“As I said before, Aesir, you are not welcome here,” she replied.
“This used to be my house, you know,” Trent said. “And we mean to take it back.”
“The deed is done. Now get off my property before I call the police on you.” She looked down at me. “That would be Ingrid’s husband, Matthew Noble, wouldn’t it? I doubt he’d be too happy arresting his niece’s boyfriend, but I’m sure he’d do it. And I’m sorry to be rude to the Aesir, but I really need to talk to you girls alone for now.”
Something happened to Trent then. I’m not sure what it was, but even though nothing seemed to change in his outward appearance, he still got bigger somehow. Not bigger, but more substantial, as if his body was sucking in a little more daylight, so that his skin seemed to glow a little, even as he was shrouded in shadow. When he spoke, his voice was deeper than I’d ever heard it, and for the first time, I truly believed my boyfriend was in fact the god of war.
“You overstep your boundaries, mortal. The Council has always treated you with leniency because you are the mother of Magdi and Mooi, the prophesied goddesses of rage and strength. But you can push us too far, and then—”
“It’s cool, Trent. Come on, please?” I cut him off before he said something he couldn’t take back. “Drive my car to Ingrid’s. We’ll get a cab to take us home.”
“Nonsense,” Janet said. “I’ll have my driver take you, of course.” She winked at Molly. “I won a Maybach in Monaco last year. It’s like riding in a cloud.”
“Trent,” I said because he was still doing that glowing/shadow thing. “Go. Please.”
After another long, tense moment, the glow subsided, and Trent was just Trent again.
“I’m not happy about this,” he said, sliding over into the driver’s seat and starting the car. He pumped the gas, making the Ferrari’s engine scream.
“I know it’s not ideal, but please don’t take it out on the car.” My last words were cut off as Trent dropped the car into first without pressing the clutch down all the way, producing a hideous noise from the transmission. Gravel spurted from beneath the tires as the Ferrari lurched into motion.
Trent may be a god, but he sure never mastered the art of driving stick.
11
IT’S A FAMILY AFFAIR
From the Diary of Molly Overbrook
It was all I could do to bite my tongue during the whole exchange between Mum and Trent. How dare he speak to her that way. Through hard work and guts and determination, she’d turned herself into the world’s best tennis player and managed to seduce a god and get a couple of children out of him. Everything Trent had—everything Trent was—had been handed to him on a magical silver platter. He needed to climb down off his high horse and admit that a human had outwitted him and his family.
I knew Mardi loved him, but I was upset.
He was rude to our mother.
Our mother. We had a mother. And she was here.
Mum put one arm around my shoulder and one around Mardi’s and walked us through the grand central hallway of Fair Haven, beneath the coffered ceiling and enormous spiral staircase, to the rear terrace, which opened onto the estate’s formal gardens and the more rustic orchards and coastland of Gardiners Island. As we sat down on a set of white-enameled Venetian grotto chairs, a small man appeared, who looked sort of familiar. Still, it wasn’t until Mum said his name that I realized who it was.
“Girls, this is Ivan,” Mum announced. “He’s my butler-slash-chauffeur-slash-henchman-slash-hitting partner-slash-I-couldn’t-get-anything-done-without-him. Ivan, would you bring us a bottle of Jacob’s Creek sparkling white wine.” She looked down at Mardi and me, a twinkle in her eye. “Have to represent for Australia, you know.”
To be promised champagne and then offered sparkling white wine is a bit of a, well, letdown, and it was a struggle to keep the smile on my face, and I could see that Mardi was struggling as well.
But then Mum burst out laughing. “Oh, you girls are terrible actresses. Ivan, break out the Krug for my princesses.”
Now I couldn’t keep the smile off my face. Krug was so expensive that even a wine snob like our father never bought it, or at least not for family dinners.
“Very good, Ms. Steele,” Ivan replied, and bowed. No, really: he bowed, and not like a little nod of the head. He bent all the way over at the waist until he was practically kissing his knees before scurrying away.
“Sit, sit,” Mum said, pulling out chairs. “Just look at that view. Isn’t it gorgeous?”
It was. Up close there were clipped hedges and multicolored flowerbeds planted in patterns as intricate as Tibetan mandalas, while farther away windswept hills covered in densely green grass and gnarled fruit trees gave way to golden dunes, and the silvery blueness of Long Island Sound. In the misty distance, across twenty-five miles of water, Rhode Island was just visible, looking like a world in another dimension.
Faster than seemed possible, Ivan reappeared with three Baccarat flutes balanced on a silver tray held on one open palm, in the other a silver ice bucket on a three-foot pedestal that must’ve weighed fifty pounds. He handled everything as deftly as an acrobat, setting the ice bucket down soundlessly, pouring the champagne into the flutes while they were still balanced on the tray resting on his palm, then setting a glass down in front of each of us.
“Will that be all, Ms. Steele?”
“Thank you, Ivan,” Mum said. “That will be all, for now.” Mum’s tone of voice could only be described as imperious. She may have been “new money,” but she knew how to act to the manor born. Another bow from Ivan, and he was gone.
Mum raised her glass in a toast, and we raised ours.
“To the new gods of Midgard.”
To what? I exchanged a glance with Molly, but it was clear she didn’t know what Mum was talking about either. We clinked glasses anyway, and sipped at the Krug.
(I don’t want to get anyone jealous, because they only make a few bottles each year, and most of them end up in Russia or the Persian Gulf, but: Krug. Is. Amazing.)
“Why new?” Mardi asked after savoring the Krug.
Mum sort of frowned and smiled at the same time. “Don’t you know?”
“No.”
Mum laughed. “I guess you wouldn’t, even though you two are the first.” She paused dramatically, fixing first Mardi in the eye, then me. Then, once again summoning that imperious tone, she proclaimed: “You, my daughters, will be the new gods of Midgard and will propagate an entirely new race of divine beings.”
I held her gaze for as long as I could, which was about two seconds, then turned nervously to Mardi, whose expression was somewhere between “Say what?” and “Is she crazy?”
“Whoa there,” I said, turning back to Mum. “I know we’ve just met, and Mardi said she wanted to wait a little before we got into the birds and the bees, but the simple truth is I’m still carrying my V card, and after what happened with Alberich last summer, I’m in no hurry to give it up, let alone start, um, propagating ‘an entirely new race of divine beings.’”
Mum’s expression didn’t change. In fact, her face was totally motionless. Still, I could tell she was disappointed. Disappointed and, well, irritated. I mean, the only thing that happened was that her nostrils flared, but somehow even that tiny gesture was enough to make me blanch a little. It was like, if she sniffed through those flared nostrils, she would suck up me and Mardi through those pink cavities and we’d disappear into her body again. During the French Open match against Serena, I’d seen her shoot that look across the net a couple of times, which Serena, being Serena, shot right back. Since I didn’t have Serena’s guns, I found myself looking away pretty fast.
But then Mum laughed, and the tense moment was over as fast as it had come.
“I heard about your misadventure with Alberich. The dark elves can be nasty creatures, and he’s the worst of them.”
>
“Yeah, Dad was saying something about that too,” said Mardi.
“When did you talk to him about this?” I asked, looking over at her. Dad usually only discussed god stuff when both of us were present.
“Um, earlier today,” Mardi said, obviously uncomfortable. “We were talking about, um, things,” she said, glancing at Mum nervously, and I realized she meant the attack a few days ago, which she obviously didn’t want to bring up in front of Mum. “Anyway, I knew I should’ve waited for you, but you were off, I don’t know, sulking—”
“I wasn’t sulking!” I cut her off. “I was upset. You’d be upset too, if that happened to you.”
I glanced over at Mum as I said this, but she didn’t say anything. Just watched both of us keenly, as if she already knew what had happened and was completely not bothered by it.
“Sorry,” Mardi said. “Sulking was totally the wrong word. Anyway, I got to talking with Dad, and he told me that all the gods are pretty much the same.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Mum snorted. “We are all but pale copies of the great Jotun, whether it’s a lowly human like me or a beautiful elf like Ivan.”
“Wait,” I said incredulously. “Ivan’s an . . . elf?”
Mum smiled proudly, as though someone had complimented her on a thoroughbred horse. “Only three in all of Midgard, and just one works for a mortal.”
“Wow,” Mardi said. “No offense, but how do you rate your own elf?”
Mum’s smile grew bigger. “Why, because I’m the mother of the Mimir, after all. My descendants will eradicate the Aesir and Vanir from Midgard, paving the way for the hegemony of the Mimir.”
Mardi and I stared at each other for a moment.
“Um, hegemony?” I said finally, although I was pretty sure I knew what the word meant.
“Rule,” Mum said simply, confirming my assumption.
“And, um, eradicate?” Mardi said.
Mum shrugged. “If you prefer a simpler term: kill.”
Mardi set her $250 Baccarat flute down so heavily that about $100 worth of champagne splashed on the table.
“Whoa,” she said. “Shit just got real.”
• • •
No one said anything for what seemed like forever. The only sound was the dripping of Mardi’s Krug onto Fair Haven’s fieldstone patio and, in the distance, the faint wash of the surf.
Finally, Mum clapped her hands and Ivan appeared as if by magic. (Which, given the circumstances, may very well have been magic.)
“Ivan, Mardi’s glass needs refilling.”
“Of course, Ms. Steele.” Ivan grabbed the bottle from the ice bucket and tilted it over one towel-draped arm, expertly filling Mardi’s flute with the maximum amount of liquid and the minimum amount of fizz. The whole operation took maybe thirty seconds, but it was long enough for me to regain some sense of equilibrium.
“M-Mum,” I said, stuttering slightly as I realized it was the first time I’d said the word, or at least addressed it to my actual mother. “Are you saying that me and Mardi are supposed to . . . to . . . kill all the old gods here in Midgard? Ingrid and Freya and Trent and, and Thor?”
Mum’s eyes flitted back and forth between us for a moment. Then, without warning, she threw back her head and laughed.
“Oh, my gods, the look on your face is priceless!” she said when she could talk again. “No, I’m not saying you have to kill your own father! That would be unseemly!”
“But didn’t you just say we were supposed to kill the older generation of gods?”
“I said the Mimir would do it. That doesn’t mean it has to be you two! It could be your daughters, or your daughters’ daughters!” She smiled brightly as if she’d told us that we’d just run over the last wild panda but it was okay because there were still some in zoos.
“Look, I can see you’re a little upset about this, but really, it’s nothing you have to think about now. The war is hundreds of years down the road. Maybe thousands. Who knows, maybe by then you’ll be so tired of Thor’s shenanigans that you’ll want him dead.”
Mardi looked at me with an “are you hearing what I’m hearing?” expression on her face. She was holding her freshly filled flute in her hand like she wanted to break it or throw it or something. And I knew why she was upset and all, but still. This was our mother, whom Thor had hidden from us our whole lives. We’d only just met her, and I wasn’t ready to give up on her just yet. So I shot Mardi my best “calm down!” stare, and I don’t know if it worked, but at least she put down her glass before she broke it (not to mention wasted all that irreplaceable Krug again). Still, her face was as pink as a breast cancer ribbon, and I spoke up before she could say something she’d regret.
“Are you sure about this?” I said to Mum. “Why can’t we just share the space since we’re family?”
“Family?” Mum said. “Did you feel like family two days ago, when you called on Skadi for help and she ignored you?”
“Wait, what?” Mardi said, turning to me. “What’s she talking about?”
I ignored her. “How did you know I called on Joanna?”
“You think just because I’m human I don’t know about magic? But then why wouldn’t you think that? You were raised by Thor. He thinks humans are just playthings. All they’re good for is pouring his drinks and cleaning his house and sharing his bed. Your call was a noble thing, Mooi. Noble and pure. I felt it all the way on the other side of the world.”
“So you know magic?” Mardi said to Mum. “And you called on Joanna to save that flight attendant?” she said to me. “Oh, Moll, why didn’t you tell me? I thought you were just upset about the fact that she died, but now I see there was a whole other dimension to it.”
“Indeed there was,” Mum said. “Mooi was learning that the Aesir care only about themselves.”
“But that’s not true!” Mardi protested. “Joanna and Freya and Ingrid have saved countless human lives. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.”
“For every life they save, they let a hundred others slip away,” Mum said coldly.
“But it would be impossible to save every human life! I mean, you’re mortal, after all. You’re not meant to live forever.”
Mum shook her head back in forth in disappointment. And even though we’d only met her half an hour ago, it was still impossible not to feel a sense of shame. I mean, she wasn’t even shaking her head at me, and I still felt bad, as if I’d let her down.
“Oh, Magdi. Such lies they’ve filled your head with. You think immortality is something only the gods deserve? What nonsense! Life is not a gift that can be taken back. It belongs to all sentient creatures—forever.”
As Mum said this, I felt a warmth fill my body (and it wasn’t just the champagne). If I was hearing her right, she was saying that just because she was human she didn’t have to die. That I wouldn’t have to face the prospect of losing her forty or fifty years down the line, and then have to spend eternity without a mother.
As if she’d sensed my thoughts somehow, Mum whirled toward me, her expression full of tenderness. “Listen to me, my darlings,” she said, looking straight at me. “No doubt you know that Gardiners Island sits on a seam between Midgard and Niflheim. But millennia ago, this seam didn’t exist, because the nine worlds were all one. Everything existed on the same plane, separated by nothing more than a river or an ocean or a wall or a bit of space.
“But when Odin led the Aesir in his treasonous revolt against the Jotun, he tore the worlds apart and flung them into different dimensions. He wanted to protect the Aesir and Vanir against some future uprising in which the giants and the dark and light elves and humans might unite against Odin and become a tiny band of rebels. This sundering split Midgard from Hel, the great city of Niflheim, which is where the soul goes after its human body has served its purpose, to be born again in a new body free of the weakness
es of this frail shell.”
“But, I mean, it’s Hel,” Mardi said. “It doesn’t sound like a very pleasant place to spend eternity.”
“Indeed it’s not, Magdi,” Mum said, “but that’s your grandfather’s doing. Hel is a part of Niflheim, which you know as the land of ice. The sun never shines, and the only plants that grow are pale trees covered in poisonous spikes instead of leaves, and a kind of black moss filled with acid. But once upon a time, before Odin cast it to the farthest edge of the universe, Niflheim was a paradise and Hel was its most beautiful region. Imagine some tropical island, but take away the flies and the snakes and the crocodiles. Every day was like this—high spring, with flowers blooming and birds singing and the fruit of the trees falling at your feet to delight your senses and nourish your body. It was only after Odin split the worlds that it became such a terrible place, which is why it lent its name to the Christian Hell.”
“I don’t want you to end up there!” I said then. “It’s not fair!”
Mum smiled at me. “Don’t you worry about me, Mooi. I can take care of myself. But the real question is, why should anyone end up there?”
She said anyone, but I knew she was talking about the flight attendant who had died in my arms. And she was right: she didn’t deserve to be in Hel.
“But what can we do about it?” I said helplessly.
“Why, everything, of course!” Mum said. “Once the Mimir vanquish the Aesir, the barriers holding the nine worlds apart from each other will be destroyed, and they’ll finally be reunited. Death as we know it will cease to exist—and it will all be thanks to you!”
12
SAY MY NAME
Mardi-Overbrook-Journal.docx
Once again, another awkward silence took over the patio. One minute, our newfound mum was telling us that it was our job to kill our father and grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins, the next she was telling us that we were going to save the world.
It was all a bit much, really. Clearly, Mum was insane.