Part 3: Chapter 11: T-t-t-t-t-touch me! (actually, don't)
This pic is Loki, by the way. Of course he's WAY cuter in real life.
Chapter 11: Touched
Aslaug gasped. She’d grown up with Sam Gann. When a snow day closed school, he was the bearer of the good news. When it was disgustingly hot, he wiped his brow as if he felt it, too. Pike liked to buy his yearly almanac full of predictions and funny sayings about the local weather (“You don’t like it? Wait a minute”), so she was used to seeing Sam’s goof-nut smile across the breakfast table. When she spotted him on the six o’clock news with his arm around a stone-faced Kristen Hawke, she disliked Kristen for the first time ever.
No one should look at Sam Gann without smiling - Jotun-touched or not. “Oh, jeez!” she said, stumbling toward him. “What are you doing here?”
Stephen stepped in front of her. “Don’t look at him.”
“Why not?”
“Not in the eye.”
Aslaug stopped short. “Oh,” she said. And then, “How?”
Sam Gann was on his feet now, walking floppily toward the outside, and she had to look away. In her old way, with a sneaky glance from the corner of her eye, she saw he was ever so slightly grinning.
“My guess is, Kristen and Jeremy,” said Stephen. He reached out and grasped Sam Gann’s forearm. Sam Gann obeyed, like a long-limbed marionette, and came to stand grinning between them. His jacket was gone and his shirt was torn, his cheek smudged with dirt. “I saw all five of them coming up the hill, past my house,” said Stephen, lowering his voice. “It was about eleven. I knew something was really wrong then, so I followed them.”
“All five who?”
But even as she asked, voices shrilled and boomed from inside the narrow crack that led into the mountain. “I could so use a drink,” a woman was saying. “This place doesn’t go anywhere. And it’s cold.”
“Well, you wanted to see,” said a younger female voice, rather huffily. Aslaug recognized Kristen.
“Blah blah blah, well, we’ve certainly seen them. And they’re very impressive. Big and cold and noncommunicative.” A tall form emerged from the crack. As it strode into the flashlight beam, Aslaug recognized the gangly body and red hair of Jerry, the KYAX cameraman. “Oh,” she said, low in her throat.
Monique Ambler side-stepped through the crack next, clambering nimbly in her sensible shoes, followed by Kristen Hawke and Jeremy Bliss. Monique’s ruffly blouse was mud-splashed and ripped, and a scratch oozed blood on her forehead, but she seemed not to notice. “Weirdest detour ever,” she said. “If we’re lucky, we’ll make it back for the eleven. Jerry, thank God you managed to upload that footage; otherwise Mark would have me into his office before I could say hick town.”
“Let’s get that drink before we go back,” said Jerry, slurring the words as if he’d already been drinking. Neither he nor Monique seemed to notice Stephen and Aslaug.
Jeremy and Kristen did acknowledge them, but only with brief, scornful glances. Then Jeremy took charge of Monique, wrapping his arm protectively around her waist, and Kristen touched Jerry’s cheek and stood on her toes to whisper something in his ear. Jerry smiled wanly. “Let’s do that,” he said.
Kristen took Jerry’s hand and led him toward the entrance, and the other two followed. “Hey!” said Stephen, too loudly. “Forgetting something?”
No one bothered to answer. Instead, the four of them contorted themselves into the right shapes to fit through the cave opening, one couple at a time - first Jerry and Kristen together, with her helping him maneuver his long legs, and then Jeremy sliding through so he could offer Monique a hand from the other side.
“’Bye, team!” called Sam Gann, though neither of his colleagues had appeared to notice him. “See you at the van?”
“I’m going to lose this lame job before it even starts snowing,” muttered Monique as she disappeared.
“We better get him out of here,” Stephen whispered to Aslaug. “They’ll take the van, and he won’t have any way to get back.”
So they walked Sam Gann down the hill, which was a harder job than it should have been. Every hundred feet or so, the weather man sat down where he was and hunched his knees to his chest, whistling “Frosty the Snow Man” or “Stormy Weather.” “I’m testing the Earth’s temperature with my rear end,” he said when they stopped to wait for him, and Stephen stuck out a hand to help him up. “It’s frost-bitten, I can tell you.”
He didn’t sound like his usual extra-happy self, but he did sound almost cheerful for an ordinary person, and it didn’t take much persuasion to get him walking again. Aslaug asked softly, “Are you sure they did him, too? Maybe it was just Jerry and Monique.”
“Ask him,” said Stephen.
Whether he was Jotun-touched or not, Aslaug was shy of Sam Gann. It took her until they could see the KYAX van parked in the empty lot below the Crays’ house, beside the railroad tracks, to muster the courage to say, “Mr. Gann, are you OK?”
“Am I ever,” said Sam Gann. “Yourself?”
“I’m OK. What happened with those other two? Why’re they acting so weird?”
“We had a stellar meal at Weiner’s Diner,” said Sam Gann, way too brightly. “The proprietor gave us a private dining room because the place was packed. Then Little Short Skirt sat on Jerry’s lap and put her hand under his shirt, and something nasty also happened between her friend and Monique. Monique passed the virus to me.”
“The virus?”
“The cold snap,” said Sam Gann.
“I’m so sorry it happened,” said Aslaug. It was all she could think of.
“Well, you’re welcome to be sorry, but you don’t have to be so sorry. It’s not terminal cancer.” He paused to whistle a bar of “November Rain,” then gestured at the van, which looked abandoned. “It’s those two I’d worry about - Miss Real Journalist and her friend with the camera. They aren’t used to discouragement. They’re young enough that they still may hope to leave this sorry state and get a spot in a real market.” He launched into “Frosty”’s refrain, humming this time. “I had an audition for an L.A. station fifteen years ago - you wouldn’t know the call sign. Would’ve been a stepping stone to national, maybe even something like ‘The Today Show.’”
“It didn’t work out?”
“No,” said Sam Gann. “I was jet-lagged. Not at my best. Anyway, point is, if you don’t have something, you can’t get it taken away from you. A blizzard is a blizzard is a blizzard, my young friend, and I’m standing in one. Nobody needs to tell me that.”
“I think you’re just depressed tonight, Mr. Gann,” said Aslaug.
“Might be, might could. But it feels awful darn familiar. My dark night of the soul,” said Sam Gann. “And dark day of the soul, for that matter. These kids, they don’t know what that means. They aren’t ready.”
For the first time, Aslaug found herself making a promise she wasn’t sure she could keep. “If there’s a way to make it stop, we’ll find it and we will.”
“Make what stop?”
“What you just said. The dark night.”
“Good luck,” said Sam Gann.
They crossed the tracks together, and Sam Gann went and knocked on the passenger window of the van. After a moment the window lowered soundlessly, and Monique’s pretty face looked out. The wound on her forehead had stopped oozing, but her eye makeup had run, making her look bruised. “Well, get in, Sammy,” she said. “It’ll have to be the back. The kids ran off, and then Jerry called shotgun.”
The door lock clicked, but instead of climbing inside, Sam Gann stood humming something new: “Winter Wonderland.” Aslaug tapped his arm, taking care to keep her eyes on the side of the van. “It’s OK,” she said. “You’ll feel better tomorrow.”
“Always a brand new day,” said Sam Gann. As if she had released him, he slid the van’s door open and climbed onto the running board. “See ya later, kiddos! I’ll be the dork pointing at a green-screen like it was a map.”
“See you!” said Aslaug wistfully. He still sounded like the old Sam Gann, and she was already imagining how she would tell Pike all the funny things he’d said, tomorrow at breakfast.
The door rattled shut behind Sam Gann, and the van’s engine thrummed to life. “They thought they could be back for the eleven o’clock taping,” she said, remembering Monique’s words. “But it’s almost one a.m.”
“It would have been better if you burned them,” said Stephen. “All five.”
He insisted on walking her to the head of her driveway, even though she used this as an opportunity to pepper him with questions. What had happened in the cave? Had the Jotun just solidified and grabbed him? Wasn’t his tattoo supposed to make him invisible to them? And why had so many Jotuns come at once?
“They saw me coming and called in the cavalry,” said Stephen. He shook out his tattooed hand. “I don’t know, OK? I don’t know what this rune is really supposed to do. Maybe Imogen’s right - it’s losing its power. All I know is, I was talking to the weather man and thinking about following the others farther in, when the big Jotun came out and grabbed me. He got solid just like that. I think that’s what they do when they’re about to touch us. Then I stuck my rune in his face. He didn’t touch me then - not my heart - but he wouldn’t let me go, either. I was looking straight into his eyes, wishing I could do what you do.”
That was another thing. She said, “Stephen! Some of those Jotuns had little yellow eyes.”
“I noticed. And I don’t know why, but I have a theory. I think maybe their eyes look one way when they look at our world, and another way when they’re in theirs.”
“You mean our world - outside the cave - freaks them out?”
He shrugged. “It figures. I mean, they come out and it’s so warm. And we’re warm. Maybe it scares them, and their eyes go all caught-in-headlights. But listen - I’ve got a question, too. What happened to your sword?”
They were at the foot of her driveway now, right on the edge of the light from the flood. Aslaug held up her sword and examined it. “Look,” she said then. “I didn’t put these scratches on the handle. But they look kinda random. Maybe I just didn’t notice.”
“The hilt,” Stephen corrected. He bent to peer at the tiny hatch-marks she had indicated. They did indeed look random in design, but they were all about the same length and carved to the same depth. “Runed,” he said. And then, “Loki.”
Aslaug whirled guiltily to inspect the darkness. “Where?”
“Not here. What I mean is, somehow he got hold of your blade and runed it, the way I was meaning to. Only his runes worked. Now you can really fight.”
“It felt amazing,” said Aslaug. But that made her feel guilty, too. Before she had time to think about it, she found herself doing the only thing that could dispel the guilt: confessing. And as she did it, she changed her mind and decided she wasn’t confessing, only telling. She had done nothing bad to confess. “Loki came and woke me,” she said. “He told me you were in danger, and that’s why I came. I wouldn’t have known otherwise, and that Jotun might never have let you go. I’m not saying I trust him for sure, but he saved you, Stephen.”
Stephen barely seemed to hear the end of this speech. “He came into your room?” he said, pounding one fist silently into his palm. “He woke you up?”
“He didn’t hurt me.” Loki was many things, she was starting to realize, both good and bad, but one thing he was not was the creepy-stalker type. Paying attention to any one thing for too long bored him.
“Curse him,” said Stephen. He hit his palm again and said something in a gutteral language she didn’t understand. “He arranged this whole thing, don’t you see? He wanted you to be grateful to him.”
“I don’t see how Loki could arrange where Kristen and Jeremy decided to go. Or make you run off after them all alone, when you know there’s absolutely no point because you can’t kill Jotuns by yourself. You should have come and gotten me. We could have gone together.”
“I have some manners,” said Stephen. “Some respect. I don’t sneak into girls’ rooms and wake them, especially not the daughter of my - of a hero.”
She glanced at the house, dark now. “He made it so they couldn’t hear me leave. You couldn’t have done that. I don’t even think he likes me, Stephen. Whatever he is, he’s not a person, and I think he thinks I’m stupid and lame. But for some reason he wants to help, and we need him.”
“He wants you to think that. He’s playing games with us,” said Stephen. He let out his breath. And Aslaug realized, with a strange shiver between her shoulderblades, that in the dark they were looking directly into each other’s eyes.
Stephen must have realized it, too, because he dropped his eyes and turned to go. “Look, I know I sound harsh. But think about it, OK? I can’t stop Loki from going where he wants and saying what he wants. You don’t have to believe him.”
She nodded, unable to speak over the lump in her throat.
But as he took his second long stride away from her, she knew it couldn’t end this way. Not after what had happened in the cave. She came after him and grabbed his arm, letting the sword fall on the grass. Stephen turned, and she put both her arms around him.
His Army jacket was scratchy and solid, like a thick skin he wore to keep out the world. She drew him in closer, feeling his ragged, still angry breath. She lowered her head and placed it against his chest, rubbing it back and forth. After a moment, he hugged her back.
They stood that way for what felt like a long time, absorbing each other’s warmth. Then Aslaug disengaged herself. “I have to go.”
Stephen nodded. An expression she couldn’t read was frozen on his face, but something about it made her come back. She put one hand on his shoulder, then tilted her head, rose to the balls of her feet and kissed him on the cheek.
It felt rough and warm, like Pike’s cheek when she was little and kissing him goodnight, and it felt right and complete. Sometimes when a boy looked at her, she felt as if a boulder was poised on a cliff above her head, ready to fall. It didn’t happen often, but when it happened it was terrifying, and she was glad to know she couldn’t look back. She was glad she was the dangerous one.
With Stephen, she didn’t feel dangerous and she didn’t feel in danger. She understood why he was angry at Loki. Like her, she thought, he had grown up without friends, and he took things far too seriously. But he also understood that some things must be taken too seriously. Killing Jotuns, for instance. Like her, he was tall and big and looked older than he was, and he had always felt out of place. Thinking of how it must hurt him to encounter someone like Loki - who laughed at danger and was at home everywhere - she tapped him gently on the chin and said, “See you tomorrow.”
Again he only nodded. But when she was several yards up the driveway, she heard him say, “One of the things I was looking forward to.”
Not true. He had looked forward to kissing Aslaug, not being kissed by her. And he had hoped for a much longer kiss on the lips. But for now, it was enough.
Stephen sauntered down the hill and into the Wildasins’ driveway, whistling “Winter Wonderland” under his breath. He took his time, searching the sky for clear patches with stars. None.
Too bad. He could have stood gazing at bright winter stars for an hour, among Kati’s garden gnomes, tracing the constellations he knew and smelling the peppery autumn earth.
Yellow light shone from the half-moon window in the front door. He unlocked it and stepped into the house with its smell of floor polish and Kati’s perfume, which made him think of violets mixed with vinegar. (When he’d asked what that smell was, she told him the last Woolworth’s in the state had closed a decade ago and she had bought a full case of her favorite and only scent during the close-out sale, proud of her foresight.)
Normally the Wildasins paid no attention to his bedtime. They turned in at nine, disappearing into their first-floor room, but he could hear the radio on their bedside table playing weather reports and oldies long after midnight. Maybe they needed it to sleep, or maybe they didn’t sleep.
He heard the muffled radio now - sports scores, it sounded like. But Kati was up. She sat at the round table in the breakfast nook, sipping from a mug and reading a Reader’s Digest under the single lamp. She glanced up at him. “Honey, you ain’t eaten. I made an almond cake.”
“I grabbed some leftovers before I went out.” He untwisted his wool scarf, still thinking of Aslaug’s lips on his cheek, and hung it on the peg.
Sometimes Stephen thought Kati’s one real mission in life was stuffing people like Christmas turkeys. He couldn’t count the times he had politely refused a fourth helping of sausage or potatoes or cucumber salad. Still, he liked Kati’s cooking, and he was touched by her concern when it came to his meals. In Sigurd’s keep, no one had cared what or when he ate or even if he did. (Sometimes he wondered if he needed to eat. But not needing to eat would mean he was a ghost. So he made sure to fill his stomach, even when he had to beg or scrounge or cook his own food.)
“Guess I could still have a piece,” he said now.
He sat under the hanging lamp and waited while Kati got up, in her old, heavy, round-bodied way, and opened the cake tin and cut a slice and poured him a cup of decaf. When he first came, he’d sometimes tried to help her with chores like peeling potatoes, but she always shook her head. She had spent her life frosting cakes, chopping slaws, setting tables and scrubbing already-clean cupboard doors, and who was he to stop her?
She set the cake down, and he ate it. It was buttery-soft and sweet. He took a deep swallow of the watery coffee, staler and less flavorful than Imogen’s tea but still hot. He stretched out his legs under the table.
Kati was talking. He let his mind wander. His great-grandmother had a few favorite subjects: the weather and her friends’ illnesses and accidents. Right now she was describing a cold front that was supposed to plow the skies of the county tomorrow, possibly accompanied by a snowstorm. Sam Gann the Weather Man had missed the eleven o’clock newscast. He must have the flu, she said. Or have had an accident on the interstate. People smashed their cars all the time on the interstate, they drove so fast these days, oh my. My golly, they drove fast.
It was past Stephen’s usual bedtime, and the decaf was making him sleepy instead of keeping him awake. He stretched his legs farther and leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes. He didn’t feel like climbing the stairs and brushing his teeth. He felt like thinking about Aslaug. Her hair, the touch of her hands and her lips.
If you knew, master, he thought. If Sigurd knew he had kissed Aslaug - wait, or she had kissed him, whatever - Sigurd would not think twice about what to do. Sigurd would toss a sword or a spear or maybe just a poisoned arrow and pin Stephen to the wall.
Lucky Sigurd had been dead for over a thousand years.
Through his half-closed lids, he could see the dark form of Kati Wildasin hovering over him. He mumbled, “Comin’ soon, grandma.”
Kati didn’t tell him it was time for bed. She stood over him, her torpedo-shaped, house-coated torso blocking the light. He nearly startled awake when he felt her hand on his chest, fiddling with the buttons of his jacket. Then he decided she was only making it easier for him to breathe. Anyway, he didn’t want to wake up, not just now.
The hand gave up on the buttons and slid under his jacket and shirt. While Stephen took deeper, rougher breaths, almost snoring, it crept to his heart.
Her hand was very cold.
Kati had started talking again, in her jangling, circular way. “… and when they said, ‘They’re dead,’ I knew that meant the boy, too. I knewed it like I know anything. When you showed up on the doorstep, with legal papers and everything to say who you were, I wasn’t the one fooled, not for a second. Colleen sent the photos. I filled two whole albums. Him, he don’t care, but I knew the face o’ my great-grandson. Stephen, he was skinny and sweeter-faced than you. Then I knew you was our cuckoo.”
Stephen tried to twitch his hand and discovered he couldn’t. His chest was still very cold. So this is how it feels. He was surprised to find he could still think and talk. “Cuckoo?” he murmured, visualizing the little bird that came out of the Swiss clock.
“Little bird puts its eggs in a nest where they’re not wanted,” said Kati Wildasin, removing her hand from under his shirt. “If the mother bird’s smart, she throws the cuckoo out of the nest. If not, she raises it as her own.”
“I thought the real Stephen looked like me,” said Stephen. Strangely, he didn’t feel worried about being found out at all. “Or that I looked like him.”
“Don’t know much but I know my own,” said the old woman. She retrieved his plate and cup and shuffled back around the table toward the kitchen. “You ain’t ours, but you’re a good enough boy. Least you don’t play no music in your room. ’Nother piece, hon?”
Chapter 11: Touched
Aslaug gasped. She’d grown up with Sam Gann. When a snow day closed school, he was the bearer of the good news. When it was disgustingly hot, he wiped his brow as if he felt it, too. Pike liked to buy his yearly almanac full of predictions and funny sayings about the local weather (“You don’t like it? Wait a minute”), so she was used to seeing Sam’s goof-nut smile across the breakfast table. When she spotted him on the six o’clock news with his arm around a stone-faced Kristen Hawke, she disliked Kristen for the first time ever.
No one should look at Sam Gann without smiling - Jotun-touched or not. “Oh, jeez!” she said, stumbling toward him. “What are you doing here?”
Stephen stepped in front of her. “Don’t look at him.”
“Why not?”
“Not in the eye.”
Aslaug stopped short. “Oh,” she said. And then, “How?”
Sam Gann was on his feet now, walking floppily toward the outside, and she had to look away. In her old way, with a sneaky glance from the corner of her eye, she saw he was ever so slightly grinning.
“My guess is, Kristen and Jeremy,” said Stephen. He reached out and grasped Sam Gann’s forearm. Sam Gann obeyed, like a long-limbed marionette, and came to stand grinning between them. His jacket was gone and his shirt was torn, his cheek smudged with dirt. “I saw all five of them coming up the hill, past my house,” said Stephen, lowering his voice. “It was about eleven. I knew something was really wrong then, so I followed them.”
“All five who?”
But even as she asked, voices shrilled and boomed from inside the narrow crack that led into the mountain. “I could so use a drink,” a woman was saying. “This place doesn’t go anywhere. And it’s cold.”
“Well, you wanted to see,” said a younger female voice, rather huffily. Aslaug recognized Kristen.
“Blah blah blah, well, we’ve certainly seen them. And they’re very impressive. Big and cold and noncommunicative.” A tall form emerged from the crack. As it strode into the flashlight beam, Aslaug recognized the gangly body and red hair of Jerry, the KYAX cameraman. “Oh,” she said, low in her throat.
Monique Ambler side-stepped through the crack next, clambering nimbly in her sensible shoes, followed by Kristen Hawke and Jeremy Bliss. Monique’s ruffly blouse was mud-splashed and ripped, and a scratch oozed blood on her forehead, but she seemed not to notice. “Weirdest detour ever,” she said. “If we’re lucky, we’ll make it back for the eleven. Jerry, thank God you managed to upload that footage; otherwise Mark would have me into his office before I could say hick town.”
“Let’s get that drink before we go back,” said Jerry, slurring the words as if he’d already been drinking. Neither he nor Monique seemed to notice Stephen and Aslaug.
Jeremy and Kristen did acknowledge them, but only with brief, scornful glances. Then Jeremy took charge of Monique, wrapping his arm protectively around her waist, and Kristen touched Jerry’s cheek and stood on her toes to whisper something in his ear. Jerry smiled wanly. “Let’s do that,” he said.
Kristen took Jerry’s hand and led him toward the entrance, and the other two followed. “Hey!” said Stephen, too loudly. “Forgetting something?”
No one bothered to answer. Instead, the four of them contorted themselves into the right shapes to fit through the cave opening, one couple at a time - first Jerry and Kristen together, with her helping him maneuver his long legs, and then Jeremy sliding through so he could offer Monique a hand from the other side.
“’Bye, team!” called Sam Gann, though neither of his colleagues had appeared to notice him. “See you at the van?”
“I’m going to lose this lame job before it even starts snowing,” muttered Monique as she disappeared.
“We better get him out of here,” Stephen whispered to Aslaug. “They’ll take the van, and he won’t have any way to get back.”
So they walked Sam Gann down the hill, which was a harder job than it should have been. Every hundred feet or so, the weather man sat down where he was and hunched his knees to his chest, whistling “Frosty the Snow Man” or “Stormy Weather.” “I’m testing the Earth’s temperature with my rear end,” he said when they stopped to wait for him, and Stephen stuck out a hand to help him up. “It’s frost-bitten, I can tell you.”
He didn’t sound like his usual extra-happy self, but he did sound almost cheerful for an ordinary person, and it didn’t take much persuasion to get him walking again. Aslaug asked softly, “Are you sure they did him, too? Maybe it was just Jerry and Monique.”
“Ask him,” said Stephen.
Whether he was Jotun-touched or not, Aslaug was shy of Sam Gann. It took her until they could see the KYAX van parked in the empty lot below the Crays’ house, beside the railroad tracks, to muster the courage to say, “Mr. Gann, are you OK?”
“Am I ever,” said Sam Gann. “Yourself?”
“I’m OK. What happened with those other two? Why’re they acting so weird?”
“We had a stellar meal at Weiner’s Diner,” said Sam Gann, way too brightly. “The proprietor gave us a private dining room because the place was packed. Then Little Short Skirt sat on Jerry’s lap and put her hand under his shirt, and something nasty also happened between her friend and Monique. Monique passed the virus to me.”
“The virus?”
“The cold snap,” said Sam Gann.
“I’m so sorry it happened,” said Aslaug. It was all she could think of.
“Well, you’re welcome to be sorry, but you don’t have to be so sorry. It’s not terminal cancer.” He paused to whistle a bar of “November Rain,” then gestured at the van, which looked abandoned. “It’s those two I’d worry about - Miss Real Journalist and her friend with the camera. They aren’t used to discouragement. They’re young enough that they still may hope to leave this sorry state and get a spot in a real market.” He launched into “Frosty”’s refrain, humming this time. “I had an audition for an L.A. station fifteen years ago - you wouldn’t know the call sign. Would’ve been a stepping stone to national, maybe even something like ‘The Today Show.’”
“It didn’t work out?”
“No,” said Sam Gann. “I was jet-lagged. Not at my best. Anyway, point is, if you don’t have something, you can’t get it taken away from you. A blizzard is a blizzard is a blizzard, my young friend, and I’m standing in one. Nobody needs to tell me that.”
“I think you’re just depressed tonight, Mr. Gann,” said Aslaug.
“Might be, might could. But it feels awful darn familiar. My dark night of the soul,” said Sam Gann. “And dark day of the soul, for that matter. These kids, they don’t know what that means. They aren’t ready.”
For the first time, Aslaug found herself making a promise she wasn’t sure she could keep. “If there’s a way to make it stop, we’ll find it and we will.”
“Make what stop?”
“What you just said. The dark night.”
“Good luck,” said Sam Gann.
They crossed the tracks together, and Sam Gann went and knocked on the passenger window of the van. After a moment the window lowered soundlessly, and Monique’s pretty face looked out. The wound on her forehead had stopped oozing, but her eye makeup had run, making her look bruised. “Well, get in, Sammy,” she said. “It’ll have to be the back. The kids ran off, and then Jerry called shotgun.”
The door lock clicked, but instead of climbing inside, Sam Gann stood humming something new: “Winter Wonderland.” Aslaug tapped his arm, taking care to keep her eyes on the side of the van. “It’s OK,” she said. “You’ll feel better tomorrow.”
“Always a brand new day,” said Sam Gann. As if she had released him, he slid the van’s door open and climbed onto the running board. “See ya later, kiddos! I’ll be the dork pointing at a green-screen like it was a map.”
“See you!” said Aslaug wistfully. He still sounded like the old Sam Gann, and she was already imagining how she would tell Pike all the funny things he’d said, tomorrow at breakfast.
The door rattled shut behind Sam Gann, and the van’s engine thrummed to life. “They thought they could be back for the eleven o’clock taping,” she said, remembering Monique’s words. “But it’s almost one a.m.”
“It would have been better if you burned them,” said Stephen. “All five.”
He insisted on walking her to the head of her driveway, even though she used this as an opportunity to pepper him with questions. What had happened in the cave? Had the Jotun just solidified and grabbed him? Wasn’t his tattoo supposed to make him invisible to them? And why had so many Jotuns come at once?
“They saw me coming and called in the cavalry,” said Stephen. He shook out his tattooed hand. “I don’t know, OK? I don’t know what this rune is really supposed to do. Maybe Imogen’s right - it’s losing its power. All I know is, I was talking to the weather man and thinking about following the others farther in, when the big Jotun came out and grabbed me. He got solid just like that. I think that’s what they do when they’re about to touch us. Then I stuck my rune in his face. He didn’t touch me then - not my heart - but he wouldn’t let me go, either. I was looking straight into his eyes, wishing I could do what you do.”
That was another thing. She said, “Stephen! Some of those Jotuns had little yellow eyes.”
“I noticed. And I don’t know why, but I have a theory. I think maybe their eyes look one way when they look at our world, and another way when they’re in theirs.”
“You mean our world - outside the cave - freaks them out?”
He shrugged. “It figures. I mean, they come out and it’s so warm. And we’re warm. Maybe it scares them, and their eyes go all caught-in-headlights. But listen - I’ve got a question, too. What happened to your sword?”
They were at the foot of her driveway now, right on the edge of the light from the flood. Aslaug held up her sword and examined it. “Look,” she said then. “I didn’t put these scratches on the handle. But they look kinda random. Maybe I just didn’t notice.”
“The hilt,” Stephen corrected. He bent to peer at the tiny hatch-marks she had indicated. They did indeed look random in design, but they were all about the same length and carved to the same depth. “Runed,” he said. And then, “Loki.”
Aslaug whirled guiltily to inspect the darkness. “Where?”
“Not here. What I mean is, somehow he got hold of your blade and runed it, the way I was meaning to. Only his runes worked. Now you can really fight.”
“It felt amazing,” said Aslaug. But that made her feel guilty, too. Before she had time to think about it, she found herself doing the only thing that could dispel the guilt: confessing. And as she did it, she changed her mind and decided she wasn’t confessing, only telling. She had done nothing bad to confess. “Loki came and woke me,” she said. “He told me you were in danger, and that’s why I came. I wouldn’t have known otherwise, and that Jotun might never have let you go. I’m not saying I trust him for sure, but he saved you, Stephen.”
Stephen barely seemed to hear the end of this speech. “He came into your room?” he said, pounding one fist silently into his palm. “He woke you up?”
“He didn’t hurt me.” Loki was many things, she was starting to realize, both good and bad, but one thing he was not was the creepy-stalker type. Paying attention to any one thing for too long bored him.
“Curse him,” said Stephen. He hit his palm again and said something in a gutteral language she didn’t understand. “He arranged this whole thing, don’t you see? He wanted you to be grateful to him.”
“I don’t see how Loki could arrange where Kristen and Jeremy decided to go. Or make you run off after them all alone, when you know there’s absolutely no point because you can’t kill Jotuns by yourself. You should have come and gotten me. We could have gone together.”
“I have some manners,” said Stephen. “Some respect. I don’t sneak into girls’ rooms and wake them, especially not the daughter of my - of a hero.”
She glanced at the house, dark now. “He made it so they couldn’t hear me leave. You couldn’t have done that. I don’t even think he likes me, Stephen. Whatever he is, he’s not a person, and I think he thinks I’m stupid and lame. But for some reason he wants to help, and we need him.”
“He wants you to think that. He’s playing games with us,” said Stephen. He let out his breath. And Aslaug realized, with a strange shiver between her shoulderblades, that in the dark they were looking directly into each other’s eyes.
Stephen must have realized it, too, because he dropped his eyes and turned to go. “Look, I know I sound harsh. But think about it, OK? I can’t stop Loki from going where he wants and saying what he wants. You don’t have to believe him.”
She nodded, unable to speak over the lump in her throat.
But as he took his second long stride away from her, she knew it couldn’t end this way. Not after what had happened in the cave. She came after him and grabbed his arm, letting the sword fall on the grass. Stephen turned, and she put both her arms around him.
His Army jacket was scratchy and solid, like a thick skin he wore to keep out the world. She drew him in closer, feeling his ragged, still angry breath. She lowered her head and placed it against his chest, rubbing it back and forth. After a moment, he hugged her back.
They stood that way for what felt like a long time, absorbing each other’s warmth. Then Aslaug disengaged herself. “I have to go.”
Stephen nodded. An expression she couldn’t read was frozen on his face, but something about it made her come back. She put one hand on his shoulder, then tilted her head, rose to the balls of her feet and kissed him on the cheek.
It felt rough and warm, like Pike’s cheek when she was little and kissing him goodnight, and it felt right and complete. Sometimes when a boy looked at her, she felt as if a boulder was poised on a cliff above her head, ready to fall. It didn’t happen often, but when it happened it was terrifying, and she was glad to know she couldn’t look back. She was glad she was the dangerous one.
With Stephen, she didn’t feel dangerous and she didn’t feel in danger. She understood why he was angry at Loki. Like her, she thought, he had grown up without friends, and he took things far too seriously. But he also understood that some things must be taken too seriously. Killing Jotuns, for instance. Like her, he was tall and big and looked older than he was, and he had always felt out of place. Thinking of how it must hurt him to encounter someone like Loki - who laughed at danger and was at home everywhere - she tapped him gently on the chin and said, “See you tomorrow.”
Again he only nodded. But when she was several yards up the driveway, she heard him say, “One of the things I was looking forward to.”
Not true. He had looked forward to kissing Aslaug, not being kissed by her. And he had hoped for a much longer kiss on the lips. But for now, it was enough.
Stephen sauntered down the hill and into the Wildasins’ driveway, whistling “Winter Wonderland” under his breath. He took his time, searching the sky for clear patches with stars. None.
Too bad. He could have stood gazing at bright winter stars for an hour, among Kati’s garden gnomes, tracing the constellations he knew and smelling the peppery autumn earth.
Yellow light shone from the half-moon window in the front door. He unlocked it and stepped into the house with its smell of floor polish and Kati’s perfume, which made him think of violets mixed with vinegar. (When he’d asked what that smell was, she told him the last Woolworth’s in the state had closed a decade ago and she had bought a full case of her favorite and only scent during the close-out sale, proud of her foresight.)
Normally the Wildasins paid no attention to his bedtime. They turned in at nine, disappearing into their first-floor room, but he could hear the radio on their bedside table playing weather reports and oldies long after midnight. Maybe they needed it to sleep, or maybe they didn’t sleep.
He heard the muffled radio now - sports scores, it sounded like. But Kati was up. She sat at the round table in the breakfast nook, sipping from a mug and reading a Reader’s Digest under the single lamp. She glanced up at him. “Honey, you ain’t eaten. I made an almond cake.”
“I grabbed some leftovers before I went out.” He untwisted his wool scarf, still thinking of Aslaug’s lips on his cheek, and hung it on the peg.
Sometimes Stephen thought Kati’s one real mission in life was stuffing people like Christmas turkeys. He couldn’t count the times he had politely refused a fourth helping of sausage or potatoes or cucumber salad. Still, he liked Kati’s cooking, and he was touched by her concern when it came to his meals. In Sigurd’s keep, no one had cared what or when he ate or even if he did. (Sometimes he wondered if he needed to eat. But not needing to eat would mean he was a ghost. So he made sure to fill his stomach, even when he had to beg or scrounge or cook his own food.)
“Guess I could still have a piece,” he said now.
He sat under the hanging lamp and waited while Kati got up, in her old, heavy, round-bodied way, and opened the cake tin and cut a slice and poured him a cup of decaf. When he first came, he’d sometimes tried to help her with chores like peeling potatoes, but she always shook her head. She had spent her life frosting cakes, chopping slaws, setting tables and scrubbing already-clean cupboard doors, and who was he to stop her?
She set the cake down, and he ate it. It was buttery-soft and sweet. He took a deep swallow of the watery coffee, staler and less flavorful than Imogen’s tea but still hot. He stretched out his legs under the table.
Kati was talking. He let his mind wander. His great-grandmother had a few favorite subjects: the weather and her friends’ illnesses and accidents. Right now she was describing a cold front that was supposed to plow the skies of the county tomorrow, possibly accompanied by a snowstorm. Sam Gann the Weather Man had missed the eleven o’clock newscast. He must have the flu, she said. Or have had an accident on the interstate. People smashed their cars all the time on the interstate, they drove so fast these days, oh my. My golly, they drove fast.
It was past Stephen’s usual bedtime, and the decaf was making him sleepy instead of keeping him awake. He stretched his legs farther and leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes. He didn’t feel like climbing the stairs and brushing his teeth. He felt like thinking about Aslaug. Her hair, the touch of her hands and her lips.
If you knew, master, he thought. If Sigurd knew he had kissed Aslaug - wait, or she had kissed him, whatever - Sigurd would not think twice about what to do. Sigurd would toss a sword or a spear or maybe just a poisoned arrow and pin Stephen to the wall.
Lucky Sigurd had been dead for over a thousand years.
Through his half-closed lids, he could see the dark form of Kati Wildasin hovering over him. He mumbled, “Comin’ soon, grandma.”
Kati didn’t tell him it was time for bed. She stood over him, her torpedo-shaped, house-coated torso blocking the light. He nearly startled awake when he felt her hand on his chest, fiddling with the buttons of his jacket. Then he decided she was only making it easier for him to breathe. Anyway, he didn’t want to wake up, not just now.
The hand gave up on the buttons and slid under his jacket and shirt. While Stephen took deeper, rougher breaths, almost snoring, it crept to his heart.
Her hand was very cold.
Kati had started talking again, in her jangling, circular way. “… and when they said, ‘They’re dead,’ I knew that meant the boy, too. I knewed it like I know anything. When you showed up on the doorstep, with legal papers and everything to say who you were, I wasn’t the one fooled, not for a second. Colleen sent the photos. I filled two whole albums. Him, he don’t care, but I knew the face o’ my great-grandson. Stephen, he was skinny and sweeter-faced than you. Then I knew you was our cuckoo.”
Stephen tried to twitch his hand and discovered he couldn’t. His chest was still very cold. So this is how it feels. He was surprised to find he could still think and talk. “Cuckoo?” he murmured, visualizing the little bird that came out of the Swiss clock.
“Little bird puts its eggs in a nest where they’re not wanted,” said Kati Wildasin, removing her hand from under his shirt. “If the mother bird’s smart, she throws the cuckoo out of the nest. If not, she raises it as her own.”
“I thought the real Stephen looked like me,” said Stephen. Strangely, he didn’t feel worried about being found out at all. “Or that I looked like him.”
“Don’t know much but I know my own,” said the old woman. She retrieved his plate and cup and shuffled back around the table toward the kitchen. “You ain’t ours, but you’re a good enough boy. Least you don’t play no music in your room. ’Nother piece, hon?”