Staked (The Iron Druid Chronicles, #8)(8)
The unfortunate upshot is that our cabin in Colorado is not safe anymore; Loki knows about it now, and the new place in Oregon won’t be ready for days or possibly weeks. I suppose it’s working out as it should: Atticus is hunting down the man who killed his friend in Alaska, and I have much to occupy me here. Not in terms of active tasks, since there is little to do but wait for Odin to craft a solution, but rather in terms of personal growth: I need to construct a new headspace, and I must decide whether to erect a literary scaffolding in a language where I already have some fluency, such as Russian, or to learn something entirely new. Frigg was kind enough to grab a selection of works for me from “some library on Midgard,” and I am reading a copy of Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground now. I find myself agreeing with a passage here and there: Nature doesn’t ask your permission; it doesn’t care about your wishes, or whether you like its laws or not. You’re obliged to accept it as it is, and consequently all its results as well. That isn’t bad at all, but after the ecstatic optimism of Walt Whitman, he’s a bit like plain oatmeal to my taste—fiber-rich and good for you, but lacking a certain joy. That may be true of almost everyone, though, compared to Whitman. Regardless, I will have to read more extensively in the language before I make my decision. If I’m going to take the trouble to memorize something, I want it to be transcendent and worthy of echoes in my head.
What truly echoes in my head continuously, though I’d much rather it would be silent, is the voice of my younger self, crying out to deliver a long-deserved comeuppance to my stepfather. For he is a man, like Dostoevsky’s vision of nature, who does not ask permission or care about your wishes or whether you like him. He plunders and pollutes the world at the same time and sneers at everyone who doesn’t have the guts to just take everything they can while they can.
I confessed to Atticus once that I wanted to become a Druid partly to reach my stepfather, since human laws wouldn’t. Atticus pointed out that going after individual polluters wasn’t rational, and I see that. He’s right. But this need isn’t rational. It’s emotional, and I have to do something about it. I can’t simply let it go and walk away. He’s more than a mere polluter. He’s a dick who laughs at animals dying in his oil spills.
Yet I fear that in my own private revenge fantasies I’m missing giant signs along the road that say FATAL MISTAKE AHEAD and DO NOT ENTER, FOR DEATH AWAITS YOU WITH NASTY BIG SHARP POINTY TEETH. I’m acutely aware that I should free my mind of his poison and just outlive him. But sometimes we do things that make no sense except in some arcane calculus hidden in our emotions. And we can seek therapy or religion to provide us relief like balm on chafed skin, but that’s denying our own power to heal ourselves and trying to silence old pain with new opiates. Somehow I will need to deal with him, knowing it won’t work out just the way I want but emerging from it feeling purged of his lingering gloom.
It’s a measure of his enduring power over me that I could think of him in such surroundings. Despite the alien feel of Asgard, I could not wish for a couch more magnificent for my studies; my guest quarters are liberally supplied with flowers and fruit and ample light, and there is a warm thermal spring for bathing when I want to forsake one luxury for another.
It’s a couple of days of such isolated decadence before I’m summoned to Odin’s hall. He believes he’s found a solution, and the dwarf Runeskald, Fjalar, is with him, as is his wife, Frigg.
Odin holds up a stone chop that looks distressingly familiar and speaks in a smoky whiskey voice. “If we’re going to free you from Loki’s mark, we’re going to have to fight fire with fire. Fjalar has lent his aid in crafting a Rune of Ashes that will burn away that which has been burned into you. It is infused with Loki’s genetic code, thanks to the teeth you provided, and that will unlock the seal and allow transformation.”
That sounds like more than I want. “Uh … transformation into what?”
“Into a free human. But also into a defeat for Loki.” Odin displays the briefest of smiles, but he isn’t properly keeping score, in my view. Loki didn’t just brand me down in that pit outside Thanjavur—he took two very powerful magical weapons with him: the Lost Arrows of Vayu, and Fuilteach, my whirling blade crafted by the yeti. To even the score, someone would have to steal them back.
Odin hands the stone chop to Fjalar, who places it in the grip of a pair of iron tongs and thrusts it into the coals burning in Odin’s hearth. Scenes from several movies flash through my head, where the bad guy does something similar to stimulate dread in the restrained protagonist, but I am looking forward to it. I would endure any pain to get rid of Loki’s mark. Pain fades, but freedom is an enduring joy. Admittedly, the freedom I’m seeking is a mental thing—I mostly want my privacy back. Knowing you’re being watched by a creep isn’t like any physical restraint, but it is a shackle on your conscience.
We stare at the fire together for perhaps ten seconds and then become aware that waiting in silence for the entire time it takes to heat the chop would be uncomfortable. Frigg clears her throat and says to Fjalar, “Do you leave for Svartálfheim soon?”
“Very soon,” he says, but before I can inquire why he might be going to visit the dark elves, Odin chimes in with the perceptible air of one who wishes desperately to talk of something else.
“Tell me, Granuaile, did Loki reveal anything else that might allow us to guess when he will act?” he asks.