The Jekyll Legacy by Jaye Michael & Levanah Greene Chapter Thirty Hel in a Handbasket

Victorian alchemy meets modern science and magic.
What could possibly go wrong?

Life is just one damned thing after another.

 — Anonymous

 

“What was that?” Phil had heard a rustling noise behind him, and whirled around to look. It was Eir and Sleipnir, just now landed as lightly as a cat might, landing on the ground with barely a hint of noise. They were in the meadow where their army was staged, still packed but waiting for an order to either move on or bivouac.

Eir dismounted and walked over to where they stood waiting.

“I gather that they’re still over the hills there,” he said, indicating the direction of the red glow they could see more clearly now, as full night enfolded Miðgarðr and the stars had started to appear overhead.

“They are,” Eir said quietly, “together with what look like stone trolls, but they have an odd glow about them that I’ve never seen. Whatever they are, they’re clearly poisonous to life, since I can see and feel small insects and animals dying wherever they pass.”

“A glow?” Phil said. “What sort of glow?”

“It’s almost like the light from the embers of a fire dying down, but strangely blue, rather than varying shades of yellowish orange.”

Phil was instantly suspicious and asked her, “Can you take me up to see? Best make it from a very safe distance, I think.”

“Of course. Now?”

“As soon as possible.”

“Then let’s be on our way,” she said, and ran back to her mount, leapt up upon his back, turned him with a beautiful rearing deboulé that would have made every one of the Lippizaner Stallions insanely jealous, rode toward Phil at speed and then bent down to hoist him up behind her on the fly as Sleipnir took instantly to the air, quickly rising up and over the hill to where the Jötunn forces were gathered.

Phil grinned and whispered in her ear, “Remind me never to say, ‘with breakneck speed’ when I’m asking for a lift.”

She laughed quietly but made no further noise until they were high over the Jötunn encampment. “That’s them,” she said in a hushed voice, pointing down toward the outskirts of their ragged camp. “I managed to separate a few Jötunn souls from their bodies, but where they wound up I have not the slightest clue. Their cold bodies are still lying where they fell, so it seems that they’re not all that fond of funerals.”

In the darkness, he could see that the skins of all the Fire Jötunns he could see were glowing with a deep amber light, as if their metabolic processes were speeded up to an incredible level. “Fire Giants indeed,” he whispered.

“That’s why they call them that, I presume. I’ve never had any personal dealing with them, though, for which blessing I’m very glad.”

“Indeed,” he barely breathed. “Where are the stone trolls you mentioned?”

“Outside the main camp,” she said, “They have them chained to iron spikes pounded into rocky outcroppings there,” she pointed, “and there.” She indicated another group of them and urged Sleipnir towards the second group, which seemed to be further from the camp.

They were ugly beasts, misshapen and lumpy, as if they’d been roughly formed from lava as it cooled, and it was instantly clear to Phil — now that he could see them clearly — that the faint bluish ‘glow’ that surrounded each of them was Cherenkov radiation emanating from the moisture in the air as what must be a fantastic flux of high-energy particles stumbled over the water molecules that the misty air contained. “Eir! Get us out of here! As quickly as you can, please.” he said as calmly as he could.

She wheeled around her strange steed and they galloped… flew… in utter silence back to their landing place.

As they landed, all eyes turned to them and Phil had a dour look on his face. He thanked Eir and suggested that they both consult with the leaders of their party, so they walked over together, leaving Sleipnir to graze on meadow grass. Phil said gravely, “Empress, Queen, Master Wizard, I have very bad news.”

They nodded, but answered not at all otherwise.

“The Fire Jötnns have brought along beasts — Eir calls them stone trolls — and they incorporate a deadly weapon indeed, a type of nightmarish internal fire that burns from the inside out, and will be very quickly fatal to any of us, I think, after any close exposure. Pregnant women are at particular risk, since this almost invisible fire interferes with the development of the baby, and will either kill it immediately, along with the mother, or introduce what we call ‘mutations,’ genetic damage that can take almost any form, preventing limbs and organs from forming properly, deforming the pathways of the brain. You name it, it can happen.”

Rhea said, as soon as he’d fallen silent, “Radioactivity, then….”

“Exactly that, and with enough power that the ‘trolls’ glow with the blue light of Cherenkov radiation, at least when shrouded by fog. They’re staked out with chains, well away from each other, and in two separate groups. I’d guess at worst that the Jötunns have figured out that they can initiate thermonuclear ignition by slamming two or more of them together using some unknown mechanism, or at least increase the emission of what would have to be termed a spherical ‘death ray’ by putting a few of the trolls in close proximity to each other.”

Eir, the wizard, and the two sovereigns were mystified. The Empress spoke first, “I have no idea what sort of magic you’re describing, Phil, so suspect that it has to do with this ‘science’ magic of your world. Are there any steps that we can take to combat this strange threat?”

“I’m not sure, and would like to consult with you and Akcuanrut before we jump to any hasty conclusions. In the meantime, I think we should prepare to send all the women back to Vanaheim, since I don’t think that we can morally risk the insidious death by poison of our innocent babies. In the worst case, we might even be forced to open a portal back to Earth and contact the United States Government, because the people of Earth have lived with these types of weapons for many years, and have a limited ability to effectively destroy both the weapons and their users, albeit at tremendous cost. Certainly the leaders back in the USA would be very alarmed, particularly if it was pointed out to them that the Fire Jötunns planned to include Earth within their sphere of destruction.”

“Why don’t we simply do that first?” the Queen asked, reasonably enough.

“Because Earth leaders would very likely use the same sorts of weapons, thermonuclear explosions and fire, and might very well destroy your world in order to save theirs. I’m personally certain that they wouldn’t hesitate to do exactly that, if it seemed the lesser of two evils, which it probably world, since mortal danger tends to bring out the worst in many people.”

“Why don’t you use some of those miniature portals you discovered in the fabric of the pavilion to transport them out into the local Oort cloud?” Selene asked. “They certainly couldn’t do any harm there.”

“In the short term, probably not, but I’m not at all sure that the trip would kill them, so it might be just a matter of delaying their plans until they figured out a method of returning. They’ve already demonstrated some ability to manipulate existing portals, and there are hundreds of thousands of the ‘heat-sink’ portals used in that fabric, at very least, and possibly many orders of magnitude more, since I don’t know how much of that fabric has been woven over the years, nor everywhere it might be scattered.”

Rhea saw the problem immediately. “The chances of them stumbling across one, even if there are billions of them, would be remote in so vast a volume of space, but it would eventually happen, since they seem to be immortal, duelling near-infinities.”

“Well, not infinities, exactly, but very large numbers.”

“I know,” she said, rolling her eyes, “it’s like the Pentagon budget; a billion bucks here, a billion bucks there; first thing you know, you’re talkin’ ’bout some serious money!” She kicked at a random stone on the ground, venting a little, but not all, of her anger. “Those slimy sorry-ass schmucks!” she said in fury, kicking another stone, but with considerably more force.

“All too true,” Akcuanrut observed, “but hatred is most useful when focused on revenge.”

“You’re right, of course….” Then she changed the subject right around, “Gefjon, what’s the Sun made of?”

She seemed surprised. “Why, it’s a burning ball of fire, of course. Is it different in your world?”

“It is, but we won’t go into that right now.” She turned to Phil and Selene and said, “I don’t think that we can take a chance that it’s not a burning ball of fire here, since Yggdrasil doesn’t seem to be any kind of metaphor, but a physical reality, despite the temptation to turn it into a metaphor for some sort of extra-dimensional linkage between the Nine Worlds. That leaves Earth and possibly the world of Myriad.” She thought for a moment before she said, “Earth, I think, since we can’t vouch for the stability of close binaries over long periods of time, and who knows what damage we could do by dumping large amounts of energy into either of the pair.”

Phil was bewildered, and the rest of them were much more confused than that, when Selene cried out, “Of course!” then quickly looked around and realized that she’d shouted when they were supposed to be keeping quiet. “Sorry,” she said quietly to all and sundry.

“Never mind, Sweetie,” Rhea said, then buttonholed the Empress, Phil, and Akcuanrut. “How long would it take you to make a one-way portal — like the centaurs did in their temple — on or very near our Sun?”

Akcuanrut seemed flustered. “It’s never been done! It can’t be done!”

“Don’t give me that, Acky,” she said impatiently. “I know for a fact that Larona here was able to establish a link to your twin suns back in your world, because that’s exactly how she makes her Orrery work. If she can link to them, you simply must be able to establish a portal, just as you did to the one-way portal back in the basement of the Temple of Zampulus.”

“But it’s never been done like that!” the wizard sputtered, somewhat redundantly, since he’d already said that, and outraged respectability wasn’t nearly as becoming in a teenager as it might have been in an old man. “That portal was already present when I started!”

“Don’t be such an old fuddy-duddy, Acky! You’re only as old as you feel!” she said as she pinched his butt, “and you feel like a young man to me.”

Akcuanrut was about to say something rash when Hnoss and Gersemi came up behind him and wrapped their arms around him whilst Hnoss whispered, “Go ahead, Acky, you know how much fun it would be to show off a little and teach that young girl a lesson in what a real wizard can do when he puts his mind to it.”

Gersemi whispered in his other ear, “We’ll make it well worth your while as well….”

…at which the Wizard blushed right down to his toes, but said, “Well, I think it might be possible, but that means opening up a portal back to Earth! Can we afford to take that risk?”

“Think nothing of it, Sir,” Phil said with confidence. “They already have a portal mapped out on Earth, which undoubtedly formed part of their plan almost from the beginning. As far as we know, their fond visions of mayhem and destruction included only their home worlds at first — or so the local prophesies tell us —, and then Myriad and Earth almost as an afterthought, possibly triggered — or at least facilitated — by the explorations of the ancient centaur portal scientists themselves, or by the Giant’s discovery of a portal back to the world of Myriad when they hid their super-weapon, the Heart of Virtue.” Then, he added, “I’m pretty sure that we can link to almost any heavenly body, Sir, since I myself was an amateur at the task when I aligned my monumental focal point and amplifier of magical power to the summer solstice and to the plane of the ecliptic. I’m pretty sure that — between the three of us — we can manage Earth’s Sun, since there’s only one of them, and the entire Solar System revolves around it as one focus of the slightly eccentric ellipses that trace the orbits of the planets. It’s kind of hard to miss.”

“There’s one problem, though,” Rhea said. “Before you can go gallivanting off to arrange our reception for the Giants, we need to do something about the most immediate threat, the blue trolls.”

“But,” Phil said, “this new scheme of yours will take care of both problems, I think, with exemplary finality. Sending them off into the sunset seems a particularly fitting ending for the fiery bad guys in this particular movie.”

“But not quick enough, Phil, even if you could flit back and forth to Earth and back in the blink of an eye. We don’t know what time slippages you may encounter, and it may be night when you arrive on Earth, which might interfere with your workings, even with the three of you doing your best.”

Selene chimed in with her own two bits. “We need to have a Plan B, Phil, to cover the most pressing danger, which is the initiation of a thermonuclear event, whether it rises to the level of an explosion or not. The prophecies say that Bilröst is destroyed by the Fire Jötunns, and they could do that any time now, unless we do something to slow them down.”

“What were you planning to do with the pavilion cloth before, Phil?” Rhea said, seemingly out of the blue.

“Well,” he answered, “because they were Fire Giants, I had an idea to use the cloth fibers as a sort of fire extinguisher, by separating out the ends of each thread to make a sort of dust which I could use to smother fires by sucking out the heat and combustible materials and poking them into outer space.”

“That sounds like a great idea, Phil! Now, what if we think of the blue trolls as stacks of wood, and the radiation as ordinary fire? If we disperse a million bits of sliced-up trolls into a high energy vacuum, I doubt that they’d ever spontaneously put themselves back together again, and I don’t think they’re clever enough to do anything on their own, or at least Eir doesn’t think so, assuming that they’re roughly as stupid as the average stone troll.”

“That might work…,” Phil said doubtfully,”but it’s not going to do anything to clean up the radioactive contamination those things will leave behind.“

“Phil,” she said kindly, “there’s an old saying, ‘Sufficient unto the day are the troubles thereof.’ Let’s not worry about cleaning up the mess until the litterbugs are taken care of.”

“Phil,” Selene added, “Why don’t you make your little ‘fire extinguishers’ and let Rhea and I get on with making sure they get to where they need to be.”

“But I don’t want either of you anywhere near those infernal things!” he shouted.

“Phil… Phillip, who among us is more qualified to throw any sort of object at a distant target? You? Or Selene and I? You know very well that you’d have to have Eir fly you up close enough to spit on them, risking both her life and yours, whilst the two of us can keep well away and hit them from anywhere within a hundred feet or more. If we’re above them, we could probably do it from five hundred feet, more or less, assuming that there’s not much wind. But if you keep us standing here so you can argue with us, there will be a wind, because it will soon be morning, and there’ll be a stiff breeze, by the look of things.”

“Face it, Phil,” Rhea said, “we’re going.”

“But… the babies!” he expostulated.

“So,” she said sarcastically, “to ‘protect’ our babies, we’re supposed to let you ‘nobly’ try and fail? Get real, Phil! You’re in the officer corps, so use your damned brains while we soldier on and kill the bad guys, won’t you please? It’s our damned job!”

He was about to say something… but stern looks from both sovereigns shut him up. “Okay,” he said, in sullen dudgeon.

“That’s Mama’s good boy!” they cooed. “Now go along with Acky and whip us up a batch of ‘fire extinguishers’ — about the same size as your little light balls would be nice, since we’ve had plenty of practice with those, but almost anything will do, as long as it gets the job done.”

“And be sure,” Selene added, “to include a boatload of spares, in case they trot out the day shift after sunrise, and just on general principles. As Helmuth von Moltke once said, ‘No plan of operations extends with certainty beyond the first encounter with the enemy’s main strength,’ or as the Girl Guides still say, ‘Be prepared!’ ” With that, they smiled cheerfully and wandered off with Eir to cook up a more detailed strategy, Moltke not withstanding.

“I think,” said the Empress Larona to the two wizards, “that I’d like to sort out the deconstruction of the fabric, since that’s my particular area of expertise, with any needed assistance from you, dear wizards, while at the same time letting you concentrate as much as possible on the actual means of altering our existing portal magic to meet our new demands. Most of this should probably be done off-world, since we know that our enemies are aware of and sensitive to at least some level of portal sorcery, and I’d be loath to conduct the most critical of our experiments in what’s essentially public view.”

“That’s a very good point, Empress,” Akcuanrut said. “I hadn’t yet thought of that last reason for caution. We can have a portal back to our ‘jumping off’ location in New York open within five minutes, and close it down within seconds, so I have every reason to hope that we can be gone before our enemies even know we’re here.” He nodded toward Phil then and said, “I believe that Phil here may have a handle on synchronizing temporality between our worlds as well, although it’s still theoretical. By incorporating your own Orrery spells, which as you know represent an extremely accurate ‘clock,’ within the framework of our portals, he now believes that we can return to any particular instant in time, so we should be able to conduct our experiments on Earth, and then appear back here in what will be literally the blink of an eye.”

“Have you actually tested this?” the Empress asked. “Can we depend upon it now?”

“We haven’t rested it, no,” Phil said, looking not the least abashed, “but can do so very quickly. In fact, if my theory is correct, we can can take all the time we need in testing and modifications before we return and still return in essential instantaneity.”

“But how can you know this?” she asked, incredulous.

“Because our experience has shown that passages through portals between worlds appear to act in a manner we call a ‘drunkard’s walk’ back on Earth,” Phil said, feeling very pleased with himself to be back on ground where he was a master. “Unlike portals which link two locations on a single world, which act in apparent simultaneity, probably because we expect them to, passages between worlds do not, probably because the frame of reference changes so drastically. During the first excursion, for example, which happened before I came upon the scene, the Lanyon family and Selene left Earth a very few days before a holiday we call Halloween, spent quite some time on your world, and then returned to Earth on the very day of that same holiday, essentially in parallel to the passage of time in your world, or possibly even a reverse ‘slippage,’ gaining back at least some of the time they’d actually spent on their journey. I think they actually gained a day, but they weren’t keeping careful track of their time, so I can’t prove it. On their second foray into your world, in which I was included, we spent at most a month or two, yet fully six months had seemingly elapsed by the time that we returned, so I know that we experienced a drastic ‘slippage’ at that time. But then, when I stepped back through the portal for a consultation with you and Akcuanrut, our conversation can’t possibly have lasted any longer than a few minutes — even including the time spent gathering up Selene and Rhea for the return trip — I found that many hours had passed on Earth, a slippage which, though fairly small in real terms, was proportionally very large indeed.” He paused to let them all think about this. “I believe that the reason for this random behavior was that we made no effort at all to control our temporal relationship to our original timeline when we returned, and I believe that your Orrery spells might hold the key to synchronizing our departures and arrivals because they’re grounded in exact instants within time, and so can be a ‘target’ in the same general sense that your Orrery itself targets the current positions of the suns and planets of your own solar system, even when they can’t be seen by the eye.”

“But how,” the Empress said, “do you propose to return to Earth at any exact moment? We haven’t set up any such model of your planetary system there, or at least I don’t think so.”

“Actually,” he said, “we have, in two separate ways. First, my magical amplifier is precisely aligned with a particular point against the fixed stars which tracks the movement of the Earth in its orbit around our Sun at a very precise instant of time, sunrise on the summer solstice on the specific date the device was formed. Due to the precession of the equinox, an Earth-centric term for the specific axial precession of the Earth, it also marks a specific period within a cycle lasting, on Earth, roughly twenty-six thousand years, approximately one degree every seventy-two years. At the time I created it, I was also aware of the Earth’s position in the orbit of our Sun around our galaxy, a period of roughly two hundred and twenty-five to two hundred and fifty million years, which is enough precision for ordinary accuracy.” He paused, thinking about something.

“Well,” said Akcuanrut, “is that it?”

“What?” he said, refocusing his attention.

“What’s the next thing?” the wizard asked. “You said that your amplifier was the first.”

“Oh!” He smiled and held up his wrist, upon which was a Frank Muller Aeternitas Mega 5, a present from Selene and Rhea, who knew how much he liked gadgets. “My first two wives, Selene and Rhea, gave it to me. In its way, it’s a tiny version of your own Orrery, Larona, although it only displays the inferred positions of our Sun and our single Moon directly.” He held it up so they could see the Moon phase display, and the many dials and indications. “Unlike most such devices, this one indicates the exact moment within a thousand year cycle, which I believe is sufficient accuracy and repeatability for our purposes, although I’d like you, Larona, to set up a simple Orrery here, so I can see how it’s done, and so that Akcuanrut and I can set up a similar device on Earth to provide an alternative time source as a backup if any of our other standards fail. I’ve taken the liberty of fashioning a simple miniature orrery in platinum and gold, with mercury bearings,” here he produced a small hardwood box, about eight inches on a side, which he opened to reveal a model, not to scale, of the Nine Worlds, showing greater detail on those they’d visited thus far, with a suspended set of colored balls to represent the Sun of these worlds, plus the Moon and planets, “to serve as a framework for your spell, although I can change it if it’s not suitable for any reason.”

She looked at his contrivance very carefully, then nodded and said smiling, “It will do very nicely, Phil. I wish I’d known you when I had my own more elaborate version made, since this one’s been much improved.”

He smiled back and said, “Of course, this one’s not nearly as pretty when you’re… resting, so I think you received good value for their efforts.”

“In retrospect, dear Phillip, I have to disagree, but perhaps I’ll change my tune if we ever return to the Capital.”

“When we return to your Palace, my very dear Larona, I’ll look forward to persuading you to sing in a higher key.”

“I’ll be anticipating your score, then,” she said and smiled. “Perhaps we can manage to work in an extended duet.”

It was well after midnight, local time, before Selene and Rhea were ready for their foray into sabotage behind enemy lines, since the Empress had run into trouble trying to unweave and repurpose the heat sink cloth. It had turned out that the individual fibers were fused together by gossamer ‘bridge threads’ that spanned the distance between the center of one fiber and the next, making the overall task more difficult, because she’d had to devise an unlinking spell that didn’t destroy the useful structure of the portal fiber before she could weave them into another form. Once done, however, it was surprisingly easy to use the trigger spell Phil had designed for the light balls to cause the new portal devices to blossom into a dispersive dandelion that did its work almost instantaneously, then disappeared into itself like the Worm Ouroboros, the magic itself dissipating as the individual fibers were shredded into atoms and simultaneously transported out into the interstellar void.

All in all, Selene and Rhea were very pleased with their new toys, although they lacked the satisfying heft and beauty of a finely-crafted blade.

Carrying two bomb bags each slung over their respective shoulders, they walked up to Eir Menglöð and said, “We’re ready, Sweetie, shall we be off?”

Eir grinned broadly, excitement shining in her eyes as she said, “I’m ready, but I think that we should split up, so we can attack on two fronts simultaneously, which might serve to further confuse any efforts they might make to defend their little ‘pets.’ ”

The two women looked a little puzzled. “How does that work, exactly?” they said together.

“Easy; climb aboard!” She reached down help them up and then immediately leapt up into the air, but Selene and Rhea were astonished to find that they were each alone on their own Sleipnir, galloping in close formation with two other Sleipnirs, only one of which carried Eir.

“How do we steer these things?” they each yelled separately, though the sound of their voices blended together seamlessly.

“That’s easy too,” Eir shouted, just think about where you’d like to be and Sleipnir will find it for you. He’s quite clever, for a horse.

“But you don’t have any of Phil’s fancy gadgets!” they called out in close harmony.

She shrugged. “I was never very good at throwing stones either, so I’ll just make do with Cortana here!” She drew her slim diamond-bladed sword, wielding it as lightly as a feather, but it looked far more dangerous than any feather one could imagine. “You two take good care of the blue trolls whilst I try to keep the Fire Jötunns amused until our main force arrives!” With that, she pointed off over the hills before them, evidently indicating the rough position of the blue trolls, and turned her own mount toward Bilröst, clearly visible in the night sky toward the North.

Selene and Rhea galloped on toward the last reported location of the trolls, but were prepared to search for them if they’d been moved for any reason. As they cleared the hills, though, they could see the exact scene that Phil and Eir had described, so immediately split up, Selene to the north side of the camp and Rhea toward the more distant southeast side, where rocky outcrops still served as makeshift pastures where the trolls had been staked out to do whatever it was trolls do in their off time.

Selene saw them immediately, ten widely-spaced ugly trolls surrounded by a very faint blue glow, presumably less bright than Phil’s description because it wasn’t as misty now, so there wasn’t as much suspended water in the air to provide the local violation of the speed of light that Cherenkov radiation requires.

Making her plans quickly, she visualised the path she wanted to take high over the chained trolls, since she didn’t imagine that the nearby Jötunns would find her ærial bombing run amusing.

Sleipnir — her individualized version of Sleipnir anyway — hastened to obey as she quickly threw three gadgets per troll down upon the hulking beasts from high above them, that particular number chosen to account for any sudden movements they might make when the shit hit the fan, allowing approximately five seconds for the drop, which she thought was plenty, considering that she’d thrown them with a fairly high initial velocity. ‘Better to err on the side of pessimism, if err we must,’ she thought.

The interval seemed almost endless, but soon the dandelion blossoms flashed into a momentary trail of staccato amber brilliance and then immediately disappeared, leaving not a single troll behind, and half a Jötunn, the only one who’d had the misfortune to be passing by when her little hand grenades impacted, a good night’s work, over all.

Quickly, she wheeled her personal Sleipnir higher and they galloped through the slightly misty air toward Rhea’s destination, where she could see an alarming display of fireworks flashing, almost like lightning in reverse.

Rhea held one bag of bombs in her lap as she directed Sleipnir towards the last reported location of the trolls, but quickly saw that they were on the move, being ‘herded’ by a dozen Jötunns in the general direction of Bilröst. ‘Crap!’ she thought, by no means foolish enough to speak her curse aloud. Thinking quickly, she picked up the bag she held in her lap and whirled it over her head, scattering two hundred bomblets like deadly rainfall to carpet the entire area, then she grabbed the second bag from her shoulder and began picking targets.

She ordered Sleipnir lower with a thought, to about three hundred feet — a reasonable limit, according to Phil, and he was a known paranoiac where either Selene or Rhea herself were concerned — since even a clumsy oaf might successfully avoid a missile dropping under gravitational acceleration — no matter how forcefully given its initial velocity — assuming that they could actually see them falling against the night sky.

First, she sent three bombs each to target specific trolls, or at least the seven she could see still visible as the first hailstorm of bomblets puffed into amber brilliance and disappeared, taking trolls — or parts of trolls — into oblivion with them. Quite a few Jötunns were inconvenienced as well, and the survivors began peering up into the sky to try to ascertain where the startling bombardment had come from, the which made doubly mysterious by the fact that there was nothing left behind except the odd chunk of troll, or Jötunn, butchered as cleanly as if whacked off by an invisible cleaver.

She aimed for the trolls still stumbling around first, then the chunks, unsure what damage could be done if the stray bits of troll were all gathered together, and then began on the shepherds … ‘trollherds…?’ left standing, since they seemed the most likely salvage party, if one were to be arranged.

She was making great progress on her task when one of the ‘trollherds,’ the biggest, reached down to his side for what looked like a coil of rope.

It wasn’t. The big Jötunn took hold of a handle protruding from the coil and shook out the ‘rope,’ which instantly transmogrified itself in her thoughts into a scourge of what looked like nine strands, all of which burst instantly into flame. “Oh, crap!” she said again, this time with greater volume, which turned out to be a mistake, since the Jötunn instantly swiveled to face her and lashed out with his fiery whips in exactly her direction.

She could see the fiery tongues of flame writhing and twining together — almost as if they were alive and filled with specific malice — as they hurtled directly toward her. “Crap!” she screamed, as Sleipnir, having a nicely-developed sense of self-preservation of his own, wheeled about and hurtled toward the heights again, while Rhea, her wits belatedly collecting themselves from whence they’d flown, turned partially around and hurled three more bombs toward the hostile Jötunn, just for luck. She wished she’d thought to bring her hurley along on this strange journey, because she was wicked clever at camogie and Phil’s little balls were about the size of a sliotar.

“Sleipnir, honey! Do your stuff!” she said quietly as she wheeled him into a sweeping turn with a thought, then threw three more grenades at the bad-tempered Jötunn lashing randomly at the sky with his flamboyant weapon, obviously enraged, but unable to find her against the overcast sky, still partially-shrouded in mist as they were.

The Jötunn’s surprising scourge, as improbably extensible as it seemed to be, obviously had limitations, since not one of his spectacular flailings had come close to reaching the heights at which Sleipnir and she were circling, which was closer to their original height than not.

“Still taunting the boys, I see!” Selene’s voice came from overhead.

“Oh! Hi, Sweetie!” she said. “I seem to have annoyed the creepy clod, I must admit, but that’s his own darned fault! I can’t help it if he can’t take a joke!”

Selene surveyed the landscape below, eerily visible in the surreal flickering light cast from the flaming lashes, each of which seemed trace its own path through the air below them. It was cratered by hundreds of semi-spherical gouges, as if some Giant Julia Childs had taken a giant melon ball scooper to it, and was littered with almost as many Jötunn corpses or casualties, depending on which bits of them had been vacuumed into oblivion by Phil’s little inventions. “Well, one can hardly blame him for being a little ticked off, since you seem to have made a mess of the camp. Maybe he’s the janitor, and will have to clean up the mess.”

“That’s not my fault either!” she said angrily. “They were moving my trolls over towards Bilröst, and had them strung out all over the landscape, so naturally I didn’t manage to be quite as tidy as I’m sure you succeeded in being, Sister dear!” She looked down at Angry Male, still flailing about with his scourge of flame, and added, “I don’t think that’s the janitor, though; I think it’s old Surtr himself. He has that ineffable ‘I’m entitled to be a jerk, ’cuz I’m the Boss!’ look about him.”

Selene took another gander, then said, “Oh, he’s effable alright,” she said sourly. “Have you tried offing him?”

“I have,” she said in pique, “but he’s managed to destroy every one of Phil’s clever little gadgets that I’ve tossed at him with that crazy scourge of his. I think that’s part of the reason he keeps flailing about with it now, because the light not only lets him see what he’s aiming at, but also whatever may be aimed at him by me, for instance.”

“Bummer,” Selene mused, staring down at him thoughtfully, as one might contemplate a difficult position on a chessboard. “Of course,” she continued slowly, working out an idea on the fly, as it were, “by now he’s gotten used to the idea that the only way these things arrive is on a ballistic trajectory, and from a single origin. What if we presented him with a slightly different puzzle?” Then she smiled, not prettily at all. “Here’s what we can do….”

Rhea urged Sleipnir higher, higher than he felt entirely comfortable, to judge from his skittishness, then turned back down toward the battlefield, down and down and down, urging him to go faster, which he wasn’t at all loath to do, until the wind whistled past her ears, almost peeling back her eyelids as she hurtled like a meteor from Heaven, and only then did she release a largish flight of bomblets directly aimed at the nasty guy with the whip.

Without pause, she pulled her lovely steed up, braking his descent just shy of where that scourge could reach, and let out a piercing scream to draw his attention.

Nearer to the ground, concealed only by the edge of the forest, Selene stood waiting until she heard her sister’s scream, and then stood ready, a doubled leather strap held loosely in her hand, until the Jötunn began flailing at the sky with greater vigor, then she quickly placed a grenade in the loop of the strap, held loosely in position by a hole she worked in it with the point of a knife, and then hurled it toward the Giant with all her strength, then did the same while the first was still in flight, and then ran up and did a spinning vault unto her Sleipnir’s back, a flashy mount that she’d perfected in the gym at school, urging him to flight with both her heels in his side and an urgent thought.

As quick as that thought, they were in the air and climbing before the first of her missiles struck, but she didn’t turn to look, not until she was back up to five hundred feet, where Rhea was waiting.

“Hey, Sweetie,” she said. “How’d we do?”

“Well,” she said smiling, “There are a lot more holes in the ground, and he’s missing one hand, the hand he held that lash of his with, by happenstance.”

“I only got off two sling shots, but I think that I connected with one, at least. Did you happen to see what happened? I was running hell for leather by the time they would have connected, so I didn’t have time to look.”

Rhea grinned like a ray of sunshine on a cloudy day. “Oh, you got him all right! He won’t be dancing for a while, that’s for sure, since he’s missing one leg right up to the knee!” Then she laughed….

…and Selene joined in, laughing. Then she said, “I wish I could have seen that, but let’s beat feet pronto, pardner, and head for home right now! Phil ought to be back, if his theories turned out right, and he’ll be fretting about us if we dawdle too long.”

“True. I’d hate for him to worry. I wonder how Eir’s doing up at Bilröst?”

So, without another word, they flew back the way they’d come, almost as quick as one could blink.

Eir was having the time of her life, since she usually waited on the other side of the battle, receiving the souls of the slain, and deciding where they should go. She guessed that Rhea and Selene were keeping Surtr busy, since he hadn’t shown up so far, and even her stupid uncle Freyr was doing well, vanquishing Jötunns right and left. He’d even managed to slice the head right off of the monstrous wolf Fenrir, which would be a source of grief only to his mother Angrboða, a particularly nasty piece of work, spiteful and mean, so it couldn’t happen to a more appropriate Jötunness.

She wasn’t doing too badly either, having accounted for over a hundred Giants in slashing/stabbing attacks from the air, and even Sleipnir had managed to kill a few, kicking their heads in with four hooves at once when they spun to change direction.

On this side of Bilröst, the Jötunns were beginning to mill around instead of trying to advance, since this wasn’t going quite the way they’d planned. Their leader Surtr, who was foretold in ancient prophesy to lead the charge across Bilröst, hadn’t bothered to show up at all, and the Gods were doing better then predicted, not to mention at least one Goddess nipping at their heels, though it was difficult to tell exactly how many Goddesses there were at any one time, since they all looked exactly alike, and were riding what had to be a herd of very odd flying horses. No matter how they looked at it, this wasn’t the best of times for them.

A few of them were quietly hanging back, sidling toward the woods with innocent concern pasted on their faces, even as they looked around to see if Surtr was ever going to bother showing up to lead his conscripted army toward the completion of his damned battle plan. Finally, a Jötunn posted as a lookout on the highest hill above the road leading up to Bilröst shouted down and waved, having evidently seen their leader on the road behind them.

Taking courage, the loiterers began to sidle back toward the center of the field, concerned lest they be seen as anything less than enthusiastic supporters of their fearless leader’s plan.

Soon, the word having shot through the milling crowd of Jötunns like a bottle of cheap fortified wine through a drunk, all eyes were turned to watch the road behind them, as even the Æsir currently holding Bilröst itself paused in their attacks, anxious to see what new danger was approaching.

Then they saw the outline of Surtr’s fierce head of wild black hair against the dawning sky begin to show above the rise of the road as he approached the anchor point of Bilröst and a coarse cheer went up from a thousand Jötunn throats! Their fearless leader was approaching, and so his plan was well on track.

Even the Æsir faltered slightly, their spirits dashed down by the sudden appearance of their most fearsome opponent, but the Jötunns kept right on cheering, some of them even laughing as they turned to call out jibes and taunts to the silent Æsir, confident now of the victory that had been prophesied throughout the long ages before this rippling moment in the pellucid pool pool of time.

But then, first one, then all the Gods were laughing, pointing toward the Jötunns, slapping each other on their backs in infectious risibility, and beginning to jeer and jibe at them with the same enthusiasm that the Giants had shown before.

This wasn’t going at all to plan, so the Giants looked back toward their leader for guidance, but then … disaster! Now that Surtr had come closer, they could see that Surtr wasn’t the fierce Jötunn he used to be. He was missing an eye, for example, and had a big gauge carved into the side of his face where that eye used to be, and he was missing a foot as well, and one hand, so he was hobbling along using a broken pine tree as a staff, its branches roughly stripped off, and his garments were dirty and stained. He looked like a bum.

Just then, that damned Goddess galloped overhead on that stupid horse of hers and called out to the stunned throng of Jötunns, “You might be interested to know, dear cousins, that Surtr here was utterly routed by two human girls! There’s a whole army of such girls on their way here right now, in fact, so now might be a good time to go back home. Surely you’ve all got better things to do.”

Just then, Surtr made it to the back of his army of Jötunns and started cursing, “Turn and fight, you dogs!” He dropped his crude staff and with his one remaining hand, reached for his fearsome scourge of fire, tottering slightly as he tried to balance.

Without a word, the nearest Jötunn took his sword and calmly stabbed him through the heart, spit on his corpse as it thudded to the ground, then stepped over the body to start the long and weary march back through Hel to Múspellsheimr.

Slowly, disheartened and ashamed, the other Jötunns followed, a slow process, because they all felt the need to spit on Surtr’s corpse as they passed over or around it, all of them headed back toward home.

Even the formerly boisterous Æsir stood silent, in that grim camaraderie that warriors sometimes share, watching their defeated foes march off the field with perhaps some small measure of sympathy for those who’d wound up on the losing side, and they could well afford to be magnanimous, since the true victory hadn’t been won by them at all, but by two girls, if Eir Menglöð was to be believed, and not one of them would dare to question her word, since she’d eventually hold all their fates in her two hands, sooner or later.

Eir watched all this byplay with some amusement, then clucked her tongue to get Sleipnir’s attention as they walked up to the brilliant rainbows that formed the entire substance of Bilröst, then stepped out onto the transparent surface before riding up to her uncle. “Uncle,” she said, “How’s Gerðr doing? Well, I hope.”

“She’s doing well,” he said, “and is much nicer than you and your mother give her credit for.” He paused before adding, “Her father was abusive towards her, you may be interested to know, and had fell intentions toward her.”

“I didn’t know that, Uncle, and heartily apologize for any slight I’ve shown either you or her during the long years of our estrangement. I should have asked you for your side of the story.”

“It’s forgotten already, Eir Menglöð, and you’re still my favorite niece. Please feel free to drop in any time and meet all the members of my family.”

“I will, and soon, but perhaps you’d like to tarry for a while and meet my husband, and my sister wives, only two of whom put paid to Surtr, and thus led to his downfall and your victory here.” Then she paused and added, “You might be interested to know that my mother is back at our camp as well, having thrown in her lot with ours at very nearly the last minute.”

“Your mother? Here? I’d never thought to see her out of Vanaheimr in a thousand years!”

“Things change, Uncle, and she’s married now as well? Perhaps her heart has softened to you. Are you bold enough to come and see?”

“Bold enough? Me? I’m a lover, not a fighter, but you see me here in the front ranks of our armed band.” Then he smiled and said, “You always were a bit of a tease, dear Eir.”

“I know I had you wrapped around my pinkie finger as a girl. It’s a heady experience, you ought to know, and doubtless contributed to my confidence and sense of personal pride as I was growing up.”

“I’m very glad to hear it, then. I worried about you, in Óðinn’s hall.”

“And you were right to do so, Uncle. Óðinn was a grim and horrid piece of work.”

“You say was, and I’ve heard that he was dead. Is it true? Or just another of his many tricks?”

“He’s dead,” she said. “My husband killed him, and I’ve held his soul in these two hands, and sent him straight to Hel, as he so richly deserved. He won’t be coming back.”

“Good,” he said. Can I ask you a favor?

“Of course, Uncle. I’ve always owed you courtesy, so you have but to ask.”

“Would you mind stopping by my hall in Álfheimr,and telling Gerðr that I’m all right? She’ll be worried, of course, because of the prophesies, and I hate to think of her unhappy, even for an hour or two. She’s had more than enough sorrow in her life.”

“Already done, Uncle. You had but to ask. I’ve taken the liberty of inviting her to meet my mother, if that might influence your decision slightly.”

He laughed out loud at that. “You minx! You’ve still got me wrapped around that pinkie of yours, but don’t tell Gerðr, please. She thinks I’m a big bold warrior.”

“Your secret is safe with me, Uncle, and I’ll be sure to tell her of your heroic efforts at the forefront of the fighting on Bilröst as we ride along.”

“Thank you, niece,” he said indulgently, “would you care to ride with me? or shall we share your more formidable steed?”

She laughed. “Uncle, you’re obviously both a rough and tumble warrior such as the world has never known before, and you don’t know all that much about women, for I doubt that there are any women who’d sit anywhere near that boar of yours. You must have iron plates welded to your ass!”

“Well,” he said modestly, “riding Gullinbursti does require a certain mastery of proper posting technique, but I would never ask a lady to sit upon his back when my own lap is infinitely more comfortable.” He smiled.

“You dog! You’d better not be cheating on my lovely aunt, with whom I’m chatting happily at this very moment.”

“Of course not,” he said indignantly. “Not since we married, of course. But before that, I had a certain reputation to uphold as the God of Fertility and Love.” He cleared his throat a little nervously. “There are certain … uh … duties associated with high office that can’t really be … uh, delegated.”

“Sure ….”she said cynically. “I’ll bet that’s what you say to all the girls. Just remember, Uncle dear, that nobody can keep a secret from me forever.”

“Well, isn’t that just a case of the pot calling the kettle ‘black?’ You’re the one sharing one husband with two wives. What’s the difference?”

“First, that we’re married, and there’s no sneaking around; second, that it’s just as true that my husband shares his wives with me! so our positions within our marriage are essentially symmetrical, except for the lovely coincidence that he has certain … equipment that comes in very handy … from time to time. I’m pregnant now, for example, and my fellow wives and I could never have managed that on our own, even with the very best intentions in the worlds.” After a pause, she added slyly, “In fact, my mother is pregnant as well, so you might watch out for your job here.”

“Bah!” he exclaimed, “He can have the blasted job! Some days it seems as if everyone in the whole Nine Worlds is whining about absent lovers or missing babies! It’s a miracle I get any sleep at all. In fact, he can have Alfheimr as well! Just let me keep my little hall so Gerðr and I can raise our own babies …and maybe a few cattle. And some acres for vegetables and grain, of course; she does like her carrots and bread.”

“He’d have to be numbered among the ranks of the Ljósálfar, then, and of course I can’t do that on my own, unless he’s dead, of course, but I have future plans for him that don’t involve his being dead. I want another baby, of course, and maybe something more….”

“Yes, yes! Done!”

“…and of course my fellow wives….”

“Done, and done! As many as you want! I simply don’t care!”

“Oh, goodie, then. I’ll be sure to tell him, then, as soon as we see him. You won’t be sorry, I promise, and my dowry will make you a very wealthy man.”

“Why would I have any share of your dowry?” he asked reasonably enough, but puzzled.

“You can hardly expect me to give it to my mother, can you? And her putative husband is dead, with his two brothers having forfeited their rights to it through messing around with his wife, my lovely mother. My own father, Ullir, has vanished without a trace, so if he ever shows up you can dicker with him over your management fees for taking care of it on his behalf, and I think that it ought to be at least half, considering the complexity and expense involved in taking care of all that much in gold and silver.”

“Gold? How much are we talking about, exactly?” he asked, his interest aroused.

“Oh, she said casually, roughly a hundred pounds, as my bride price, and quite a bit silver along with it. My Phillip is a very generous man.”

“And wealthy too, if he’s paid that much for several brides! Exactly how many wives does he have? Not that it’s any of my business, of course.”

“Six hundred and fifty wives, and six hundred and fifty-four babies on the way,” she said promptly, having always had a good head for figures. “And of course my mother might want to have you look after her bride price as well, just to keep things in the family, and her price is exactly the same amount.”

His eyes bulged. “There’s not that much gold in all the worlds!” he said, amazed.

“Oh, there is, believe me, but much of it is on his world, or safe on the world of many of his other wives, so I guess you could fairly say that it is outside the nine worlds we know.” She paused to think for a moment, than said, “Ask King Alvís of the Dvergar, if he’ll give you a straight answer. My Phillip gave him two sacks of gold weighing at least eighty to a hundred pounds, plus a pair of magical gold armbands which drop identical armbands on command.”

“What did he ask for in return?” he queried.

“Not a thing. He gave these things in pure generosity, to honor King Alvís’ friendship. King Alvís responded to his generosity with a magical bridge that allows Phillip to pass freely between all the Nine Worlds, and pledged his support in any battle to boot, which I believe he has never done before. In fact, I believe that King Alvís’ hard heart is quite melted, and in future generations his people will grow to match their hearts, perhaps eventually to rejoin the ranks of the bright Ljósálfar.”

“Is this a prophesy?” he asked.

“Perhaps more than mere prophesy, Uncle, since I am the final judge of all such things, surpassing even my mother in that regard, although she has the keeping of many I have judged. Even you, Uncle, will submit to my judgement eventually,although …” she smiled, “I sincerely hope that it’s many a long age from now.”

He bowed to her with old-fashioned formality. “Great Lady, beloved niece, I too hope for that. I’ve many a crop of carrots and cabbages to raise, after all, and my herds might well benefit from careful management.” He smiled at her in sly amusement.

“You old reprobate!” She began to laugh. “Let’s go, before you try to get under my skirts and I have to break your all your fingers!”

“I’m at your service, dear kinswoman, both now and always. If I may be forgiven any slight trespass on your proper sphere of authority, I foresee a new era in which the balance between the Æsir and the Vanes will be reworked, and the spirit of peace and harmony prevail for the coming age.”

“I hope so, Uncle, although there are powerful enemies still waiting just beyond our gates. Surtr is dead, and Loki, and you yourself killed Fenrir, but Jörmungandr still lives, and many others with reasons good or bad to hate us.”

“To the new age, then! And let’s both of us be off. I want to see my wife, and doubtless you have many who are anxious to see you….”

“If we stood here talking for an entire year, we’d still arrive on time, Uncle, and well you know it.”

“Oh, I do, Niece, but I’m getting on in years, and find I grow impatient with too much talk.”

“Well, what are we waiting for, then? Climb aboard!” She reached down her hand to him, and he took it.

Copyright © 2000, 2001, 2002 Jeffrey M. Mahr — All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2012 Levanah Greene — All Rights Reserved