Part 4: Chapter 1: In the Pines, in the Pines, where the sun will never shine...
This section may change, but here it is. Re: the pic, indulge my obsession with someone dead.
Part 4
Chapter 1: Under the Pine
It started like a dream. One minute I was walking down the hallway with my backpack like everybody else, except that I kept my eyes down. The second bell had already rung, and I was late for Euro History class. I had stuck around too long in the library after French, refreshing the WYAX site and the police log, trying to make sure Sam Gann and the others hadn’t had an accident. So far, nothing.
Then Stephen came up behind me. I knew who it was before he took my arm and said, “Aslaug. Let’s get out of here.”
I’m always surprised by how easy it is to leave school - no guards, no checkpoints or electrified fences. It took us less than a minute to find the nearest side door and jog down the concrete path outside the library, between the little nettly black bushes. No one came after us. A few kids who were smoking looked up at us and then back down.
I kept going because Stephen was pulling me, and I let him pull me because I liked having him where I didn’t have to look at him. I was still feeling a little embarrassed about last night. “Have you been out all day?” I said, trying to catch my breath. “We’re missing Mr. Blanding’s class.”
“Loki won’t mind if you cut,” said Stephen. He dropped my arm and pointed across the road into the woods that bordered the wide school driveway. “That tree right there. It’s away from the windows. We can see when school lets out, but they can’t see us.”
I followed him. For the first time, I realized how cold I was without my coat. Snowflakes flew fast on the wind and stung my cheeks, and they came thicker now, more dense and business-like than they should be in November. The road was already a soft ribbon of white, untouched by tracks. The place where Stephen stopped, in a small hollow right under a squat pine, was white, too.
“A pine is the best shelter if you’re caught in a blizzard,” he said, folding his long legs and sitting down in the snow. “If the branches hang low, like on this one, the snow sticks in them and makes a kind of roof.”
“I don’t think there’s that much snow yet,” I said, squatting beside him. I couldn’t stop shivering, even when I put my hands in the front pocket of my sweatshirt.
“You’re cold.” Stephen peeled off his prickly green jacket and handed it to me. “Put that on.”
“But now you don’t have anything.”
“I got a couple sweaters. I’m fine.”
He tried to unwind the long scarf from his neck and give that to me, too, but I made him put it back on. I picked up the Army jacket and stuck my arms into the sleeves and buttoned it. It hung big on me and smelled like him. I asked again, “Where have you been? Imogen was asking.”
Stephen shrugged. Since he wasn’t facing me, it was easy to keep him in the corner of my eye - but not for the old reason. I was afraid if I looked at him head on I would blush all over. “What did you tell her?”
“I told her we went to the cave. And about Sam Gann. And how your rune doesn’t completely work.”
Stephen said, “I forgot something in the pocket of that jacket.”
I came closer, and he stuck his hand in the roomy front pocket, brushing my hip, and pulled out a skinny steel thermos. He opened it and took a sip, then offered it to me. Steam rose from inside.
I took a big swallow and nearly choked. It was warm but bitter, and somehow minty-sweet at the same time. “What is that?”
“Diner coffee and Schnapps. Stole some from my great-grandpa’s cabinet.”
I took another swallow, and this one went down easier. I could feel the liquor now, warming my chest and sending a bubbly, silly, even more dream-like feeling to my brain. I found I didn’t mind sitting in the snow under a tree, watching a big black crow hop along the edge of the driveway, while school went on inside the brick building. I handed the thermos back to Stephen and said, “I could get used to this.”
“Why do you bother going to school, anyway?” He was just inches from me and a bit behind, so I knew if I leaned back I would lean on him. “You could quit, you know. It would give you more time to go to the cave and use that sword like you did last night.”
Remembering how the sword had dipped and sliced with a mind of its own gave me a feeling like flying. “I could,” I said. “But I want to have a normal life, too.”
“What’s a normal life?”
“You know. College. Getting a job. Being married with kids and stuff.”
“You’d still need to stay here, right?” said Stephen.
“I guess.”
I heard a tchock sound behind me. Stephen drew a deep breath, and then filmy smoke billowed over my shoulder and dissipated in the gray sky between the black pine needles. I coughed. “I thought you stopped doing that.”
“I did. But it’s cold. You’d be amazed how warm it keeps you.” A hand in a black wool half-glove hovered over my shoulder, holding the lit cigarette. “Try. You don’t have to inhale.”
Normally I would have grimaced and shaken my head. But after last night, I felt like a warrior, not a girl with clean pink lungs. I had seen a line of Jotuns that didn’t seem to end. I had seen Sam Gann sitting in the grass and humming like a crazy person. I took the cigarette, put it to my lips and tried hard to breathe in.
“Like you’re smelling something really good on the dinner table,” said Stephen.
Then I inhaled; it burned. I coughed so hard I nearly dropped the cigarette, but I did feel warm. I gave it back to him and said, “I want the thermos.”
He handed it to me. And somehow - maybe I slid back, maybe he moved forward, maybe both - I ended up leaning on him.
He smelled like smoke, but he felt big and solid. My head fit in a place right below his shoulder, and I could feel his warm breath riffling my hair. I unscrewed the thermos, took a drink and said, “Tell me more about my dad.”
“What about him?”
“You saw him that time in the woods, right? In Alaska? What was he like?”
“Big,” said Stephen. He took another drag on his cigarette. “Big guy, strong. Yellow hair. He might not be big in this century, but he was when I met him. I felt about a third as tall.”
“What century are you from, then?” I asked. I giggled. It was almost like talking to Loki.
“A ways back,” said Stephen. “I think people were shorter then - I think I was. I think I changed when I came here. Anyway, your dad. He spent all his time practicing using weapons and sharpening weapons and making weapons. He had his own forge in the backyard. That’s what a hero does, you know. Sometimes he would sit indoors trying to read a big book of runes, but I think he never got that far. Your mother was the one who understood them.”
I laughed and gave him the thermos. “My mom’s at her job right now. She does data entry for a company in Perrinsford.”
“That’s not your mother.”
“No?” I felt like we were making up a story together, playing some kind of role-playing game.
But Stephen’s voice was dead serious. “No,” he said again, and then he slid backward on the snow and rose to his feet.
He abandoned me so quickly that I nearly toppled over. I steadied myself with one hand and managed to stand up, too. My sneakers were soaked and clammy, and so was my butt through my jeans. Around here we usually wouldn’t be caught outside without exactly the right clothes for the weather, so it was an odd sensation.
“You’re drunk, Aslaug,” said Stephen. He took a few steps away from me, toward the driveway, and I could see a new look on his face. His eyes were narrowed, almost closed, and his lips were thin, as if he’d just smelled something unappetizing. He dropped the cigarette in the snow and stamped on it. “You aren’t taking things seriously,” he said. “This normal life you want. It’s gone.”
Since I’d never seen him quite like this, I wasn’t sure what to do. But last night I had come closer to him instead of running away, so I tried it again now - just a step or two. He stayed still. Over his shoulder - far away, it seemed - I could see a little person in a black coat wading through the flowerbeds, in the suddenly deep snow, and hopping off the curb the way the crow had.
But I didn’t want to look over his shoulder, not really. I reached out and took his arm.
At first he tried to shake me off. I could see his whole face compressing in anger, his eyes dark slits. Then he grabbed me back by both my shoulders. He drew me to him and kissed me - not the way I had kissed him. Not that way at all.
It was a deep kiss, and I could taste the Schnapps and cigarette. It was a kiss that opened under me like a crevasse on a snowy mountain and left me hurtling away in thin air, down and down, till a wind rushed in my ears and whirled me and set me on solid ground again.
In this new place, I still had my arms around someone, and he was kissing me. But there was fire on all sides. Fire burned in front of me, and fire burned behind me. It singed my hair and made a wind that drowned out every word he said.
And this was right, as it should be. His words were lies. His kiss was a lie.
They lie, the fire told me. Even the one you truly love - he lies. They always lie. They will treat you like a conquest, like a shiny ring to win and possess. You have no power in this. Your power is to say No. Your power is to hurt them.
A rage moved through me - not my own rage. No one had ever made me angry like this, but I understood it, because it came with the shame I felt when people called me names like Assload. It made me want to burn whole towns and make people run for cover. It made me want to dance as if I were on fire myself, eternally burning and desperately trying to feel anything but pain.
After that came a sadness. It wasn’t a sharp, exciting sadness, like what you feel during a crying fit, but an exhausted one. It stretched before me like a landscape where fire has carbonized everything in its path and burned itself out. A world scoured clean, nothing but ashes and snow.
I felt this sadness deep as a moonless night, deep as the world, and I felt it in Stephen. I felt his body again, solid against mine. I opened my eyes and saw his hair above me, messy and haloed in the light. I lifted my head.
Someone kicked my shin with hard-soled shoes, so viciously I staggered and nearly fell. Someone - a small, black-coated someone with a white face and snow in her black hair - was beside me, saying in a hoarse voice, “Don’t look at him, Aslaug. Don’t you dare look.”
I turned to examine this hostile goblin that was speaking in the voice of my friend Imogen. “What is - did you-”
But Stephen took hold of my chin and yanked it back, as if he hadn’t noticed her or didn’t care. I caught a glimpse of white fury in his eyes as Imogen said again, “Don’t.”
And I closed mine.
“Move away from him, move away,” said Imogen. She was out of breath, as if she’d been running, and her normally deep voice rose to a whimper on the last word. “Loki told me,” she said. “This is my fault. I should have told you before. I should have told you.”
“Loki told you what?” Stephen asked.
I opened my eyes again. I had turned my back and was looking into the snowy forest, but I could hear the icy contempt in his voice. That was how he had looked at me before he kissed me - I understood it now. With disgust.
No wonder I had gone to the place of fire. And I knew where it was now. It was the same place Brynhild had gone, after Sigurd first left her and before she killed him.
“Show me your right hand, Stephen,” said Imogen, her breath still coming almost in sobs. “Take off your glove. I need to see.”
“Need to see what?”
“Your hand. I need to see the back of your right hand.”
“Haven’t you seen it before?” There was a pause, as if he were taking his glove off. I realized I was still wearing Stephen’s coat and shrugged it off my shoulders; the snow had made it too wet to keep me warm.
Imogen took in her breath, and then her small hand reached out and snatched the jacket. “Take it,” she said to Stephen in a new voice, low and throbbing. “You need it more than we do.”
Then she latched on to my shoulder and turned me around and marched me back toward school, steering us both wide of Stephen. Though I didn’t dare raise my head, I could see him still standing there, holding his jacket in both arms, his head hanging. “She’ll do it eventually,” he said.
“No, she won’t,” Imogen called back. She tugged me across the driveway, through driving flakes that smacked my face like cinders from a distant explosion, and up the school walkway. I tried once to turn my head and look back, but she pinched my arm hard and said, “Don’t risk it.”
“Why not? What did Loki tell you? You don’t really think he’s -”
“Well, I wouldn’t take Loki’s word for anything,” said Imogen through gritted teeth. “He’s the sketchiest person I’ve ever met. But he told me to look at Stephen’s hand, the one with the rune, and now I have. And there’s nothing there.”
Part 4
Chapter 1: Under the Pine
It started like a dream. One minute I was walking down the hallway with my backpack like everybody else, except that I kept my eyes down. The second bell had already rung, and I was late for Euro History class. I had stuck around too long in the library after French, refreshing the WYAX site and the police log, trying to make sure Sam Gann and the others hadn’t had an accident. So far, nothing.
Then Stephen came up behind me. I knew who it was before he took my arm and said, “Aslaug. Let’s get out of here.”
I’m always surprised by how easy it is to leave school - no guards, no checkpoints or electrified fences. It took us less than a minute to find the nearest side door and jog down the concrete path outside the library, between the little nettly black bushes. No one came after us. A few kids who were smoking looked up at us and then back down.
I kept going because Stephen was pulling me, and I let him pull me because I liked having him where I didn’t have to look at him. I was still feeling a little embarrassed about last night. “Have you been out all day?” I said, trying to catch my breath. “We’re missing Mr. Blanding’s class.”
“Loki won’t mind if you cut,” said Stephen. He dropped my arm and pointed across the road into the woods that bordered the wide school driveway. “That tree right there. It’s away from the windows. We can see when school lets out, but they can’t see us.”
I followed him. For the first time, I realized how cold I was without my coat. Snowflakes flew fast on the wind and stung my cheeks, and they came thicker now, more dense and business-like than they should be in November. The road was already a soft ribbon of white, untouched by tracks. The place where Stephen stopped, in a small hollow right under a squat pine, was white, too.
“A pine is the best shelter if you’re caught in a blizzard,” he said, folding his long legs and sitting down in the snow. “If the branches hang low, like on this one, the snow sticks in them and makes a kind of roof.”
“I don’t think there’s that much snow yet,” I said, squatting beside him. I couldn’t stop shivering, even when I put my hands in the front pocket of my sweatshirt.
“You’re cold.” Stephen peeled off his prickly green jacket and handed it to me. “Put that on.”
“But now you don’t have anything.”
“I got a couple sweaters. I’m fine.”
He tried to unwind the long scarf from his neck and give that to me, too, but I made him put it back on. I picked up the Army jacket and stuck my arms into the sleeves and buttoned it. It hung big on me and smelled like him. I asked again, “Where have you been? Imogen was asking.”
Stephen shrugged. Since he wasn’t facing me, it was easy to keep him in the corner of my eye - but not for the old reason. I was afraid if I looked at him head on I would blush all over. “What did you tell her?”
“I told her we went to the cave. And about Sam Gann. And how your rune doesn’t completely work.”
Stephen said, “I forgot something in the pocket of that jacket.”
I came closer, and he stuck his hand in the roomy front pocket, brushing my hip, and pulled out a skinny steel thermos. He opened it and took a sip, then offered it to me. Steam rose from inside.
I took a big swallow and nearly choked. It was warm but bitter, and somehow minty-sweet at the same time. “What is that?”
“Diner coffee and Schnapps. Stole some from my great-grandpa’s cabinet.”
I took another swallow, and this one went down easier. I could feel the liquor now, warming my chest and sending a bubbly, silly, even more dream-like feeling to my brain. I found I didn’t mind sitting in the snow under a tree, watching a big black crow hop along the edge of the driveway, while school went on inside the brick building. I handed the thermos back to Stephen and said, “I could get used to this.”
“Why do you bother going to school, anyway?” He was just inches from me and a bit behind, so I knew if I leaned back I would lean on him. “You could quit, you know. It would give you more time to go to the cave and use that sword like you did last night.”
Remembering how the sword had dipped and sliced with a mind of its own gave me a feeling like flying. “I could,” I said. “But I want to have a normal life, too.”
“What’s a normal life?”
“You know. College. Getting a job. Being married with kids and stuff.”
“You’d still need to stay here, right?” said Stephen.
“I guess.”
I heard a tchock sound behind me. Stephen drew a deep breath, and then filmy smoke billowed over my shoulder and dissipated in the gray sky between the black pine needles. I coughed. “I thought you stopped doing that.”
“I did. But it’s cold. You’d be amazed how warm it keeps you.” A hand in a black wool half-glove hovered over my shoulder, holding the lit cigarette. “Try. You don’t have to inhale.”
Normally I would have grimaced and shaken my head. But after last night, I felt like a warrior, not a girl with clean pink lungs. I had seen a line of Jotuns that didn’t seem to end. I had seen Sam Gann sitting in the grass and humming like a crazy person. I took the cigarette, put it to my lips and tried hard to breathe in.
“Like you’re smelling something really good on the dinner table,” said Stephen.
Then I inhaled; it burned. I coughed so hard I nearly dropped the cigarette, but I did feel warm. I gave it back to him and said, “I want the thermos.”
He handed it to me. And somehow - maybe I slid back, maybe he moved forward, maybe both - I ended up leaning on him.
He smelled like smoke, but he felt big and solid. My head fit in a place right below his shoulder, and I could feel his warm breath riffling my hair. I unscrewed the thermos, took a drink and said, “Tell me more about my dad.”
“What about him?”
“You saw him that time in the woods, right? In Alaska? What was he like?”
“Big,” said Stephen. He took another drag on his cigarette. “Big guy, strong. Yellow hair. He might not be big in this century, but he was when I met him. I felt about a third as tall.”
“What century are you from, then?” I asked. I giggled. It was almost like talking to Loki.
“A ways back,” said Stephen. “I think people were shorter then - I think I was. I think I changed when I came here. Anyway, your dad. He spent all his time practicing using weapons and sharpening weapons and making weapons. He had his own forge in the backyard. That’s what a hero does, you know. Sometimes he would sit indoors trying to read a big book of runes, but I think he never got that far. Your mother was the one who understood them.”
I laughed and gave him the thermos. “My mom’s at her job right now. She does data entry for a company in Perrinsford.”
“That’s not your mother.”
“No?” I felt like we were making up a story together, playing some kind of role-playing game.
But Stephen’s voice was dead serious. “No,” he said again, and then he slid backward on the snow and rose to his feet.
He abandoned me so quickly that I nearly toppled over. I steadied myself with one hand and managed to stand up, too. My sneakers were soaked and clammy, and so was my butt through my jeans. Around here we usually wouldn’t be caught outside without exactly the right clothes for the weather, so it was an odd sensation.
“You’re drunk, Aslaug,” said Stephen. He took a few steps away from me, toward the driveway, and I could see a new look on his face. His eyes were narrowed, almost closed, and his lips were thin, as if he’d just smelled something unappetizing. He dropped the cigarette in the snow and stamped on it. “You aren’t taking things seriously,” he said. “This normal life you want. It’s gone.”
Since I’d never seen him quite like this, I wasn’t sure what to do. But last night I had come closer to him instead of running away, so I tried it again now - just a step or two. He stayed still. Over his shoulder - far away, it seemed - I could see a little person in a black coat wading through the flowerbeds, in the suddenly deep snow, and hopping off the curb the way the crow had.
But I didn’t want to look over his shoulder, not really. I reached out and took his arm.
At first he tried to shake me off. I could see his whole face compressing in anger, his eyes dark slits. Then he grabbed me back by both my shoulders. He drew me to him and kissed me - not the way I had kissed him. Not that way at all.
It was a deep kiss, and I could taste the Schnapps and cigarette. It was a kiss that opened under me like a crevasse on a snowy mountain and left me hurtling away in thin air, down and down, till a wind rushed in my ears and whirled me and set me on solid ground again.
In this new place, I still had my arms around someone, and he was kissing me. But there was fire on all sides. Fire burned in front of me, and fire burned behind me. It singed my hair and made a wind that drowned out every word he said.
And this was right, as it should be. His words were lies. His kiss was a lie.
They lie, the fire told me. Even the one you truly love - he lies. They always lie. They will treat you like a conquest, like a shiny ring to win and possess. You have no power in this. Your power is to say No. Your power is to hurt them.
A rage moved through me - not my own rage. No one had ever made me angry like this, but I understood it, because it came with the shame I felt when people called me names like Assload. It made me want to burn whole towns and make people run for cover. It made me want to dance as if I were on fire myself, eternally burning and desperately trying to feel anything but pain.
After that came a sadness. It wasn’t a sharp, exciting sadness, like what you feel during a crying fit, but an exhausted one. It stretched before me like a landscape where fire has carbonized everything in its path and burned itself out. A world scoured clean, nothing but ashes and snow.
I felt this sadness deep as a moonless night, deep as the world, and I felt it in Stephen. I felt his body again, solid against mine. I opened my eyes and saw his hair above me, messy and haloed in the light. I lifted my head.
Someone kicked my shin with hard-soled shoes, so viciously I staggered and nearly fell. Someone - a small, black-coated someone with a white face and snow in her black hair - was beside me, saying in a hoarse voice, “Don’t look at him, Aslaug. Don’t you dare look.”
I turned to examine this hostile goblin that was speaking in the voice of my friend Imogen. “What is - did you-”
But Stephen took hold of my chin and yanked it back, as if he hadn’t noticed her or didn’t care. I caught a glimpse of white fury in his eyes as Imogen said again, “Don’t.”
And I closed mine.
“Move away from him, move away,” said Imogen. She was out of breath, as if she’d been running, and her normally deep voice rose to a whimper on the last word. “Loki told me,” she said. “This is my fault. I should have told you before. I should have told you.”
“Loki told you what?” Stephen asked.
I opened my eyes again. I had turned my back and was looking into the snowy forest, but I could hear the icy contempt in his voice. That was how he had looked at me before he kissed me - I understood it now. With disgust.
No wonder I had gone to the place of fire. And I knew where it was now. It was the same place Brynhild had gone, after Sigurd first left her and before she killed him.
“Show me your right hand, Stephen,” said Imogen, her breath still coming almost in sobs. “Take off your glove. I need to see.”
“Need to see what?”
“Your hand. I need to see the back of your right hand.”
“Haven’t you seen it before?” There was a pause, as if he were taking his glove off. I realized I was still wearing Stephen’s coat and shrugged it off my shoulders; the snow had made it too wet to keep me warm.
Imogen took in her breath, and then her small hand reached out and snatched the jacket. “Take it,” she said to Stephen in a new voice, low and throbbing. “You need it more than we do.”
Then she latched on to my shoulder and turned me around and marched me back toward school, steering us both wide of Stephen. Though I didn’t dare raise my head, I could see him still standing there, holding his jacket in both arms, his head hanging. “She’ll do it eventually,” he said.
“No, she won’t,” Imogen called back. She tugged me across the driveway, through driving flakes that smacked my face like cinders from a distant explosion, and up the school walkway. I tried once to turn my head and look back, but she pinched my arm hard and said, “Don’t risk it.”
“Why not? What did Loki tell you? You don’t really think he’s -”
“Well, I wouldn’t take Loki’s word for anything,” said Imogen through gritted teeth. “He’s the sketchiest person I’ve ever met. But he told me to look at Stephen’s hand, the one with the rune, and now I have. And there’s nothing there.”