Poison Fruit

I snatched off my hat, shoving it into my coat pocket, as Mikill escorted me into the sawmill. I don’t know for sure if wearing a hat in the presence of a deity is a breach of protocol, but wearing a knit ski hat with PEMKOWET HIGH SCHOOL emblazoned on it didn’t exactly seem like a gesture of respect.

As always, Hel was seated on her throne, a massive affair that the duegar, the dwarves of Little Niflheim, had wrought from old saw-blades. And as always, the vastness of her presence struck me like a physical blow, even before my eyes adjusted to the darkness well enough to see her as more than a dim, imposing figure attended by the equally dim and almost as imposing figures of several frost giants.

I knelt, bowing my head.

“Daisy Johanssen.” Hel’s voice tolled out of the darkness above me. “Rise, my young liaison.”

I stood.

In the faint illumination emanating from patches of glowing lichen creeping along the walls of the abandoned sawmill, Hel’s image resolved itself, the fair-skinned right half of her face grave and beautiful, the black and withered left side of her face skeletal and terrible. Both of her eyes were open. The right eye, the eye on the side of life, shone with a deep, luminous compassion, as ageless as a mother’s love. On the side of death, her left eye in its charred, hollow socket glowed a baleful pits-of-Mordor red.

Needless to say, it takes a certain effort of will to look Hel in the eyes, but I’d had practice.

“So, young Daisy.” The shriveled claw of her left hand stirred on the arm of her throne. “What compels you to seek an audience?”

Confidence notwithstanding, my heart skipped a beat, remembering the sensation of that hand closing around it with an iron grip the last time I’d requested an audience. “I have some information regarding a matter you asked me to look into, my lady,” I said.

Hel inclined her head. “You may report.”

I told her what I’d learned, omitting no details. When I’d finished, Hel gazed into the distance for a small eternity, her bifurcated face expressionless. That had a tendency to happen down here in Little Niflheim, where I’m pretty sure they have an entirely different relationship with time than we mortals do. I waited patiently, shivering in my down coat as the cold sank into my bones. I was glad I’d left my gloves on.

By the time Hel’s gaze finally returned from the unknowable distance, I was beginning to rethink the hat. She closed her right eye and uttered a single word, her ember eye glaring. “Hades.”

Behind her, the frost giants murmured.

“So it’s definitely him?” I asked her.

That evoked another long, fathomless gaze, at the end of which Hel opened her luminous right eye. “I do not know.” Her brow—or at least the fair right side of her forehead—furrowed in perplexity. “All that you have told me, including the name Elysian Fields, suggests the possibility. And yet I cannot surmise to what purpose the Greek Hades would wish to acquire property in Pemkowet.”

I was a little confused by her reference to the Greek Hades. “Umm . . . is there another Hades?”

Hel made a slight, dismissive gesture with her fair right hand. “It is a manner of speech, young one.”

Ever get the urge to crack inappropriate jokes in a tense situation? I bit my tongue against a perverse desire to suggest that maybe he should be called the Canadian Hades now. “Maybe it’s just an investment. Like my mom said, property values are on the rise.”

“Perhaps.” Hel didn’t sound convinced.

“Do you think—” My mouth had gone dry. I licked my lips and swallowed. “My lady, do you think he’s moving in on your territory?”

“No.” Another dismissive gesture. “Despite his wealth, not even the Greek Hades can maintain two demesnes. It is an impossibility. And the gods of yore no longer make war on one another.” She closed her right eye, sounding almost wistful as her ember eye continued to smolder. “We are too few and too diminished. Only those of us with ties to the deep places beneath the earth endure. Our age has all but passed, and our days of battle have ended.”

“A pity,” Mikill said in a low rumble. “It would have been a great battle.”

Hel closed her left eye and opened her right to cast a sympathetic gaze on him. “Once, my friend. No longer. We are not what we were.”

Mikill bowed his head in acknowledgment. “No, my lady. We are not.”

Ohh-kay, call me a bleeding-heart pacifist, but I can’t say I was sorry to hear that there wasn’t going to be an epic Greco-Norse Supernatural Smackdown taking place in my hometown. “What would you have me do, my lady?”

Her gaze shifted to me. “Wait. Watch. Report aught of significance that you learn. Continue to uphold my order. I trust that all is well?”

“Um . . . mostly.” I told Hel about the Night Hag, which brought on the baleful gaze of her left eye.

“I did not grant license for such a creature to prey in my demesne,” she said. “Certainly not one so careless of the fragile mortal mind. You have my leave to banish her in my name, Daisy Johanssen.”

Good to know, since that was pretty much what I’d planned on doing when I caught the bitch. “Thank you, my lady.”

“Is there aught else?” Hel inquired.

I shook my head. “No, my lady.”

“You’ve done well, my young liaison.” Opening her right eye, Hel fixed me with her double-barreled gaze, the right corner of her mouth lifting in a smile. “And I am grateful for your service.”