"You are no fisherman," it said. "What manner of man are you?"
“I am a shaman,” I replied, “if I am any sort of man at all. A wizard, certainly. Some would say a folk hero. Some might say a god. But I am foremost a being of curiosity, and I am curious about you. What is your name?”
"I have no name in the tongue of men or gods. But sailors call me serpent. A monster."
“What do you call yourself?”
"I have never thought it necessary to call myself, for I am always here. Do you ever call yourself?"
“No, but I have a name by which others call me.”
"You have a name! What is it?"
“I am called Väinämöinen. Tell me, are there others like you?”
"There are the older ones. They taught me speech when first I swam the deeps, but now I am Curious and they will not speak to me until I am grown."
“You say you’re curious like it’s a bad thing.”
"Among my kind it is. It is our most dangerous time of life, when we seek knowledge of what lies on the surface. I will be Curious only a little while longer."
“You are a child among your kind?”
"Only for a few more cycles of the sun. When next we harvest the blue whales, I will join the chorus of my people. They will sing to me my name and I will never rise to the surface again."
“I see. How many of your people are there in a chorus?”
"I will make twelve. But there are other choruses in oceans far away."
She—for the creature was female—asked me to build a fire, to see how it was done. She asked me where the lights in the sky were tonight, and I explained they were hidden by the clouds. She wondered why the clouds would do that. She wondered whether men had given names to the lights. She wondered how men got their names and how they kept them clean.
She told me the Remarkably Short Saga of Sheerth the Excessively Dim, He Who Sought the Secret Lair of the Giant Squid. She sang to me the Ballad of Moth the Valiant Born, She Who Fought the Sirens in the Grotto of Lime and Decay. She told me many secrets of the deep, such as the fate of fabled Atlantis; its gold and marble splendor serves the mermen now. There are treasures lying along the coasts of all nations, and off the coast of South America, sleeping gods of cold evil rest until the day they are called by men with dreams of power.
"Do you dream of power?" she asked. "Have you called me to destroy your enemies?"
“No, of course not. I am merely pleased to meet you and exchange knowledge of our worlds. We have much to teach each other before you earn a name in the harvest of the blue whales. What can I teach you? What would you know?”
We had long since spoken into deep night, with naught but a fire lighting the waters of the fjörd. Flickers of lightning played about the billowing skirts of clouds, and these flashes occasionally lit up the shore. The great creature’s snout lifted up toward the low ceiling in the sky after a particularly bright display.
"What causes those flashes in the sky?"
I chuckled. “There are many explanations for those. One god or another is usually credited for them.”
"What do these gods look like?"
“The god of the Norse is named Thor. He rides a chariot pulled by two goats—horned animals with four legs—and wears a large belt that doubles his strength.”
"Would that be he, there?"
“Where?” I turned to look over my shoulder and saw a bright ball of lightning writhing in the sky. It centered round the head of a hammer, beneath which was a raised hand and a scowling visage wreathed in blond hair. The edges of a chariot and the horns of two goats were starkly highlighted. Nothing else could be discerned, other than that the thunder god was quickly approaching, intent on the two of us.
Fearful of his intentions, I frantically began to wave. “No!” I cried. “Wait!”
But Thor threw forward his arm, and the coiled lightning arced down to strike the magnificent creature in the eye. She screamed and reared up in pain, then plunged herself into the fjörd, more lightning bolts following her and burning holes into her scaled hide wherever it showed above the surface.
I dropped my kantele and proceeded to jump and gesticulate and call him the brain-dead spawn of a lack-witted shepherd, but to no avail. He kept hammering the poor beast wherever he could as she desperately tried to make it out of the shallow fjörd to the open sea. I ran to my hut and retrieved a spear from my small cache of weapons. This I quickly enchanted for true flight and hurled at the nearest one of Thor’s goats. It spitted him cleanly and the chariot lurched violently to the side, spilling the thunder god into the sea.
This managed to secure his attention.
She who had sung to me was given a reprieve from the lightning, and I took up my kantele again to speak to her.
“Dive deeply and never rise again,” I told her. “I am so sorry.” Nothing coherent came in reply, just a sense of agony and bewildered betrayal. I berated myself for not concealing us with a seeming, and for not acting more decisively to halt Thor before he could unloose the destruction of the skies upon her. Here was a terrible price to pay for our mutual curiosity. But she was still alive. Perhaps she would live if I prevented the thunder god from attacking further.
He thrashed to the surface, collecting more lightning to his hammer held high above the waves. I targeted him with my voice and sang a song to calm his rage. His remaining goat strained to land the chariot on shore, dragging both his dead companion and the chariot behind him.
I could not see the leviathan anymore, but apparently Thor had some sense of her location, for he struck out with clear intent at a certain swell in the ocean near the entrance to the fjörd, heedless of my song and immune to its spell.
A flare of pain lashed out from the sea and seized my mind, and I staggered backward. Then there was nothing, simply nothing.
After that I needed to sing a song to calm my own rage. The flood of it nearly loosed itself upon him, with no dam to stop it save my will; yet I knew that Thor could stand against that tide if anyone could, and furthermore I knew that I was woefully unprepared to fight him at that time. I had no defense against lightning. Instead, I did what I should have done earlier and cast a seeming over my presence to hide myself from his eyes. As Thor pulled himself through the water with powerful strokes toward the shore, I cast another seeming on my small hut and yet one more on my voice, so that when I spoke next Thor would not know from whence it came.
The thunder god emerged from the sea looking every bit as angry as I felt. He took the hammer from his belt, where he’d secured it during his swim, and shook it threateningly in my general direction.
“Coward! Show yourself! You who slew my goat! Answer for it!”
“Will you answer for slaying the leviathan?” I said. My voice boomed from every direction, and the thunder god spun, trying to locate me.
“I have nothing to answer for!” he shouted. “I did the world a service.”
“Do the world another and slay yourself. That creature was harming no one.”
“Foolish mortal! It was about to eat you!”
“We were speaking peaceably and you murdered it without divining its true intent. And I am not mortal.”
His expression turned incredulous, then composed itself into a contemptuous sneer. “What are you, some sorcerer who keeps serpents as pets?”
I replied in the same tone, “What are you, a thickheaded, arrogant god who thinks immortality excuses all sins?”
The sneer left his face, which reddened as he shouted in a circle, making sure I heard him. “That creature was a spawn of the world serpent and as such was my rightful prey! I merely practice for Ragnarok. What was your purpose? Jörmungandr will not wait for any man’s permission to attack Asgard, so I shall not stay my hand against those who would hasten its coming.” He stalked over to his chariot and yanked my spear out of his slain goat before tossing it into the fjörd. Then, with a touch of his hammer, he resurrected the beast, who looked a bit wild-eyed but otherwise none the worse for having been dead.
“Witness the power I wield, whoever you are,” he said. “I am life and death. Vex me further at your peril.”
He waited for a reply, but I made none. The time to vex him further is now; it was not then.
Satisfied that he had cowed me sufficiently, he mounted his chariot and snapped the reins, flying back into the dark clouds that had concealed his approach.
From that day to this I have mourned the loss of my unnamed friend and cursed the name of Thor. He ripped from me the wonder of the ocean; he stole from all men the knowledge of a world they can never inherit. The Finns may no longer need an old wizard to watch over them, but Thor still needs to answer for his callous murder.
I have salted my hatred and cured it, stored it in a dark cellar of my mind against the day when I could let it be my only nourishment. The day is finally come, and I will tear into this meat and savor its taste.
Väinämöinen’s last words were a guaranteed applause line with this crowd. Perun suggested that it called for a toast. He pulled a bottle of vodka from somewhere and started pouring. I joined in, more out of appreciation for his lyricism than from any bloodthirsty sentiment against Thor. What had stunned me from the moment he described his unnamed friend was how it recalled what Odysseus had told me in Hades—I hadn’t been lying when I told Granuaile that the sirens had spoken to him of hasenpfeffer and sea serpents. What they’d said, essentially, was a bunch of rubbish to the fabled king of Ithaca, but to me it all made perfect sense. They had sung to him a series of prophecies that were far more accurate than anything Nostradamus spewed forth.
That was the attraction of the sirens: not promises of power or riches, but bewildering, tantalizing prophecies that made men leap from their ships to go ask the crazy bitches what the f**k they were talking about. Or, if that didn’t work, then they leapt when the sirens said they knew what would happen to the sailors or to the sailors’ families. Odysseus lost his shit and demanded to be freed from the mast when they sang their prophecies about Penelope and Telemachus.
Odysseus never saw any of their prophecies come true, but I did. He related to me what they said—word for word, because they were burned indelibly into his memory—and they were creepily accurate. They’d predicted the Black Death in Europe and the breadth of the Mongol Empire. They said things like, “The red coats will be defeated in the New World,” and “Two cities in Asia will perish under clouds shaped like mushrooms.” They added that “A man with a glass face will walk on the moon,” and “People will never get along in Jerusalem.” Only one of their predictions hadn’t come true yet: “Thirteen years from the time a white beard in Russia sups on hares and speaks of sea serpents, the world will burn.”
Cue the shivering violins. Had I just witnessed the beginning of a final countdown? Was Väinämöinen the herald of the apocalypse? It occurred to me, rather uncomfortably, that if this final prophecy of the sirens came true, it would be shortly after the time Granuaile completed her training and became a full Druid.
Correlation does not imply causation, I reminded myself. Maybe the sirens were talking about global warming.
Perun was growing more convivial the more he drank. He was pounding two shots of vodka to every one of ours. Aside from getting happier, he showed no other effects of inebriation. Perhaps this was one of his godlike powers.
“Is time for my tale, yes?” he said, rising smoothly to his feet and grinning amiably at us. “You maybe thinking, Perun just jealous of Thor. He does not want to share sky. But you would be wrong!” He pointed a finger at me and then waved it around clockwise to indicate everyone. “Plenty of sky for all gods. Plenty of men and women to make worship, plenty of vodka—hey.” He halted, raising his eyebrows at us and holding up his bottle. “You want more?” No one took him up on the offer, so he shrugged and poured himself a shot.
“I drink alone, then.” He tossed it back, winced appreciatively at the burn in his throat, and exhaled noisily.
“Ahhhh, is good. Good, very good. Now, listen like thieves.”
I looked at him sharply to discern whether he’d intentionally alluded to an INXS song, but he appeared unconscious of making any pop culture reference at all, and no one else seemed to recognize it.
“I tell you what happened. But I tell it short, yes? English is no good for me.”
Chapter 17
The Thunder God’s Tale
Americans say all men created equal. These words very good. Make men feel special. They know is not true, not really, but they always say is true, and they point to these words and say, Ideas like this make us strong. They turn mouse into bear. They turn dog into bear. Everything can become strong like bear if you think with American brains. But if everything is bear, what do bears eat?
Americans want magic, perfect world. But these places only seen in movies. People never equal, same as animals never equal. There is always predator and prey. Little fish make dinner for big fish, yes? And there is always bigger fish.
Is same with ideas. Exact same. Small ideas eat up by big ideas. Big ideas stay for long time in brains of men. Small ones forgotten; is like little fish eaten up by big fish.
Gods are big ideas. They stay for long time in brains. They walk on earth or live in sky or water or under ground. But even gods can be eaten by bigger gods.
I was eaten by Christ. You see? Christ ate many gods. I mean he ate me as idea, not as flesh. He ate me and other Slavic gods. He ate Celtic gods and Greek gods, Roman gods and Norse gods—even Väinämöinen here—and took their places in brains of men. Some of those old gods are dead now. Men have forget—no, forgot—them.