“Now that we are all here, I will cast a seeming,” Väinämöinen announced. “We will not appear to be here to anyone who snoops around.”

I rather thought it would have been a good idea to do that before the five lightning strikes in the same small area, but perhaps it would still be effective. “Pardon me if I’m being impertinent, but do you know if this seeming will deceive the eyes of Hugin and Munin, Odin’s eyes in Midgard?” I asked.

The wizard’s dark eye sockets swung around to regard me. “An excellent question. The answer is yes. I have had occasion to hide from him before.” He strode back to the rock he’d been sitting on and withdrew a strange instrument from a pack there. It looked like the lower jaw of some animal, teeth still prominently attached, and wound tightly around these teeth were fine yellow strings.

“This is my kantele,” he explained. “Made from the jawbone of a giant pike and the hair of a fine blond woman.” I was stunned speechless. What does one say to that sort of thing? “Who was the blond woman?” or “Why didn’t you pick a brunette?”

Väinämöinen began to sing, and I flipped on my faerie specs to appreciate what he was doing in the magical spectrum. The normal bindings present in the air around us began to haze or fuzz over; he was cutting us off from the normal scheme of things, creating a pocket dimension. When he finished, his mustache raised slightly at the corners and I understood that he was trying to smile. “There. Has everyone eaten? We have something cooking,” the wizard said, gesturing to a cast-iron pot hanging over the flames.

Gunnar indicated he’d eat anything, and we all moved around the fire. We stood until Perun and Leif secured a few more boulders for us to sit on; they may have competed to find the largest, heaviest ones nearby.

“It is a humble meal. A couple of hares, together with carrots and onions. We have no potatoes,” Zhang Guo Lao said apologetically. “But it has been cooking since before sundown. We have added salt and pepper. It should be seasoned and tender now.”

I smiled. “You guys seriously made a stew?” One of the things I’ve always enjoyed about twentieth-century fantasy novels is how bloody fast the heroes whip up a pot of stew from scratch over a campfire. To me that’s more magical than slaying dragons, because it takes a good four hours to make a passable stew—often longer over a fire in winter—yet those folks in the books always seem to manage it in less than an hour, without explanation. Though it was still an hour past sundown in Prague, it was approaching midnight in Nadym, and the stew should indeed be ready to eat.

Väinämöinen and Zhang Guo Lao’s packs were well stocked with cutlery and plates. Both were accustomed to spending nights in the open. Everybody chowed down—except for Leif. He drank a cup of my blood. Perun approved of the cooking but seemed wistful about the small portions.

“Is good. But next time, eat bear,” he said.

No one seemed anxious to do the dishes; it was as if they had each become Hemingway Code Heroes (with all the concomitant chauvinism that implied), and they’d rather die than do “women’s work” in front of all the other men. So I volunteered for the duty as a sop to their egos, and accepted their relieved thanks as I took everything down to the lake.

“Honored Druid,” Zhang Guo Lao said, “I have heard few details from Mr. Helgarson beyond an assurance that travel to Asgard is possible. Please explain to us how this is so.”

“I will shift us all there. Physically this is not an issue. Mentally it’s a gigantic issue. I was able to shift my two companions here across the globe,” and I gestured to Leif and Gunnar, “because I’ve now been acquainted with them for more than ten years. I know how they think. I know what gives them joy and I also know how to push their buttons. They are friends.

“But you are new acquaintances,” I said, gesturing at the three sitting across from me. “I am unfamiliar with the essence of who you are. When I must hold Zhang Guo Lao and Väinämöinen and Perun in my mind, what are they to me but names? You are more than a name. You are experience and wisdom, wit and folly, hatred and sorrow, strength and weakness. You are motivated by different forces; you have different goals in mind. All this I must hold in my mind, so that when we shift to the Norse plane, I do not leave parts of you here.”

“So we must tell you all of these things?” Väinämöinen asked.

“Not only me. You must tell us all. If we are to survive, we must each see into the windows of our comrades’ houses. We will open our windows by telling stories.”

“Stories? What kind?” Perun wondered.

“All kinds. In America they call it male bonding, and that is an accurate term for what we must accomplish here. We need to be bound, mentally and spiritually, if I am to take us all physically to the Norse plane. So we will remain here until I am confident we can leave, and we will tell stories. I suggest that your first tale concern what you all have in common—that is, why you want to kill Thor. We can move on to lighter topics from there. Agreed?”

A general murmur of consent accompanied their nodding heads, but every visage scowled at the fire—imagining the Norse thunder god in it, no doubt.

“Who would like to go first?” I asked.

All five spoke at once, but four of them almost as quickly deferred when they saw Gunnar bristling, lest he begin to doubt that we thought him dominant.

Chapter 15

The Werewolf’s Tale

I am probably the youngest being here, with only slightly more than three centuries to my name, but it seems I have hated Thor for longer than that—though he wronged me personally only ten years ago. It is strange how raw emotions can expand time or contract it. It is stranger still how a god can cultivate a reputation for being a friend to man when he is so often an enemy—for I know that Thor has done you all a great wrong, else you would not be here. I also know that we are not the only men in the world to whom he has offered injustice. I have heard whispers and stories, rumors of casual cruelties and petty behavior. It is, perhaps, his nature to be capricious and shockingly vicious, since his body is a bottle for extremely bad weather and his will makes for a weak stopper. His sense of right and wrong is no doubt somewhat storm-tossed.

Yet that is not an exculpatory condition. Werewolves contain ruthless predators within, and we must control our wolves if we wish to survive in the world. We must firmly adhere to pack law at all times and to mortal law where it does not conflict with pack law. Law is all that separates us from barbarism and the howling within; it is a necessary leash on our darker natures. The same should be true of gods. As we are subject to law and order, they should be also. We hear in tales that their justice is administered by a supreme god, if at all. But it is never commensurate to the crime, while the punishments they deal out to mortals are often excessive and eternal. I think it is time a god received his comeuppance.

To appreciate fully what Thor did to me, I must take you back to Iceland in the year 1705.

In that time I was a courier and peddler. I circuited the island in the summers, delivering messages and doing a little trade out of my pack, sharing news and providing some isolated farmers the sense that they were not alone in the world. Often they were just as glad to see me as I was to see them. I got free room and board for the gossip in my head, and they had the opportunity to reconnect with friends and relatives by entrusting me with a letter for a small bit of coin or provisions for my horse.

The visit I made to Hnappavellir farm that summer changed my life. Most of the household was out in the field; the only person at the farmhouse was a girl named Rannveig Ragnarsdóttir, nineteen years old and disaffected with rural existence. She had hair like summer wheat and a soft blush to her cheeks when she smiled. When I arrived, she was wrestling with a ball of dough in the kitchen, flour on her dress and completely unprepared for company. My presence flustered her as she tried to remember manners she’d learned long ago but had never practiced until now. I thought her completely lovely, and once we were seated with drinks and talking across a table, she thought my humble existence was somehow romantic and adventurous. The way she looked at me began to change after a few minutes; she became flirtatious, and I admit that I encouraged her. I had not known a woman’s touch in weeks. Before long, she was suggesting a short excursion to look for lost sheep. She packed some dried strips of meat and some biscuits along with a blanket, then selected a mare from the stables and led me to what is now Skaftafell National Park. There was a special place there, she said, that I should see. It was a waterfall called Svartifoss that tumbled over black columns of volcanic basalt, which had slowly cooled and crystallized into hexagonal shapes. It was a place of dark, musical beauty, and after the sun went down she said she wanted to have me there. I let her.

There were few escapes to be had in Rannveig’s life. Twenty people lived at Hnappavellir, most of them related, and there was nothing for a young girl to do in such a situation except be obedient. I was supposed to be a happy interlude, quickly enjoyed and long savored afterward, and I understood that and was grateful for it.

She was ravenous in her lovemaking, and I remember that she told me she wanted to do more than merely dwell on the earth; she wished that she could truly live. She and I interpreted this to mean that a nice shag under the light of a full moon sure beat the hell out of snoring through the night and then scrambling all day to bake the bread and keep the hearth fire burning. But that particular comment of hers was overheard and interpreted much differently.

The wolf who savaged us called himself Úlfur Dalsgaard. While we were locked in each other’s embrace, he bit deeply into my hamstrings and then tore at Rannveig’s calves. Utterly crippled and unable to flee or fight effectively, we thought we were finished. We half expected an entire pack to descend upon us, but soon enough we realized that there was only one wolf—a huge wolf, to be sure—and he’d backed off to watch us bleed.

I couldn’t believe my eyes at first: There had never been any wolves in Iceland, but of course I had heard tales of them. This one didn’t act like the wolves in stories. I didn’t understand the behavior. We were wounded, bleeding, and scared, and that should have been more than enough encouragement for him to kill us, but he wanted us to stay there, nothing more. If we tried to drag ourselves away or call for help, he growled and lunged at us. We were being saved for something special.

“What does he want?” Rannveig asked me.

“I don’t know,” I replied. “But I don’t think we have any choice but to wait.”

“You think he’s eaten our horses?” We’d heard nothing from them since we’d staked them perhaps a mile away and left them to graze—but that was not surprising, considering how close we were to the waterfall and the distance between us.

“No idea,” I replied. There was nothing to do but wait and wonder if we’d perish from blood loss or from jaws at our throat.

Our answers came at dawn. When the sun outshone the pale glow of the moon, the wolf writhed and howled on the ground, suddenly overcome by a series of snapping bones and popping tendons and shifting, sliding skin. During this grisly metamorphosis, he could not pursue us, and Rannveig thought it a good opportunity to flee. She gathered her clothes, rose to her feet, and said, “Come on, I’m well enough to run,” and I saw that her calves had healed very well in the hours before dawn. I looked down and realized my hamstrings were likewise remarkably restored, and this, coupled with the evidence of the transformation in front of me, explained the wolf’s odd behavior.

“He’s a werewolf!” I cried. “And he bit us during a full moon!” The stories of werewolves today vary greatly in their details, but at that time it was clear that they could add to their numbers only by biting someone during a full moon. The evidence pointed to a horrifying conclusion, but Rannveig had yet to realize it.

“Come on, Gunnar! Let’s go now!” Rannveig said, already yards away.

“No, look, do you not see? He is a man!” I pointed at the twitching form on the ground, now clearly recognizable as human. He was a bit shorter than me but thicker and more muscled. His blond hair was cropped closely around his skull, but his beard was full. The twitching stopped even as I spoke and he stood before us, na**d and unashamed.

“You said you wanted to truly live,” he called to Rannveig in a mocking baritone. “So now I’ve given you the opportunity. Tonight, the moon will not be completely full, but it will be more than enough to trigger the transformation. You will become werewolves like me or die in the attempt. We will be Pack, and together we will live in the worlds of men and of nature.”

“But I don’t want to be a wolf!” Rannveig protested.

The man scoffed at this objection. “It’s necessary only once a month after you establish control. Think of it as a menstruation, except you won’t be the one bleeding.”

“Why didn’t you ask us first?” I said. “This is not a life I would choose.”

“It’s a life that chooses you,” he corrected me. “I could hardly ask you while in wolf form. And you cannot appreciate what you’re refusing until you’ve tried it. You will like being a wolf. Trust me.”

“Why should I trust you?” Rannveig demanded. “You bloody bit me!”

“And you’re welcome,” Úlfur replied. “I know you’ll get around to thanking me later.”

“Thank you? For what? Turning me into a monster? For condemning me to hell?”

“You are concerned about hell?” He waved a hand at me and laughed. “This man is not your husband, am I right?”