Part 8 (1/2)
”I have a habit of doing that.” Lilly picked up a rock that had narrowly missed her and speedballed it back into the crowd. She heard the satisfying impact of rock on bone.
”Well, at least they can't kill you,” Hod said as a rock whizzed past his ear. ”But they can render your body such that it will be little more than a bag of pulp or a scattering of debris, yet even then you will remain conscious.”
”G.o.d, you're cheery.”
”I am of the Aesir tribe, true, but there's no need to call me G.o.d.”
”I think you misunderstood what I meant.”
”Very likely. Now, please, crouch down.”
Hod lifted his stick, and Lilly saw what he had in mind. She ducked and heard a great whoosh of air as his stick circled overhead like a helicopter rotor blade. He hit those closest and batted away a few hurled stones. The mob scattered.
”They'll be back,” Hod said. ”And now that you've identified yourself as my friend, they'll come after you as well.”
”Who said I was your friend?”
”You didn't need to. It doesn't take much in Helheim to find yourself the target of blame. Blame for Baldr, blame for death, blame for lack of good footwear. Now they'll blame you too.”
”Terrific. So we should get out of here.”
”Yes,” Hod said.
”Where to?”
Hod pointed off in the distance with his stick, but Lilly didn't think he was pointing at anything in particular.
She set off with him, not knowing what he was all about, or where they were going, or what they'd do when they got there. Hod didn't know either. ”We're going that way,” he said. ”We can do there everything we can do here, but hopefully with fewer rocks being flung at us.”
”Yeah. Okay. That actually makes sense.” Besides, staying on the move made her feel a little less dead.
THEY MADE slow progress down a packed-dirt path wide enough to be a two-lane street. Hod swept his crooked stick before him to determine his way. She'd gotten out of him that he'd spent a long time in the custody of Hel, though what a long time meant in a land of G.o.ds and dead mortals was something she was still having trouble calibrating. He claimed he'd recently escaped Hel's palace, with the a.s.sistance of Baldr's wife, but he refused to say much more about that matter.
In return, Lilly gave him the online-dating version of her biography, with brief sketches of some of her felonies thrown in to make herself sound more interesting. She'd left home at sixteen, finding Los Angeles too tainted by Hollywood and Beverly Hills. After trying out life as a barista, a ba.s.s player, but mostly a sofa-surfer, she'd fallen in with a group of anarchists in Was.h.i.+ngton State who were saving up to fly to Geneva to protest a G8 summit. She'd come back from that trip with a broken wrist, Taser scars, a criminal record, and a life's calling.
”How did your family feel about all this?” Hod asked.
Lilly's feet shuffled through the dust. ”My grandmother died when I was in Switzerland. Kathy never really forgave me for that. I wish we'd managed to settle that stuff before I died.”
”And your grandmother? Have you sought her out here?”
”No. It would be ... I don't want to see anyone I knew when I was alive. I guess that's cowardly.”
Hod was quiet for a while. Then, ”No,” he said. ”I understand completely.”
They walked on together. Vapors swirled around them, occasionally thinning enough to reveal low, one-story structures built of piled stones and limbs from dead gray trees. Gaps in the piles suggested windows and doorways, and some of the buildings had awnings woven from thin boughs. Not so much buildings, Lilly judged as they pa.s.sed a pile of rocks arranged to resemble a fire hydrant, but abstract simulacrums of them.
”Who built this place?” she asked.
”They were mostly dead from your lands, perhaps two generations removed from you. Iowans, they called themselves. Many of them had died together in a tornado. In Midgard they had built a town, and they sought to build it here again, as best they could. It took them longer to gather the materials than you might believe.”
Lilly shook her head in bemus.e.m.e.nt. She could imagine hardened, determined, Depression-era townsfolk trying to reconstruct Main Street, dreaming of one day building a library and a city hall and a little park with a statue, schools and houses, all of it. They dreamed of building an America with sticks and stones.
”What happened to them?”
Hod's stick sc.r.a.ped the dirt. ”I'm not certain. I heard that Hel put them in the corpse gate.”
They went on for a while, only the sound of their footfalls disturbing the silence.
”Is that what she'll do with us if we're caught trying to break out?” Lilly said.
”She'd probably make you part of the gate,” Hod said matter-of-factly, ”but I'm of the Aesir, one of her prized possessions. I imagine she'd want to keep me around, probably in chains, possibly tortured.”
Better that than be tangled up in the writhing ma.s.s of bodies in the gate. The idea of getting cuddly with other corpses made her empty stomach quiver.
Of course, she herself was a corpse. Or was she? If she managed to breach the wall and get out, what would she be? A ghost? A zombie? Nothing at all?
A ragged growl cut off her thoughts, and she felt a jolt shoot through her legs. Whatever the state of her existence, that sure as h.e.l.l had felt like an adrenaline spike.
”Do you see anything?” Hod demanded in a hoa.r.s.e whisper, his staff raised. Lilly realized he was afraid.
”No. What was that? It sounded like an animal.”
”Garm. Hel has sent her best servant after us.”
Lilly tried to a.n.a.lyze their situation tactically. Except for Hod's stick, they had no weapons. And Hod's blindness ruled out a fast retreat. Their best bet was to take cover in one of the nearby buildings.
She hooked Hod by the arm and pulled him through a doorway. Inside were more stones, arranged into shelves against the walls. When she spotted a waist-high stack of rocks, atop which sat another stack in the unmistakable shape of a cash register, she came to the heartbreaking conclusion that the place was supposed to be a shop of some kind. The shelves were bare; apparently the townspeople had not gotten around to sculpting stone merchandise.
”We can duck down here,” she said, hunkering behind the counter.
”Garm will smell us out,” Hod said. ”He probably already has. He'll squeeze through the doorway and bring the walls down with him. The last thing you will see before he tears your head off is blood and slaver dripping from his jaws. Hel will probably have your head placed such that you will be able to view your own decapitated body. Thankfully, being blind, I will be spared the sight of my own corpse.”
”Thanks, Suns.h.i.+ne,” Lilly hissed. ”But as long as my head's still attached to me, I'm staying attached to it. What's Garm's weakness?”
Hod considered this for a moment. ”It is said he can be subdued with Hel cakes, which never fail those who gave bread freely in life.”
”I used to collect cans for food drives. Does that count?”
”I would have no way of knowing,” Hod said. ”I don't write law.”
Another growl ripped the air. It was a nasty, terrible sound, a force of nature driven by hunger and malevolence. Lilly wiped her palms on her thighs, though she wasn't sweating. She hadn't perspired or wept or p.i.s.sed or shat since dying.
”What are Hel cakes, anyway?”
”I'm not sure,” said Hod. ”But it seems unlikely that Garm could be dissuaded from his pursuit by mere morsels. Some lore is only invention.”
”So our best option is throwing rocks?” said Lilly, incredulous.