Chapter Two
I don't get mad. I get even.
The trickster god as my father gave me many advantages beyond silver eyes, a gift for mirage, and a growing ability to deceive. I’m also good with a lock-pick.
“Just . . . there.”
The side window, reserved for the pretty valkyries to enter Valhalla with drinks, creaks open. I hold my breath, watching sunlight dance rainbows across the polished stone floor.
A beat passes, and nothing moves. It’s silent as the grave.
I throw my legs over the windowsill and hop down. Despite the afternoon’s warmth, the stones are cool beneath my feet. All I want is to hold on to a branch in my familiar spot by the banister, but I push forward, float to the center of the space and approach Odin’s empty throne.
Perhaps I’ll set the whole hall on fire, burn every scrap of wisdom he’s collected. The flames would be a beautiful sight.
No. It would hurt the tree, and that realization nips that idea in the bud.
Vandalism then? I could paint something horrid on the main floor. But that wouldn’t hurt him. He’d use it to punish someone innocent, no doubt.
Perhaps I could destroy something he values and leave it in pieces on the throne. Close, but I know what would hurt him worse.
I’ll rob him of the thing he values most — his delusion that he’s all knowing. It’ll be easy. Simple. A small mystery he cannot solve, not with all the wisdom he pretends to have.
I will steal something. It doesn’t even have to be precious to him, but better if it is. He’ll always wonder where it went and be driven mad by the desire to know what, to find it if he can.
But if I’m clever and careful, he never will. Yes. Yes, that is the plan.
I slink behind his throne and root around the nooks and crannies of shelves. There are bags of raven food, long scrolls full of sagas and mediocre verses, potions, and herbs. No, none of this will work.
Wait. One shelf has a groove. I feel around it and realize it's a drawer. A small hole is off to one side. A locked drawer.
I grin to myself and pull out the tiny dagger I used to pick the window lock. Child’s play. It pops open too easily, a pathetically obvious hiding place.
As I peel back the indigo velvet layer of fabric, what’s beneath it makes my mouth fall open in shock.
I immediately dry heave.
It's an eyeball covered in goo and tiny threads of muscle and sinew. Disgusting.
Then, it hits me, and I have to clamp down on my delighted laugh.
It's his eye. The eye. The one he writes poems about that he claims he sacrificed to gain wisdom. The one he threw down the well.
How… interesting. I’m not usually one for smiling, but as I stare at the evidence of his deception, one uncurls across my face.
He didn’t sacrifice anything. He lied. He kept it.
Why? It's mysterious enough I would steal the thing just for my own curiosity, imagining the light in Father’s eye if I showed him.
But knowing how upset it will make Odin makes me nearly jump out of my skin with delight.
This is my prize. This is how I get even.
He took something precious to me. I’ll take something right back.
My heart races, imagining how vulnerable it will make him feel that a piece of him is just missing, that anyone could have it.
Everyone will be suspect. The paranoia will eat him alive.
It is enough for me. He’ll never pay for killing Níehoggr for the rest of his endless existence, but this is a start.
I pluck the eye from its hiding place using the velvet cover and hold it up for inspection. Fresh, not rotted at all. Immortally gooey, I suppose. We’ll keep this in its wrapper for now.
I hear a snuffling sound behind me. A light tap and scrape on the stone floor. I breathe in sharply and turn around, nearly dropping the eye.
“You,” I whisper, full of fear, but making sure the word comes out harsh and angry. I’m not afraid. He should be afraid of me.
It's the hound from before, the one who growls at me.
“You plan to turn me in to your master? I have powers beyond your imagining. I can strike you dead with a touch.” Maybe. I’m mostly bluffing. My powers are erratic at best.
The hound prowls forward. There is no fear in his face, but there is also no anger, no snarl or familiar growl. He looks sad. Those brown eyes hold a tender emotion that again tells me there’s more to him.
I press my hand out five fingers flat, palm facing him.
“Do not approach me, beast.” I feel the revulsion in my throat, saying the word knowing that I learned it from Odin, hating that I just called anyone that, no matter the fact it's the hound that hates me. If he is a monster, it’s only in service of a greater monster.
“Stop,” I say. The cold power within aches to release from me, to defend myself from harm. Still, I hold back. Against every logical instinct, I don’t think he means me harm.
He stops and settles on his belly, laying his head between two giant front paws. Only now do I notice he has something in his mouth. He opens it and a small, rumpled form tumbles out. He nudges it forward with his long nose and a whining sound.
“Níe!” My precious boy. I gasp and rush forward.
The hound is forgotten. All I can see is the limp body of my little one.
I can bring him back. I know I can. I snatch him up and cradle his small form tenderly, the gross eyeball still clutched in my hand as well. My thumb passes down his face, his throat, his belly. Whole but not alive. Two glass beads are tied to his tail. Strange.
“Tiny feet. Tiny toes. Soon enough, my big boy grows.” It’s what I said the first moment I awakened him. Maybe it will work again.
Nothing happens.
I scramble across the floor to the wall where a branch of Yggdrasil peeks out from between two long drapes. One hand grasps it while the other cradles Níe and the eye.
“Alive, alive,” I call on Yggdrasill and the unknown below it, the source of my strange powers, for any tendril of life to spark through me to him. I put the full force of my heart into bringing him back.
His egg-shaped head twitches. A single eyelid blinks.
A heavy breath wooshes out of me. I nearly crow with joy until I hear voices outside.
The hound growls at my side. Before I can push him away, he bumps his shoulder against me, herding us both behind the long drapes.
I stay quiet, stay hidden, but delight watching little Níe wiggle. His nose twitches. He’s not quite awake, but he’s alive. I grip a new branch tighter and stay focused on him.
Odin enters the hall and I recognize Father’s voice following him in. He’s always up to something, but thankfully he’s incredibly distracting.
“What is that smell?” Odin asks with a disdainful sniff. His voice has that tone to it, the same sharp warning when he’d struck Níe dead.
The hound’s eyes dart around. He’s afraid.
I know what happens to beasts found in Odin’s hall and so does he.
I tuck Níe and the eye in my hidden front pocket and hug the huge wolf around the neck.
I rub my cheeks up and down the sides of his face and even pass the top of my head under his long jaw, transferring his scent to me.
He blinks as I pull back, eyes wide with confusion. Whether he truly hates me or not, he brought Níe back to me. This is the least I can do.
“Thank you,” I whisper just before I climb up the wall to the window I entered from and quietly take a seat on the sill.
Father finds me first. A crinkle in his brow is the only hint of confusion. Odin never sees it. As he turns, Father shouts, “Hel, right on time.”
The older god grumbles. “Trespassing is a punishable offense. How did you open that window?”
“It was unlocked.” I shrug. A white lie, one he’d never be able to verify.
“I asked her—”
“Silence.” Odin’s hand cuts Father off. “You stink like a dog. If you like to skulk around in smelly places, your punishment will be an easy one. From now on, you assist my hounds on trash duty.” He turns to Father with a hard glare. “Why did she follow you here?”
“Apologies. She brings me a message.” His finger crooks.
I drop to the floor and approach. They both grimace.
I may have overdone it with the hound’s scent, but the stronger I smell the more likely the real hound will go undetected and Níe and the eye will stay hidden in my pocket.
I press my hand over my chest all the same, just to feel my little dragon’s faint heartbeat as I lean forward to whisper in Father’s ear.
“It was a lie for good and clever trick, I promise.”
His gaze follows me out the door, even as Odin pulls out his pipe and settles on the throne.