The Wildcard Read online

  "No, Green’s right, I really do enjoy model trains. You know in Scandinavia we have some of the most spectacular train lines in the world, I’ve always been fascinated by the feats of engineering you tok - I mean, that we humans manage to achieve. Those long tunnels under the mountains are quite something."

  Peter beamed.

  "Yes, Claudia and I took a trip into the fjords on one of those trains...now what was it, Claudia, the Flam? We still have the photographs somewhere. I’m sure you could identify them, being a native more or less...."

  Peter led Baldur away to his den and Green and her mother looked at one another, neither knowing where to start.

  "It seems very soon, dear. After..."

  "I know. But, actually - we did meet before I even met Sam. In Budapest."

  "Really? You didn’t mention anything to me about it." Clearly, Claudia couldn’t understand how her daughter could meet a man like Baldur and not say anything about it.

  "Well...it was just briefly. And then we didn’t meet again until I went to Greece, and then..."

  "You didn’t - cheat on Sam with this Baldur fellow, did you?" Claudia was shocked. Morals might have been free and easy in the sixties, but now was a different matter.

  "No!" She would have, if she’d been asked, at the right moment. No need to say that. "But I mean, it’s not really that sudden. And I do love him, Mum. I never was really in love with Sam. I thought I was - but now I know this is the real thing."

  Claudia looked doubtful.

  "He’s very handsome - are you sure you’re not just getting carried away by looks, Green. Because looks fade, you know. Your father was very hot, in his day. I still remember him in his tight levis, with no shirt on and that deliciously hairy chest - chest hair was very 'in' in those days..."

  "Ok, ok, too much information." Green tried to picture her father half naked in tight jeans, and failed. "No, it’s not just looks. He is gorgeous- but he’s very good to me, too."

  "And your illness? When you just disappeared, you didn’t write, you didn’t call - I was so worried for you. I thought something had happened to you! So I rang Sam - and he just clammed up as if he never wanted to hear your name mentioned again. At least he told me you were alright - as far as he knew. You could have called." Claudia sounded hurt.

  "I know, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to do that to you, it just - happened. I’ll explain later. But you don’t need to worry about me anymore, Mum, I’m better now."

  "Are you sure? Because a mental illness - well, I wish it wasn’t so, but it doesn’t just disappear. Sometimes it comes back, just when you’re not expecting it. I really think you should go back to that psychiatrist and continue your treatment."

  "I don’t need treatment any more, I’m better. I mean, do I look sick?"

  Claudia peered into Green’s face as if she could see the marks of psychosis on her skin, like acne.

  "You look happy, sweetheart. I’m really glad to see that." She put both arms around Green and pulled her into a hug. It felt so good to be close to her mother again. She pushed away the thought of what was coming. "But I still think you should go back to that psychiatrist. Just for a check-up. Now tell me all about him. Where does he come from? What’s his family like? What does he do for a living?"

  Green launched into her pre-prepared concoction of lies and half-truths. She couldn’t decide what was worse - that she was lying to her mum, or that her mother actually believed it all. If Claudia had just turned to Green and said ‘now cut the bullshit, what’s the real story’, she probably would have confessed everything - as it was, she had to sit and look at her mother’s fascinated, innocent, loving face and feel guilty as hell.

  "She swallowed it all whole," Green said, shame-faced, to Baldur later as they lay in their shared room - Green’s parents were progressive - listening to the rush hour traffic honking on the Sydney Harbour Bridge. "She thinks you work for Nokia and your family live in Reykjavik - because that’s the only Icelandic place I can remember."

  "Good to know. Fortunately, your father was too interested in showing me his trains to ask questions - otherwise I might have some explaining to do, when your parents compare notes." Baldur looked amused. "Perhaps I should have mentioned it earlier - but I cannot lie. I can see that this might become inconvenient."

  "You mean you can’t lie - or you don’t want to?"

  "I cannot. I am sorry."

  Green looked at him in a new light. How could a person live and not be able to lie? She wasn’t big on lying, herself - but you had to be able to do it, sometimes. And when she did, she was damn good at it.

  "So what if I asked you if I looked fat in something, and I did - would you say yes?"

  Baldur nodded meekly. "If you do not want to hear the truth, perhaps you had better not ask me. But if you ask me if you look beautiful, I will always say yes - because it will always be true. No matter how fat you are."

  Green blushed, caught between embarrassment and pleasure.

  "Anyway," she said, hastily changing the subject, "my mum thinks I’m mad. She’s worried I’ll have a relapse, like schizophrenics that go off their meds and then have a psychotic attack."

  "She loves you very much," Baldur commented wistfully. His own mother loved him, too - but not with this uncomplicated, simple maternal affection. Frigg’s love for her son was inextricably bound up with pride, ambition, power. It seemed that being a mortal came with its own compensations.

  "But I’m not mad, am I?"

  He kissed her in the darkness, and they slept.

  Later - she couldn’t tell what time it was, but not yet dawn - she woke to see Baldur standing at the window, gazing out towards the lights of the bridge.

  "What is it?"

  "We’re not alone."

  "What do you mean?" she whispered. He beckoned her, and held her close to his side. Even as a mortal man, she could feel the strength in his smoothly muscled arms.

  "You see?"

  She peered out into the darkness. A magnolia tree, its white blossoms ghostly in the street light. The bridge with its constant hum of headlights and brake lights, even at this time of night. The opera house, cream sails rising into the night, empty now of tourists and theatre goers. A shape, darker than the darkness, reaching across the thick grey air.

  Green pulled back and slammed the window closed.

  "What is it? It had...eyes." Flame red, in a long muzzle open to display fangs of white fire.

  He said nothing, his mouth a grim line.

  "Set? Is it Set?" She still had trouble thinking of him as anything but Dionysos - the man with the tattoo. She pressed herself into Baldur, and tried not to be afraid.

  "It is Set, yes. We should both be afraid," he answered her thought, pulling the curtains shut, and switching on the bedside lamp. "We are mortals, and Set is a god."

  "I thought you said he wouldn’t do anything. I mean, you got into trouble for saving me, so wouldn’t he get into the same kind of trouble for attacking me - us?"

  She pulled the covers up to her chin, like a child hiding from a monster under the bed. Baldur lay down beside her, his hands behind his head, his eyes watchful.

  "I think he will not act directly - I hope he will not. His weapons of choice are fear and faith. He is just letting us know that he is watching and waiting, like a cat at a mouse hole."

  "But then what’s the point - if he can’t do anything."

  "Not to you or I. But your parents, they are vulnerable. We have brought him into their world - I should have thought. I should have known."

  She froze.

  "He’d do something to my family?"

  "Accidents happen. Or he can enter their minds - you know how that feels. He wants us to feel threatened. That is why he takes his wolf shape - to create fear, not just in you, but in others. Fear feeds his power."

  "So what can we do?"

  He hesitated. "We should leave. Where you and I go, I think he will follow."

  "But - we only just g
ot here. My parents are going to think we can’t stand to be around them. They’ll know something’s wrong. And I, you know - I need to be with them, before..."

  "I know."

  Just at that moment, she could have smashed something. Despite everything, it had felt so good - so very good - to be home, in her own city, her own country, with her own parents - and now this! Green looked around the room. She'd had so many 'rooms', in different countries - but her mother had obviously gone to a lot of trouble to make this space homely, and personal. There was Big Ted, her favourite teddy bear, peering down from the top of a cupboard, and Doggy, a lop-eared purple sausage dog with the stuffing coming out. Alexander, his grey coat rumpled, licked himself on the end of her bed. She leant down to ruffle the fur behind his fat head, fighting the urge to scream.

  All she wanted was a little respite, a bit of normality - and Set wouldn’t even allow them that? If humans could kill a god, she could have strangled him with the utmost pleasure.

  "We do not have to leave immediately."

  She looked at Baldur resentfully. Was this what life was going to be like from now on? It wasn’t his fault - but he was here, and she needed to blame someone. Couldn't he show more emotion? Didn't he care?

  "So where will we go? We can’t just keep running away, can we?"

  "We will go my brother Hodr," he said, "in Iceland."

  Iceland. Another plane trip, to another strange place, on the other side of the world - cold, snow-bound, full of...Icelanders! Green squeezed her eyes shut and pulled the quilt over her head - and dreamed of blowing him away with an assault rifle. Set, that is. Not Baldur.

  Chapter 7

  "He thinks he knows best," says Frigg crossly.

  "Do not they all." Ishtar puts a be-ringed hand on her sister’s thigh, comforting. "Sons, husbands, lovers."

  Frigg casts her a sharp glance.

  "It’s all very well for you. Ares does whatever you bid him, in the end, and as for your children - I do not think you would care what they did."

  "Harsh," Ishtar remarks, her dark brown eyes resting with some sympathy on Frigg, now winding the green silk of her kirtle between her hands as if trying to wring her son’s neck in absentia. "I care. But they go their own way - besides, there are so many of them, I forget their names at times. You know this banishment will not last long."

  Frigg throws her a distracted look, and chews at her nails.

  "It is not fair! Set has committed similar crimes and he is not banished. Why should my son be sent down to live as a common man among mortals?"

  Ishtar shrugs. "Set is Hera’s son, she will not allow anything serious to happen to him, no matter what he does. You know Zeus-Ra is afraid of noone but his Assigned, and so would I be. She is full of spite."

  Frigg nods, seeing the truth in this.

  "I want Baldur here with me where he belongs. It is not long until the Game ends, and he must be here when it does. It does not bear thinking of - that he should be among mortals when..."

  "Do not weep." Ishtar coils a plump white arm around her sister’s shoulders, and leans her dark red head against Frigg’s golden-brown one. "Zeus-Ra has had his little tantrum, and I am sure will think better of his decision before long. Naina will forget the rage of a goddess scorned and find a new young lover - and then you can ask for the decision to be reversed. I, for one, will speak for it. It is ridiculous, to banish a god for loving a mortal. I have loved dozens, and no Council has ever sat to judge me for it."

  "It needs to be soon. Baldur cannot be on earth when the board is swept clean."

  "You know," says Ishtar, allowing herself to drift, a warm haze, "if Naina sees that Baldur no longer loves his mortal - or if his mortal no longer loves him - then Zeus-Ra may be persuaded to change his mind. He is probably, even now, regretting his decision and looking for a way to reverse it without losing face. He has a soft spot for Baldur - and even he must know that Naina is a silly, vain creature."

  "Baldur will not change," Frigg says bitterly. "The stubborn idiot has told me that she is the one woman he has ever loved and will ever love. As if I did not know anything about love!"

  "Ah yes...do you remember when you were in love for the first time?"

  Frigg remembers. The man, Harald, and how she had spent every waking moment thinking about how to please him, and wondering if he loved her as much as he claimed - and looking with dread towards the day that he died.

  "It does not last," says Ishtar, smoothing her jewelled velvet skirts. "We remember, but we feel nothing in the end. Love is not eternal - we just think it is, when we are young and stupid."

  "Baldur will not give her up for anything, I know this."

  "But she will give him up - if she comes to hate him. Perhaps we can make her jealous. She is only a mortal, attractive enough in her way but hideous compared to Naina. If we can persuade Naina to tease her a little - I think we can awaken the fires of jealousy. And then it does not matter what Baldur thinks - she will slap his face and go back to her mother."

  Frigg looks at Ishtar with respect and some distaste.

  "You have done this before, I think."

  "Many times," says Ishtar, comfortably, "and it always works."

  Chapter 8

  It was morning, and the magnolia outside their bedroom window glistened dark green and creamy white against a perfect blue sky. Down below, over the rooftops, a glimpse of the harbour showed a yacht race in progress, sails of all colours spread against the light breeze. Green pulled on her clothes higgledly-piggledy.

  "Tell me more about Hodr. You never told me you had a brother."

  Baldur pulled on blue jeans. They looked like they’d been made just for him.

  "My brother is an immortal - but Harald his father was mortal. Hodr was banished for trying to kill a god."

  "You mean, you?"

  Baldur turned to her with a slow smile. "The story, as always, has become a little garbled in the telling. Do you wish to hear it?"

  "Alright." Why not? Pass the time telling stories.

  "From when we were children, Set and I were rivals. One day he challenged me to a competition - a kind of mock-fight, to see who was fastest, strongest, most skilled. My mother commanded me not to accept - she knew that if I won, Hera would not like it, and Set would never forgive the slight. But I was arrogant, and proud of what I could do, so I disobeyed her."

  Green tried to imagine the young Baldur, a cocky little boy. Or were they teenagers? Whatever.

  "So Hera set us three tests - a race, a wrestling match, and a trial of our skills with the bow. The gods came together to watch, and we began the test. I won the race, and the wrestling, and my mother again spoke to me, saying 'Let your aim with the bow waver, my son, for Hera is angered.' But again, I did not heed her."

  "So she wanted you to throw the match."

  "Yes. So we took our bows, and set a target..."

  "What target? I'm having difficulty imagining all this given you all have superpowers. Was it, like, Batman versus Superman?"

  Baldur frowned. "Do you want to hear this story - or do you not?"

  "I do. Sorry." Green bit her lip.

  "The target was the heart of a tree that my mother had created for the purpose. In any case, I won - I will spare you the details - and Hera called me to her high seat beside Zeus-Ra, and I could see that - as my mother warned me - she was not pleased. But she congratulated me, and would have let it go without reprisal - at least at that time - when Set came to us smiling and proposed a further test of skill."

  "But you'd already won," said Green indignantly.

  "He said that Hodr, my brother, was downcast because he could never rival us in our sports, and would never have the chance to display his abilities before all the gods. I looked at Hodr, and Set was right - he seemed sad and friendless, alone among those who paid him no heed."

  "But Hodr's blind, right?"

  "Yes. But Set proposed that Hodr too be allowed to use the bow before all the assembled - and
said that he would guide the arrow, so that it would strike the heart of the tree just as mine did. 'How generous', said Hera his mother, and so it was difficult not to accept with a good grace. What could I do?"

  "Say no. Obviously, he was planning to shoot you."

  "Obviously. But I was fast, and - arrows are not exactly arrows, in our world. I gave Hodr the bow, and showed him how to use it, and then stood back and let him loose, while Set guided the shaft. I knew he would guide it to my heart, in his foolishness - but I had no doubt I could catch it in my hand before it reached me - as I said, I was fast, and confident. So Hodr loosed the arrow, and I caught it, with nothing more than a scratch to show for it, and as I thought, Set looked like a fool - even Zeus-Ra was angered at his son.

  But when he understood what had happened, Hodr was furious. His father was a berserker - one of those who experience a mad rage during battle and kill many men while remaining unharmed themselves. He had - has - the capacity for great anger. He took the bow from me, with great force, and the arrow. And then he loosed it into the air, and by some chance - I do not know how - it struck Set on the forehead."

  Green was rapt. This story was better than she thought it would be. "And then what happened?"

  "Then he fell, and was like to die. Hera called Hodr a murderer, and would have had him killed, if Zeus-Ra had allowed it. And if my mother had not stood before him like a wolf before her cub, snarling that she would see all Asgard wither, before she let them harm Hodr." Baldur smiled at the memory. "So Hodr was exiled to earth, instead - and Set lived, though the scar on his temple tells the tale. He has turned the scar to his advantage - you would not know it was an arrow made it."

  The tattoo. "The end?"

  "Not quite. When Hodr was banished, I chose to go with him. He was my brother, and blind, and needed protection. But now he has become accustomed to the ways of this earth, and keeps himself well enough. So I returned to Asgard, and my mother was pleased to see me. Until now - until this new struggle with Set began, and I was exiled once more. I think she wishes she had more manageable sons."