled over the sibyl's feet. ”I won't answer a thing,” she said. ”Your runes aren't powerful enough, and your gift isn't pretty enough. You're a rude picker of corpses. You have nothing I need, so nothing will I give you.” With that, she turned her back and took several steps into the surf.
”She has to answer the questions,” Hermod insisted. ”Otherwise we're just thras.h.i.+ng around here instead of knowing what and where to attack. You have to make her answer.”
”Do I?” Mist shot back. ”You said you'd help me get my people out of Helheim, and as far as I can tell, none of your questions has anything to do with my objectives.”
”When the worlds are destroyed, Helheim will be one of them. If you want to rescue your sister and your recruit, then the best thing you can do is to make sure there's still a Helheim to rescue them from, not to mention a living world for them to return to.”
”Dammit,” Mist growled. She called to the sibyl, but the old woman just pushed deeper into the waves. Mist jogged into the cold foam and called out again. ”Forget the spell, forget the stupid mouse. Please, tell me what you want that I can give you.”
The sibyl stopped, waves breaking over her shoulders as though she were a rock. She turned and put her hands on her ample hips. ”You could offer an old, dead lady a cup of tea.”
GRIMNIR WAS typically resourceful in finding something for the sibyl to wear, though Mist was afraid to ask him exactly how and where he'd obtained the purple sweats.h.i.+rt, yellow pants from a rain slicker, orange sparkly boots, and Minnesota Vikings ball cap with one sagging gold lame horn.
Sibyl, Valkyrie, warrior-thug, G.o.d, and Alaskan malamute made for an odd party when they arrived at the Novel Cafe, which occupied part of the bottom floor of the old Masonic lodge on Pier Avenue in Santa Monica. Hermod gave Winston instructions to remain outside on the sidewalk, and the group installed themselves around a corner table, flanked by chipped-wood bookcases stuffed with paperback best sellers from the 1970s. Mist left to get tea for the sibyl and black coffee for the rest of them, as well as a poppy-seed m.u.f.fin for Hermod, who'd reminded her that she'd promised him breakfast. The total cost of the drinks and m.u.f.fin shouldn't have astonished her as much as it did, considering how the prices of fuel and food had been climbing in inverse proportion to the average temperatures. When she returned to the table, drawing on past waitressing experience to balance everything, the sibyl was immersed in a copy of the Weekly World News.
She looked up at Mist and snorted. ”Just who is this Nostradamus character?”
The front page displayed a scowling, bearded visage in grainy black and white. Two-inch type had him predicting a Miami buried in snow and mammoths charging through the streets of Santa Fe.
”He was a prognosticator, like you.” Outside, hail clattered on the sidewalk.
”A prognosticator?” the sibyl barked. ”He was a spouter of non sequiturs. Listen to this: The young lion will overcome the old one on the field of battle in single combat and put out his eyes in a cage of gold.” The sibyl threw the paper down on the table. ”What in Niflheim is that supposed to mean? What a phony.”
”Not like you, though. Your p.r.o.nouncements always come true.”
The sibyl's smile was tight and smug. She squeezed honey into her tea from a plastic bear. ”I'm more than reliable. I prophesied that a son of Odin would kill another, and wasn't Baldr slain by Hod? I predicted all of this: three winters, each longer than the last, with no summer between.”
Mist took a sip of watery coffee. At least it was hot. ”There've been ice ages before.”
”Three winters,” the sibyl boomed, ”each longer than the last. Man forgets the bonds of kins.h.i.+p. Battle-ax and sword rule, and an age of wolves 'til the world goes down. The rust-red c.o.c.k will raise the dead in Helheim, and the golden c.o.c.k Gullinkambi will crow to the G.o.ds. The wolves of Fenrir's kin swallow the sun and the moon. Earth breaks and mountains crumble, and the Midgard serpent, venom-spitting, rises from the sea. Naglfar, the s.h.i.+p of dead men's nails, breaks its moorings and sets sail. The Aesir's enemies meet them on the battlefield of Vigrid, and the nine worlds fall to fire and ice.”
The sibyl caught her breath. ”Forgive an old woman for admiring her work. It's so nice to chat like this.” She slurped her tea.
Mist gazed out the window and tried to imagine the sky on fire. She tried to imagine monsters striding over the horizon, leaving gravel and dust in their wake. But she couldn't, really. It was all too big, too abstract. Easy enough, however, to picture the Irish pub across the street engulfed in flame. She'd spent a first date there during her soph.o.m.ore year at UCLA with a cla.s.sics major named Jared. After dinner, he'd taken her back to his car, parked on this very street, and they'd made out for three hours. She remembered his hazel eyes and the way he seemed genuinely interested in learning everything about her, about how her grandmother Catalina had raised Lilly and her, how she'd been a band geek with a tenor saxophone at Venice High, about how Lilly dropped out of high school to travel the world and protest the World Trade Organization and whaling and half a dozen other things, and how alone she'd felt when her grandmother died. Now she imagined Jared's hazel eyes shriveling in the heat of conflagration and Catalina's little house burning to cinders-all just collateral damage in the fight between G.o.ds and monsters who wouldn't even notice.
”I don't believe it,” Mist said. ”I will not believe that the world can go on for four and a half billion years, and we can go from living in caves to building the Taj Mahal and sending probes out to Jupiter and making music and law and antibiotics ... and it's all for nothing.”
The sibyl tore open a sugar packet. ”Take heart, carrion-lover. There will be a new world, all fresh and green, run by the Aesir who survive: Vidar and Vali, and Thor's sons, and Baldr and Hod. It just won't be this world, and you and those you love won't be around to enjoy it.”
”Ask her what happens to me,” Hermod said around a bite of m.u.f.fin. ”No, wait, changed my mind, I still don't want to know. Ask her about all those things I told you on the beach.”