فصل 47

I Psychoanalyze a Goat

AS LOKI HAD PROMISED, I woke up with a goat in my face.

Confession time: My only previous experience with kissing had been with Jackie Molotov in seventh grade, behind the bleachers at a school dance. Yes, I know that’s lame, seeing as how I was now sixteen. But during the past few years I’d been a little busy, living on the street and whatnot. Anyway, with apologies to Jackie, getting mouth-to-mouth from a goat reminded me of her.

I rolled over and puked into the river conveniently located right next to me. My bones felt as if they’d been broken and mended with duct tape. My mouth tasted like chewed grass and old nickels.

“Oh, you’re alive,” said the goat. He sounded mildly disappointed.

I sat up and groaned. The goat’s horns curved outward like the top half of an hourglass. Sticker burrs matted his shaggy brown fur.

A lot of questions crowded into my head: Where am I? Why are you a talking goat? Why does your breath smell so bad? Have you been eating spare change?

The first question that came out was: “Where are my friends?”

“The elf and girl?” asked the goat. “Oh, they’re dead.”

My heart threatened to exit via my throat. “What? No!”

The goat gestured with his horns. A few yards to my right, Hearthstone and Sam lay crumpled on the rocky beach.

I scrambled over. I placed my hands on their throats and almost passed out again, from relief this time.

“They’re not dead,” I told the goat. “They both have pulses.”

“Oh.” The goat sighed. “Well, give them a few more hours and they’ll probably be dead.”

“What is wrong with you?”

“Everything,” said the goat. “My whole life is one big—”

“Never mind,” I said. “Just be quiet.”

The goat brayed. “Sure, I understand. You don’t want to know my problems. No one does. I’ll be over here, weeping or whatever. Just ignore me.”

Keeping my hands against Sam’s and Hearthstone’s carotid arteries, I sent warmth through my fingertips into their circulatory systems.

Sam was easy to heal. Her heart was strong. She responded almost immediately, her eyes fluttering open, her lungs gasping for air. She curled sideways and began vomiting, which I took as a good sign.

Hearthstone, though…something was wrong beyond the water in his lungs and the cold in his limbs. Right at his core, a dense knot of dark emotion sapped his will to live. The pain was so intense it threw me back to the night of my mother’s death. I remembered my hands slipping from the fire escape, the windows of our apartment exploding above me.

Hearthstone’s grief was even worse than that. I didn’t know exactly what he had suffered, but his despair almost overwhelmed me. I grasped for a happy memory—my mom and me picking wild blueberries on Hancock Hill, the air so clear I could see Quincy Bay glittering on the horizon. I sent a flood of warmth into Hearthstone’s chest.

His eyes flew open.

He stared at me, uncomprehending. Then he pointed at my face and gestured weakly—the sign for light.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

Sam groaned. She rose on one arm and squinted at me. “Magnus…why are you glowing?”

I looked at my hands. Sure enough, I seemed to have been dipped in Folkvanger light. The warm buttery aura was starting to fade, but I could feel residual power tingling along my arm hairs.

“Apparently,” I said, “if I heal too much at once, I glow.”

Sam winced. “Well, thanks for healing us. But try not to self-combust. How is Hearth?”

I helped him sit up. “How you feeling, buddy?”

He made a circle with his thumb and middle finger, then flicked it upward, the sign for terrible.

No surprise. Given the depth of pain I’d felt within him, I was surprised he wasn’t constantly screaming.

“Hearth…” I started to say, “when I healed you, I—”

He put his hands over mine—a sign language version of hush.

Maybe we had some residual connection from the healing magic, but when I met Hearthstone’s eyes, I could tell what he was thinking. His message was an almost audible voice in my head—like when Jack the sword had started to speak.

Later, Hearth told me. Thank you…brother.

I was too startled to reply.

The goat plodded over. “You really should take better care of your elf. They need lots of sunshine—not this weak Jotunheim light. And you can’t overwater them by drowning them in rivers.”

Hearthstone frowned. He signed, The goat is speaking?

I tried to clear my head. “Uh, yeah, he is.”

“I also read sign language,” said the goat. “My name is Tanngnj?str, which means Teeth Grinder, because…well, it’s a nervous habit of mine. But nobody calls me Tanngnj?str. It’s a horrible name. Just call me Otis.”

Sam struggled to her feet. Her hijab had come undone and now hung around her neck like a gunslinger’s bandanna. “So, Otis, what brings you here to this place that is…wherever we are?”

Otis sighed. “I got lost. Which is typical. I was trying to find my way back to camp when I found you all instead. I suppose you’ll kill me and eat me for dinner now.”

I frowned at Sam. “Were you planning to kill the goat?”

“No. Were you?”

I looked at Otis. “We weren’t planning to kill you.”

“It’s okay if you want to,” Otis said. “I’m used to it. My master kills me all the time.”

“He…does?” I asked.

“Oh, sure. I’m basically a talking meal on four hooves. My therapist says that’s why I’m so down all the time, but I don’t know. I think it goes way back to when I was a kid—”

“Sorry. Wait. Who is your master?”

Hearthstone spelled out, T-H-O-R. D-U-H.

“That’s right,” said the goat. “Although his last name is not Duh. You haven’t seen him, have you?”

“No…” I thought about my dream. I could still smell the bitter almonds on Loki’s breath. The gods don’t even pretend to deal in good and evil, Magnus. Think about that when you meet Thor.

Junior had told us to seek out Thor. The river had somehow brought us to where we needed to be. Only now, I wasn’t sure I wanted to be here.

Sam readjusted her headscarf. “I’m not a big fan of Thor, but if he can give us directions to Lyngvi, we need to talk to him.”

“Except the goat is lost,” I said. “So how do we find Thor?”

Hearthstone pointed to my pendant. Ask Jack.

Instead of spelling the name, he made the sign for jack-in-the-box, which looked like a finger rabbit popping up from behind his hand. Sometimes sign language can be a little too literal.

I pulled off the pendant. The sword grew to full length and began to hum.

“Hey,” said Jack, the runes glowing along his blade, “glad you survived! Oh, is that Otis? Cool! Thor must be around here somewhere.”

Otis bleated. “You have a talking sword? I’ve never been killed by a talking sword before. That’s fine. If you could just make a clean cut right across the throat—”

“Otis!” Jack said. “Don’t you know me? I’m Frey’s Sword, Sumarbrander. We met at that party at Bilskirner—the one where you were playing tug-of-war with Loki?”

“Oh…” Otis shook his horns. “Yes. That was embarrassing.”

“Jack,” I said, “we’re looking for Thor. Any chance you can point us in the right direction?”

“Easy McSqueezy.” The sword tugged at my arm. “I’m reading a big concentration of hot air and thunder that way!”

Sam and I helped Hearthstone to his feet. He wasn’t looking too good. His lips were pale green. He wobbled like he’d just gotten off a Tilt-a-Whirl.

“Otis,” Sam said, “can our friend ride you? It might be quicker.”

“Sure,” the goat said. “Ride me, kill me, whatever. But I should warn you, this is Jotunheim. If we go the wrong way, we’ll run across giants. Then we’ll all be butchered and put in a stew pot.”

“We won’t go the wrong way,” I promised. “Will we, Jack?”

“Hmm?” said the sword. “Oh, no. Probably not. Like, a sixty percent chance we’ll live.”

“Jack….”

“Kidding,” he said. “Jeez, so uptight.”

He pointed upstream and led us through the foggy morning, with spotty snow flurries and a forty percent chance of death.