Chapter 004

Heimdall was the last to arrive.

He dutifully wiped his muddy boots on the bristly door mat before pressing down on the door latch and swinging the massive door open. Enticing aromas of roasted chicken and lamb and stewed vegetables greeted him, mingled with the more solemn sounds of worried voices. He shook the rain off his jacket before entering the current incarnation of the lodge that his family had built nearly seventy years prior.

Heimdall stepped inside and closed the door behind him. On the few feet of all-weather carpeting just inside the front doorway, he stooped to untie and slip off his heavy boots, then reached into the coat closet to hang up his damp jacket and retrieve a pair of sheepskin boots — in deference to his mother. He’d never had to worry about tracking dirt or mud into the longhouse or the lodge before the past century or so, but she’d become a self-described “domestic goddess” — a term she always laughed at, being an old deity herself — and fully expected the rest of the clan to participate in homemaking, rather than leaving every last effort to her.

He padded down the oak flooring of the hallway toward the kitchen and contiguous rec room that served as the family’s main gathering spot.

Drawing nearer the smells of the food cooking in the kitchen, Heimdall rubbed his bare chin. The only time he ever missed his beard was when he was in this house, surrounded by old friends and family and the familiar dishes — though they tasted somewhat different these days. The ingredients from the original recipes weren’t always available here in the States — some of the old herbs had long since died out, and the pasteurization process left an odd taste to the butter. But his mother had adapted and invented new dishes that still satisfied the voracious Norse appetite.

Tonight, his mother had not disappointed. Heimdall stepped into the kitchen and picked up the last empty plate at the end of the counter. There were at least a dozen dishes that had already been picked over by the rest of the clan, but there was still plenty left for him and probably a full complement of Vikings.

He looked across the massive island counter that divided the kitchen from the rec room to the black leather couches, chairs, and divans where many of his surviving siblings and other kin sat feasting. Frigga looked up from her plate and smiled at her son as she dabbed at the corner of her mouth with a linen napkin.

Heimdall swallowed a chuckle. The sight of any Nordic god using a napkin always seemed so incongruous to him, even after these many centuries of living among more civilized peoples.

Frigga rose from her seat and carried her half-empty plate toward the kitchen. “Heimdall,” she cooed, stretching out a hand to touch his cheek. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

He nodded toward the others, silent save for the loud sounds of chewing and the occasional grunt. “I can see that.”

Frigga looked back at the collected clan. Odin loaded a hefty spoonful of potatoes into his mouth, then wiped his sleeve across his lips. Frigga frowned. “Ugh. Barbarians, aren’t they?”

Heimdall couldn’t help but laugh. “Mother… We are barbarians.

She shrugged him off. “Were.” She crinkled her nose and watched her husband eat. “At least they’re using utensils.”

Heimdall moved around the counting, beginning to pile food onto his plate. “So why the big meeting? Loki’s not trying to get a job at a nuclear reactor facility again, is he?” Heimdall added a few rolls to his plate, but then looked up when his mother didn’t laugh. When he saw her worried expression, he rested his plate on the counter.

“There’s been a development.” She paused, then moved nervously to the counter to spoon a few pieces of chopped fruit onto her plate. “I fear we don’t have as much time as we’d thought. Not nearly at all.”

She always had been something of a worrier, but Heimdall could tell by her stiff shoulder and the hard line of her mouth that this ran considerably deeper. He took a step closer to her and touched her arm. “Mother, what’s happened?”

Finishing his meal, Odin tossed his ceramic plate onto the stone tile coffee table and belched loudly as his utensils clattered onto the hardwood floor. Looking toward the kitchen to consider whether or not he wanted a third helping of roasted chicken with rosemary and mango — one of his wife’s more creative and appetizing creations — he caught sight of Heimdall and waved him over.

“Come on in, son.”

Frigga sighed loudly and hurried toward the coffee table. She picked up Odin’s plate, checking for cracks and then examined the coffee table for damage. “How many times do I have to tell you not to throw the dishware?” She picked up his fork, knife and spoon from the floor and wiped a few bits of food off of the floorboards with his discarded napkin. “I swear, you can take the god out of the Jutland….”

Odin laughed heartily and smacked his wife on the backside. She stood upright, scowled at him, then strode off toward the kitchen, shaking her head. Odin laughed harder, then thumped the flat of his fist against his chest as he belched again.

“Ugh!” On the other side of the room, his daughter Saga wrinkled up her nose, a near perfect imitation of her mother. “For frigg sake, Dad!”

Odin cleared his throat and wagged a stern finger in her direction. “Don’t take your mother’s name in vain, young lady.”

An eternal teenager, Saga collapsed back against the dark leather of the couch, her long light-brown hair falling forward into her face. “Whatever.”

Heimdall yanked the last leg off of one of the roasted chickens, grabbed a set of utensils and made his way into the rec room. He glanced out the wall of windows at the darkening night, always struck by the outline of the tall evergreen trees against the deepening blue blanket of night. But then he nearly tripped over his younger brother Bragi, stretched out on the floor.

“Sorry about that, man.”

The younger god just rolled his eyes and scratched at the back of his thick mane of dark hair. Stepping over Bragi, Heimdall sat on the low stone ledge of the fireplace, taking a moment to adjust the screen so that a stray spark from the roaring fire wouldn’t catch his fisherman’s sweater. It had taken Bragi two such accidents just in the last century to learn the same lesson. So much for the bard of the gods — poetic with words, clumsy with fire.

(CARE TO INTRODUCE THE OTHER GODS IN THE ROOM? TYR, THE LAWGIVER. MAGNI, MIGHT, THOR’S SON. FREYA AND FREYER. FULLA, IN SERVICE TO FRIGGA. MEILI, SON OF ODIN. SNOTRA, WISDOM. SKADI, WINTER AND THE HUNT. AND MAYBE LOKI.)

Bringing her husband a full stein, Frigga settled in next to him on the couch. She caught Heimdall’s gaze and raised her eyebrows at him, nodding slowly until he unfolded the napkin and tucked it into the collar of his sweater. What she didn’t see when she looked away was that he still wiped his fingers on his blue jeans after lifting the chicken drumstick to his mouth and taking an uncomfortably large bite.

Odin gulped at the beer in his mug, then held the container far away from his face. Grimacing, he stopped himself from spitting the liquid out of his mouth. “What in the name of the bloody house of mists is this?”

Frigga leaned close and patted his soft belly. “Light beer.”

Odin turned toward her and gave her a hard look. She returned the gaze, not flinching. Finally, he grumbled deep in his throat.

“For the love of Niflheim,” he practically spat, raising the stein back to his face and sniffing at the contents. “Diet freaking mead. Hardly fit for the likes of the chief god of the Vikings.” He looked sideways at his wife and narrowed his one eye.

Frigga propped an elbow up on the back of the sofa and rested her head against he palm, fingers disappearing into her short dark hair. “Well if you don’t like it, sweetheart,” she fluffed up her hair with her fingers, then rubbed the back of her neck. “You can always have no mead instead.”

Odin pursed his lips. He studied his wife as she smiled at him smugly. He’d never been a match for her stubbornness. He inhaled sharply and put the stein down on the coffee table, careful not to slam into onto the stone surface the way he wanted to. He leaned back against the sofa cushions and stared hard at the stein, then glanced briefly at his wife at his side. The stalemate had begun.

Thor leaned forward on the sofa opposite from the fire. He cleared his throat too loudly and then started picking at his bottom teeth with his pinky fingernail. “So, Dad, what’s this all about anyway?” He pulled his hand away from his face, examined the bit of carrot his nail had dislodged, then sucked the orange shred back into his mouth. He rested his elbows on his knees. “You said something about Berserkers.”

The rest of the room fell silent. Thor looked from one face to another, then fixed his father with a hard stare. “So let’s have it.”

Odin took a deep breath in and sat upright. “It’s true.” He nodded at Thor, then looked thoughtfully at the floor boards from a moment. “One of my students this morning awoke.”

Next to her sister Saga, Sjofn was curled up on the couch across from her father. She sat up, auburn curls bouncing on her shoulders, then titled her head to once side, brows furrowed. “Oh, come on. You’re kidding, right?”

Odin shook his head slowly. “I wish I were. But I’d recognize that look anywhere.”

The Berserkers had served him for centuries, wildly enthusiastic warriors who were undefeated in battle. Born mortal, they acquired magical and impenetrable protection when they awoke to the chief god’s service. Axes shattered to pieces when striking a Berserker. No spear could pierce their skin. But they also lost their minds in the transformation. The crazed Berserk warriors ran into battle with no armor — sometimes without any garments whatsoever — and left in their wake the bloodiest corpses men had ever seen.

It was a trigger in their DNA that called them into service, a tiny marker that not even Odin himself could recognize in one man or the next until it had been activated. Sometimes it was passed from one generation to the next within families, other times a Berserker would arise from a bloodline previously untouched by the warrior madness. Once awakened, a Berserker’s mortal life was over. He was literally insane with battle-lust and heard no voice other than his god’s. And when the need for his fighting was over, he passed easily to the Halls of Valhalla where fallen heroes feasted and caroused for all eternity.

The last time Odin had called upon the Berserkers was in his last battle with the Fenris Wolf, when he and the others had scarcely beaten back the final confrontation that would destroy them all. It had been nearly a millennium since they had defeated and bound Fenrir. Odin hadn’t seen a Berserker since, especially not in the New World.

Heimdall swallowed hard, forcing a half-chewed piece of bread down his throat. “And you didn’t call him?”

Odin looked at his son and slowly shook his head. “We were talking about some mathematics competition.” Odin sighed and relaxed back into the couch. “The kid was sitting there doing geometry problems, and then it just…. Happened.”

There was a pop from the fireplace as the burning wood cracked and shifted. Bragi turned his head and stared into the flames, firelight reflected in his sea green eyes and highlighting the golden cast of his brown hair. He tapped a finger against his dark corduroy trousers.

“I didn’t even know they still existed,” Bragi said at last, in a voice so low that most of the others had to strain to hear him.

Sitting on the fireplace ledge above him, Heimdall tapped Bragi’s knee with the side of his sheepskin boot. “Why would you say that?”

Bragi looked up at his older brother, then glanced quickly about the room. “I don’t know,” he shrugged. “I suppose I just always assumed they died out, with the last of the Vikings.”

Sjofn looked hard at her brother. “With the last of us, you mean.” She stretched strong arms over her head and shifted in her seat. “The last of those who worshipped us, anyway.”

Bragi nodded. All eyes turned toward Odin, but Thor stamped his foot on the floor and stood up. “There must be war brewing then.” His eyes lit up as he stepped away from the couch and began pacing back and forth behind it. “That’s the only thing that makes sense. And if the Berserkers are rising again….” He stopped in his tracks and held his open palms out before him, imagining the thunder bolts he used to trow. He clenched his hands into fists, remembering the feel of power in his fingers. He glance down at his father with an excited smile growing on his face.

“That means we may be rising again, too.”

A hushed murmur swept through the room, then fell silent. Saga crossed her arms tightly over her chest, while beside her Sjofn curled into a tighter ball. Bragi looked back again at the fire, and Heimdall stared out the window.

Meili clasped his hands together in his lap and looked at his father. “But there’s more that you’ve not yet told us.”

Odin took a deep breath. “The Berserker…. Paid me no heed.” He looked down at the floor. Vulnerability had never been the chief god’s strong suit, even in the more touchy-feely twentieth and twenty-first centuries where “real men” ate quiche and cried at chick flicks.

Thor’s shoulders sank. “How is that even possible?”

Odin shook his head. “This is what troubles me.”

On the divan, Freya uncrossed and re-crossed her legs beneath her in the seated lotus position she’d assumed since those few decades on the Indian sub-continent in the mid-sixteenth century. She straightened her spine and lifted her chin before speaking. “Someone’s been working magic, then.”

Raven-haired Snotra turned to face her niece. “Curious.” She titled her head, her eyes going out of focus as she considered Freya’s words. She nodded once, then glanced toward Heimdall. “What is the news from the forest?”

Heimdall pulled the napkin from the neck of his shirt and laid it across his plate as he set it down on the stone ledge beside him. He rubbed his hands on his thighs and lifted his shoulders. “I still haven’t found it. I feel like I’m getting close….”

Snotra shook her head. “What is the feeling in the forest?”

He knit his brows together, thinking. “I, I’m not sure. It feels like a forest?” He looked across the room at his aunt, but it was obvious he wasn’t giving her the information she was looking for. Heimdall sighed. “I don’t know. I was out there last night, hunting for the tree, and… well, it just felt weird. It’s nothing that I can put my finger on.” He turned again to look out the wall of windows at the night. He longed to be out in the woods again, hunting with Laika, even though they each had very different prey. Then a quick shiver ran down his spine, and he turned back sharply to face Snotra.

“There was a chill, not really on the air. It was something else. It felt like it moved right through me.”

Odin inhaled sharply, remembering the cold that had passed through him immediately before the Berserker had awakened. He felt Snotra’s eyes on him, and he looked up. “Yes, just before. What does it mean?”

Snotra considered a moment, then shook her head slowly.

“Some kind of meandering spell,” Freya offered. “Not direct, else there likely would have been some kind of confrontation with the new Berserker.” She raised her eyebrows in her father’s direction.

Tyr shook his head angrily. “There are people in this town working all sorts of magic all the time. It’s like Pagan central around here.” He reached down to make a slight adjustment to the tight waistband of his chinos straining against his rounded belly. “We’d be shivering ourselves silly day and night if very little spell gave us the chills.”

“Nordic magic then,” Freya conceded.

“And possibly from someone who knows the old ways.” Saga scooched forward on the couch and rested her elbows on her knees. “That would explain why you two felt it. But why not the rest of us? And what’s the point of waking up a Berserker?” She looked around the room. “Any of you see anything like that going on lately?”

She accepted the room’s silence as her answer. “Alright then.”

“Alright nothing,” he brother Bragi complained, crossing his arms over his chest. “That’s just one more question, not an answer to anything.”

Saga stuck her tongue out at him.

“Oh, real mature.” Bragi threw his hands in the air. “Would somebody please tell me just how a petulant teenager got to be the goddess of history? I mean, really!”

Saga pressed her back against the couch padding and snorted. “Yeah, right. You who can’t walk three paces without tripping over your own feet.” She tossed her hair back out of her face. “Twice.”

Bragi made a move to get up from the floor and go after his obnoxious younger sister, but Heimdall caught him by the shoulder and pressed him back down toward the floor.

Thor stood across the room, staring hard at Saga. Feeling his eyes boring into the side of her face, she turned toward him and raised her hands in the air. “What?”

He shook a finger at her. “Yes.” He nodded and slowly began pacing again. “Yes. The old magic is afoot. And if that kind of Nordic power is still strong…” He paced around the huge coffee table while the others watched. “If someone out there has been able to harness it, then we can, too.” He stopped by the end of the couch, next to his father, and turned to look at Saga and Snotra. “Couldn’t we?”

Snotra’s mouth opened, then closed again. It was Freya who answered him.

“Awakening a Berserker is a far cry from restoring a god’s strengths and abilities, cousin.” She leveled him with her gentle gaze. “It would be prudent to investigate precisely how this has come about before making attempts to harness it for any purpose.”

Thor sighed loudly and looked at the floor. Odin eyed the stein on the coffee table and started to reach for it, then remembered its less than satisfactory contents and leaned back again. Frigga caught his eye and smirked in quiet triumph. Odin shook his head at her, then looked up at his son.

“She’s right. I know it’s been difficult for you, but we need to remain focused on the issue at hand, to figure out exactly what’s happening and why, before we start dreaming of future possibilities.”

Thor turned to face his father, his hands balled into loose fists, but the mixture of compassion and stern warning in his father’s eye somewhat diffused his impatience. Shoulders drooping in temporary defeat, Thor stepped back over to the divan and sat down beside his brother, Meili.

Thor swallowed hard. “I apologize,” he said softly. “I just really, really hate my job.” He hated having to have a job in the first place, but that went without saying. He missed his thunderbolts.

Fulla got up from her seat near the fireplace and began clearing away the dishes. No one was eating any more now that the business portion of the evening was underway, and making herself useful was the only way she could keep herself sane in the midst of so much anxiety. She had always been so emotionally sensitive, much more so than the others. Fulla stacked Bragi’s and Sjofn’s plates on top of her own, then reached for the dishes in front of Saga, Freya, Freyer and Snotra.

Deep in thought, the others watched Fulla in silence as she collected the utensils from before her younger siblings and cousins. A natural empath, she was grateful for the quiet and for the busy brains. She had gotten better about controlling which feelings — positive and negative — she absorbed from those around her, but it was still a struggle in large groups, particularly when she was surrounded by such a collection of old gods.

“Thank you, Fulla.” Frigga nodded to her as Fulla crossed the floor to the kitchen carrying a stack of plates and utensils. Her pace slowed as she approached the large double sink against the far wall. She put the plates down on the white tile counter, coming to a complete stop as she reached for the sink faucet. Her hand hung there, mid-air, as the pieces came together in her mind.

Back in the rec room, Bragi tapped his foot against the leg of the coffee table in an ancient rhythm that even he could no longer place. Sitting beside his sister on the arm of the couch, Freyer broke the silence.

“Uncle Tyr is right about all the magic — real and recreational — being wrought in the area.” He paused to scratch the back of his slender neck. “And given that no one else but Odin and Heimdall has noticed anything out of the ordinary, I would hazard that this Berserker thing is thus far an isolated incident.”

Meili leaned forward in his seat. “Thus far…?”

Freyer nodded and opened his mouth to speak when Fulla appeared at the edge of the room.

“The tree.” Her voice had an almost dream-like quality as she stood before them, frail as a willow, gazing wide-eyed out the wall of windows at the tall trees beyond.

Startled, the others looked up at her.

“Yes, of course, we’re looking for the tree…” Magni dismissed her with a wave of his hand, but Snotra silenced him with a hard stare.

“Let her finish.” Snotra turned to look up at Fulla, still standing there as though in some kind of trance. “What about the tree?”

Fulla collected herself, rubbing her face quickly, uncomfortable to feel so many pairs of eyes focused on her, waiting. She took a short breath and kneaded her hands together nervously. “I mean, I think it’s the tree. The old tree, and the new tree. The timing of it all.”

Thor and Meili turned around on the divan to face her, and the leather squeaked beneath them.

Heimdall nodded in encouragement from across the room. “Go on. You’re talking about the cyclical regeneration of the tree.”

Fulla nodded and took a few tentative steps into the room. She glanced down at the divan, and Meili edged closer to Thor to make room for her.

“The last time we saw the Berserkers, the last time we felt such magic…” She took a seat beside her cousins on the divan. “That all happened when the last tree, the Vingolf Ash, was still standing.”

The Vingolf Ash had been the last World Tree to stand in the land of the Vikings, in the original home of the Nordic gods. It hadn’t been the original incarnation of the Yggdrasil, nor even the first or second incarnation after, upon whose trunk Odin had hung himself to access the great tree’s ancient wisdom, and then had sacrificed his right eye for the gift of the Runes, the written language that fostered peace and culture and brought magic into the world of men. The World Tree was the keeper of all knowledge and wisdom, and the unifying gateway to the Nine Realms. Odin and the others had guarded the Vingolf Ash fiercely, and thus preserved the entire world.

But it had been the last incarnation of the Yggdrasil in the Old World, and when the Vingolf Ash’s cycle came to a close and the tree died, it had been Frigga, the seer, who had led them all to the New World — more accurately, she’d led all the gods who cared to follow — to the birthplace of the next embodiment of the Yggdrasil here in this dark, wet region so much like the Celtic lands the Vikings had conquered. It had taken several decades, but they had at last found the young World Tree, the Sitka Spruce later called the Klootchy Creek Giant or simply the Sitka Spruce by the descendants of the Old Worlders who had come to settle the region. And the gods had been among them, watching over the World Tree.

Now that Yggdrasil had, too, come to the end of its cycle, had died, and had been reborn. Somewhere nearby. They just hadn’t found it yet.

“The tree is young again, vulnerable,” Fulla stammered. “The energies of this world, of all the realms, are in flux.” She got up on her feet again, stretching her arms out to her family in the mounting urgency she was having such a difficult time trying to convey. “No earthly magician would know of such things. It has to be one of us, one of the Old Ones.”

Heimdall’s eyes narrowed and he sprang to his feet. “For the love of Bilrost!”

The others turned to him in alarm. Heimdall made a small gesture of apology to his cousin, Fulla, then ran a tense hand through his thick mane of hair. “I should have made the connection sooner.” He rested his hands on his hips and looked squarely at his father. “She’s right. It is one of ours. It has to be. Someone took a chunk out the Sitka Spruce, just within the six hours or so.”

Tyr slid forward on his chair, his round belly hanging out between his knees. “What do you mean, took a chunk out of it?”

Heimdall held his hands out in front of him, about a foot and a half apart. “A decent sized section, about this big, had been sawed clean off.”

Odin frowned at his son. “And you did not offer this information right away?” he bellowed more than questioned.

Heimdall held his hands up in surrender. “I thought it was probably just a bunch of kids. The remains of the tree still attracts a lot of visitors. Some of them want souvenirs.”

Magin’s face flushed red. “And you were not there to protect it?” His temper was only slightly less fiery than his father, Thor’s.

Heimdall turned on his nephew sharply. “Hey, I’ve been out looking for the next Yggdrasil, okay? Without any help from the rest of you, I might add.”

Snotra rose to her feet and held up her hands in a placating gesture. “Boys, let’s please remain focused.”

“You tell ‘em, Aunt Snotti,” Bragi offered from the floor.

Snotra turned on her nephew and scowled. “I have asked you repeatedly not to call me that.”

Bragi shrugged weakly and looked away. “Sorry,” he whined, completely insincere.

Wide-eyed, Sjofn leaned across her niece Saga to tap Freya’s shoulder. “But with wood taken from the old World Tree…”

“Used to work the old magic…” Freya continued her aunt’s thought.

“Runic magic.” The room turned to find Fulla wringing her hands on the end of the divan. “It’s true. I know it’s true.” She looked up at her kin around her. “One of the old gods is working this magic. One of us is after the young tree.”