“To stop Ethan. Doesn’t stop the furry bloke from following the path of your story to its bitter end.”
Thor’s smile was hard and cutting when he looked at Jono. “The day will come when we will be on opposite sides once more, but what happened here in Chicago was not that day.”
“That day may never come in this world we have all lost.” Hinon spread his wings. “Shall we, cousin?”
Thor nodded gravely, and Hinon launched himself into the sky without a word, huge wings flapping to keep him aloft. Frigg raised her right hand in a commanding gesture, and Heimdallr bowed to her in response. Then he and the valkyries tending to the boats pushed them into the water. Waves rippled away from the hulls as the boats floated away, leaving the shore behind. In the rippling wake of their passage, the water took on an oil-slick sheen to it, like a rainbow. The sheen overtook the boats, stretching toward the horizon in a line of multicolored light—a rainbow bridge to a heaven.
“What is that?” Wade asked quietly, sounding awed.
“The Bifröst,” Patrick told him.
In the recess of Jono’s mind, Fenrir howled in a mournful way.
Heimdallr and the valkyries with him stayed knee-deep in the cold water, watching the dead on their final passage. Brynhildr jammed her spear into the snow, twisting the pole until it could stand on its own. She took five steps forward, raised her bow, and nocked the arrow to the string. Fire erupted around the arrowhead, a flickering warmth Jono could feel from where he stood.
“Valkyries,” Brynhildr called out, her voice cracking through the air the way ice over water did in winter when too heavy a weight stood on it. “On my mark.”
Jono watched as the half circle of valkyries all raised their bows and took aim at the boats with a steadiness that never wavered. Patrick’s grip tightened in his, and Jono held on because he would never let go.
When Brynhildr’s count reached one, every valkyrie with a bow let loose their arrows. The burning arrows streaked through the dark sky, bringing fire to the boats and turning them into funeral pyres.
The boats drifted over the Bifröst that glowed beneath the waters of Lake Michigan, their fires growing. In the sky, Hinon followed their route, gliding low over the waters every now again, almost as if he were guarding their passage. Several of the valkyries on the beach mounted their steeds and joined Hinon in the sky.
“There is an edge to every world,” Frigg said into the quiet. “Here, on Midgard, this is one of ours, because this is one of the few places we are remembered.”
“Hinon isn’t of your pantheon. Lake Michigan belongs more to his pantheon than yours,” Patrick said.
“Our stories overlap in ways you could not understand. Hinon will ensure Oniare does not interfere with the dead. The valkyries will guide their sisters to Valhalla.”
“What of Odin?”
Frigg didn’t speak, merely looked up at the night sky that was no longer cloudy. Jono didn’t know when it had happened, but the sky over the beach was clear and full of stars. Jono watched as two black specks grew larger and larger, blotting out the starry sky until Huginn and Muninn landed in all their strange glory in front of their queen.
Frigg knelt and extended both hands to Odin’s ravens. Huginn and Muninn hopped closer to her, gently preening her hair with their beaks as she stroked their feathers. Frigg smiled at whatever they told her that Jono couldn’t hear.
“Odin lives,” Frigg said before straightening up.
Patrick stared at her. “I drove my dagger into his heart.”
“Yes, but you didn’t kill his memory. You merely broke the spell seeking to use him.”
“You just lit his boat on fire. I know what burning flesh smells like.”
“Odin does not burn, even if the valiant dead do. We gods lose our bodies and our lives only when we are forgotten here.”
“Your lives are myths. You’ve already lived your age in the past. That’s why you’re just stories to most people on Earth.”
“Midgard is the heart of the world tree, but sometimes our hearts ache to return home to Asgard.” Thor pointed at the horizon. “Look. The Allfather comes.”
Jono stared at the water and burning boats still drifting across the Bifröst to the edge of the world, lit by starshine. Some of those stars grew brighter, cutting through the sky like a ribbon of the Northern Lights. Jono’s eyes widened in surprise when he finally realized what he was looking at.
Odin’s godhead returning to the immortal vessel that housed it.
The boats never stopped gliding toward the edge of the world. When the shining brightness of what passed for a god’s soul reached the boat Odin’s body had lain in for the funeral, the fire there grew brighter. It flickered red, then orange, then a pure, shining white-gold before getting snuffed out by some unseen force.
Odin climbed out of the boat, standing tall on the Bifröst rather than sinking into Lake Michigan. The Allfather had been dressed in the finest suit money could buy, overlaid with a fur cloak that matched Frigg’s in style and color. The crown he wore was a simple twist of gold that burned like a halo. Heimdallr was the first to greet Odin when the Allfather stepped off the Bifröst and returned to earth. To Jono’s eyes, Odin looked exactly as he had when he’d swung from Yggdrasil’s branch, the pinnacle sacrifice that never truly happened.
“What,” Patrick said angrily, “the fuck?”
