The Age of Odin - James Lovegrove [80]
"What if I told you Mrs Keener is the one who wants to destroy us, not the other way round?"
"That's pretty far-fetched. How's she even know you exist? There's only one god as far as she's concerned, the big daddy of them all, Jehovah. You lot are a pagan aberration. You're not real to her. That'd be like saying she wants to get rid of unicorns. Or dinosaurs, which she doesn't believe in either." It said so in her book. Dinosaurs were a lie invented by evolutionary scientists to prove that life on earth had developed over millions of years when, as any sensible Creationist knew, the universe had been put together by God in just under a week. Must have come in kit form. Probably from Ikea.
"Unless," I went on slowly, "she does know you exist and wants to wipe you out precisely because you're non-Christian. Fuck. Is that it? Her game's heathen god genocide? The Man Upstairs has told her to do that for Him?"
Odin shook his grey head. "Would that it were that simple."
"But it doesn't bother her too much, attacking other countries. So why not pantheons as well? Your lot, the Greek ones, the Egyptian ones - I'm assuming they're all still around too."
"Not to my knowledge. As I told you before, I don't consort with deities from other faiths. I have no evidence to believe they were ever out there. Perhaps we are all isolated from one another in such a way that we can never meet. Perhaps, by cosmic design, every pantheon is an island, known only to itself and its worshippers. Every monotheist god too. This is not germane, anyway. Mrs Keener is not aggrieved with us on religious grounds, you have my assurance on that. Her hatred stems from a much closer, more personal source."
"He still hasn't fathomed it," Urd hissed to her sisters, with a nod at me.
"But he knows enough to make the connection," said Verdande.
"He is just about to," said Skuld. "It is due."
"Mrs Keener is holding a grudge against the Norse gods," I said. I was beginning to grasp the shape of something - a realisation that was immense and profound. The clues were all there. Principally I was remembering the tale Paddy had told while we were waiting for Sleipnir to arrive, and what Thor had said afterwards. Somehow I knew that was where the answer lay.
President Keener. Mrs Keener. Lois Keener.
Ping. Lightbulb popping on.
Oh no. No fucking way.
It couldn't be that straightforward, could it? That completely stupidly glaringly obvious?
I was about to speak again. Then there came an urgent rapping at the front door.
Twenty-Nine
Urd went to answer it. I heard a woman's voice asking for Odin. We all went out into the hallway to see who it was. Skadi, the little skier goddess. She was on the porch, with her skis still on and her face flushed. She'd just hurried here from somewhere, langlaufing straight up the Norns' garden path, ploughing ski tracks over Odin's and my footprints.
"Odin," she blurted out. "All-Father. I bear news from Heimdall. He has heard the distant advance of enemy troops. Artillery, he thinks, though he cannot identify of what kind. They approach from due west. Come quickly. We must gather our forces. Asgard is under threat."
Instead of answering, Odin merely closed his eye. I thought he was trying to pretend he hadn't heard what Skadi had said, or else was giving in to a moment of despair. Then he murmured, "Huginn, Muninn," and I realised he was communing with his ravens.
"Fly high, my faraway eyes," he said. "Higher, higher still. Soar to the apex of the heavens, where all stands revealed. Show me what you see."
He stood there for several minutes, turning his head this way and that as if scanning horizons, although his eye remained shut fast. His body swayed slightly, buffeted by winds none of the rest of us could feel. Then, at last, the eye snapped open.
"Nothing," he said.
"You mean Heimdall's wrong?" I said.
"No, no. If Heimdall has heard something, then Heimdall has