The Wildcard Page 7

Chapter 14

  They left for Reykjavik three days later.

  Peter drove them to the airport and fussed as they got ready to go through the departure gates.

  "Have you got your tickets?"

  "Dad, they’re e-tickets these days. Even if I didn’t have them they could look me up online."

  Peter harrumphed.

  "Well, suppose they can’t find you online!"

  "It’ll be fine," said Baldur in his deep, sure voice. Peter visibly relaxed, his shoulders drooping within his loose brown jacket. He liked Baldur - and the man seemed steady enough. But he wasn’t sure about him as a potential son in law - before Claudia passed away, he’d just been a boyfriend, if a charming one.

  So when, exactly, did he turn from a passing flame to Green’s fiance - and weren’t young men supposed to ask the father’s permission first? Or at least the daughter's - by the startled look on Green's face, he'd guessed it was the first she'd heard of it too.

  He was very good looking, of course - but he seemed to have a very odd background, whatever Green said. Claudia had had her doubts about it. And really, you don’t want your daughter’s husband to be too goodlooking - you want a nice, average guy who’s a good provider - like Peter himself. What was it the man did for a living, again?

  Baldur picked up Green’s tiny carry-on case and his own duffel bag.

  "Have you got everything you need in there?" Peter said doubtfully, looking at the size of the cases. "You know it’s going to be freezing in Iceland. That’s why they call it Iceland."

  "Yes, Dad."

  Green had dressed for both hemispheres. Jeans and a tee-shirt for Sydney, where it was a sweltering 35 degrees. A polo fleece jumper for the first stopover, and a big black puffer jacket for when they stepped off the plane. If she needed anything else, she could always buy it.

  "What about you, Baldur?" He wasn’t carrying a coat - and his carry-on sure as hell wouldn’t fit one.

  "It is my native country, so I do not feel the cold." Baldur turned to Green. "We’d better go, my little beast. The plane is boarding."

  "What did he just call you?" hissed Peter in Green’s ear, as she gave him a goodbye hug.

  "Nothing. Just a pet name, you know." Green made a mental note to have a word with Baldur about using pet names in public. Sweetheart, darling, maybe cupcake or even ‘my little cabbage’. But ‘little beast’ should be right off the menu.

  After an interminable flight, the plane touched down in Reykjavik. As they stepped into the airport, Green shivered.

  "Mum was right. I should have brought fur boots."

  Baldur put his arm about her, comforting as a hot water bottle on a cold night. "We will buy some."

  "I wish you could just flick your fingers and..."

  "I wish I could too. The first time I rode in an aeroplane was a novelty but the second time...how humans bear this is beyond my understanding." So he had suffered, packed into economy. Perversely, she was pleased.

  On the other side of the barrier, as they exited passport control, an enormous Icelander stood waiting, flanked by an equally huge white dog. Baldur’s face lit up and he hurried forward, throwing his arms around the giant.

  "Brother! It’s been too long!"

  Hodr was even taller than Baldur - and thickset as a bear. His face was covered with white-blonde beard, and white shaggy hair curled wildly over his shoulders. On his substantial nose, he wore a pair of dark glasses.

  "It is very good to see you, brother, in a manner of speaking." Hodr engulfed Baldur in a hug that looked more like a World Wrestling Federation hold than a brotherly embrace, then turned his head from side to side. "And where is this beautiful girl you told me about? Have you left her behind in the land of the wide brown plains?"

  Baldur drew Green forward and she reached forward, putting her hand in his. She smiled shyly, not sure how to greet a giant who couldn’t see her. But Hodr pulled her in as easily as a bear pulls a salmon, and overwhelmed her in a massive embrace, slightly redolent of dried fish. She was nearly smothered by his bulging pectorals.

  "Beautiful!" shouted Hodr, with complete unconcern for his surroundings. "It is wonderful to meet you, Green. I have heard much of you."

  She disengaged herself and stood back, regaining her breath. "It’s wonderful to meet you too." She looked down at the dog, panting quietly beside him. "Can I pat him? I know you’re not supposed to pat a guide dog but..."

  "Pat him as much as you like," boomed Hodr, ruffling the dog’s ears. "Fafnir loves attention."

  Baldur took his brothers’ arm in one hand, and Green’s bag in the other, and they set off for the Flybus to the city. Of course, Hodr didn’t drive. Fafnir kept pace on his harness, his shoulder at the level of Hodr’s waist. He really was the biggest dog Green had ever seen. She followed along, feeling like she was walking in the wake of a moving mountain.

  Hodr’s home turned out to be a small house in suburban Reykjavik, overlooking the ice-floed bay. It was almost a granny flat. It was like sharing a mouse cage with a woolly mammoth - a not very tidy one. But Green was just glad to get in from the cold - and Hodr kept the place as warm as an incubator. In the living room, an enormous fire blazed. She stood as close to it as she could reasonably get, warming her frozen back and hands. Hodr shrugged off his coat. In his shirtsleeves, Green copped an eyeful of the furred chest, broad as a shield.

  "Have this," Hodr said, handing her a beer keg the size of a saucepan. "It will warm you up. It’s been on the stove."

  She drank the warm ale and felt instantly better. She drank more of it, and started to feel drowsy. Leaning back next to Baldur, she gradually fell out of the conversation, opting instead to just listen as the brothers caught up. They spoke in English at first - to be polite - but as she sat quietly, just sipping at her drink, they lapsed into Icelandic and then into their own language - something she’d never heard before. It was a liquid, melodic language, like a harp played in a forest.

  She let herself fall into oblivion on Baldur’s shoulder, and woke up much, much later, snug in bed beside him. It was morning - not that you would have known. Outside, it was dark as night. But Hodr’s electric clock showed nine am. She turned over and snuggled into Baldur, but he was already awake, gazing up into nothing.

  "Thinking?"

  He turned to kiss her hair.

  "A penny for them."

  "I have been thinking," Baldur said slowly, turning his beautiful face towards her, "that whatever - whoever - is speaking through you is issuing a warning."

  "So?" His eyes were so strange to look at now - the colour of clouded glass, but opaque.

  "So when someone warns you, they are usually trying to help you. If they warn you, it means that there is still time to turn aside, still time to act."

  Green sat up, enveloped in Hodr's massive spare pyjamas. "You mean, there’s something we can do. There’s hope."

  "Yes."

  Chapter 15

  Not unexpectedly, Reykjavic was cold as a freezer truck.

  On their first morning in the northern city, Green went shopping and bought a pair of fleecy lined boots, thermal underwear, a hat with a sheepswool lining and ear flaps, and an Ice Age-level coat. She felt like the Abominable Snowman. Even Baldur wore a hooded jacket - the better to fit in, he said. At least it stopped some of the looks. Not all of them. She felt like the mousy secretary.

  The city had a completely different feel to the monument-studded, stone-built capitals of the rest of Europe. Instead, it was a colourful dolls' house of a city, with its red roofs, white steepled churches and the spectacular backdrop of the ice-covered Esja range soaring into a pale sky.

  "I want to see a volcano on the ice!" she told Hodr later over hot vegetable and oat soup (the best Hodr could come up with for a vegetarian). "I’ve never even seen lava - and I’m dying to see the northern lights."

  Hodr smiled his slow smile - unlike Baldur’s dazzling grin, but still strangely sweet.

  "I’ve never seen th
em either. But I can tell you how to get there. Now is a great time to catch them - right in the heart of winter - but the roads will be dangerous, I can tell you that. Snowstorms, ice, blizzards..."

  Baldur grimaced.

  "It was not long ago when we did not have to bother with roads and driving. How do you put up with it?"

  Hodr laughed. "I put up with it because I must. When everything is difficult, you appreciate life more. I think you will find this a valuable lesson, brother, if you remain mortal. "

  "It might be a bit late for that lesson," said Green with a twisted smile.

  Hodr shifted uncomfortably. "As for me, I will walk with Fafnir here. He does not like being cooped up in the house all day."

  Day, thought Green, looking out the window while she ruffled the eager Fafnir's coat. The sky was now a dark steel grey, sliding into night almost as soon as the weak sun had reached its zenith. No wonder people here drank a lot. She pulled on her cold weather gear and took Baldur’s hand.

  "Let’s go then."

  They hired a car to take them up to the mountains where the northern lights were most visible. Baldur drove the icy roads as if born to the wheel (naturally, thought Green, with a tinge of resentment) and they wound their way out of the city and into the bleak plains. At first the highway carved a straight line between dull green, stone-littered fields of ice and mush, but within an hour they began climbing towards the mountains, shelves of freshly fallen snow piled up like crash barriers on either side. Green was thankful they had a vehicle designed for the conditions.

  As night drew in, a bloated moon rose in the clear black sky. The snow-covered ranges glowed silver in its light, stark and magnificent. At an unmarked intersection, Baldur veered off the highway and the car headlights illuminated a long, empty rural road. An occasional low farmhouse crouched among the hills, a lighted window here and there in the vast cold.

  In an hour they had left even the farmhouses behind, and there was nothing but an eerie lunar emptiness of bare stone and snow. An icy wind buffeted the car as they climbed.

  "Where are we going? I don’t want to get lost!" Green peered out the misted window, anxiously scanning the white desert surrounding them.

  Baldur glanced across, his eyes a pale glow in the moonlight.

  "This is my homeland. I was born here, in the mountains."

  "Still...that was a long time ago. And now..."

  The comment hung in the air, unspoken.

  "Now I’m mortal, as you are. But I still know this country like the back of my hand." He stopped the car on a low ridge above a frozen river, and opened the passenger door. "Look."

  She stared and gasped. The sky was a kaleidoscope of light - greens and purples, shifting and changing like a magical world beyond their reach. She had never seen anything so wondrous, so humbling. The lights formed an arc across the sky, pulsating above the peaks, their colours reflected on the snow. She gazed, and shivered.

  Baldur pulled her close and wrapped a car blanket around the two of them. His warmth spread, comforting and arousing at the same time.

  "I’ve never seen anything like it! Is it like that, where the gods live?" she asked after a while. Baldur looked down, his skin reflecting the light.

  "No, but it reminds me of Asgard," he said at last. "Always shifting, always restless." His face was serene, as always, but she caught a breath of sadness. She put both arms around his waist and laid her head against his heart.

  "You want to be there, I guess."

  "I want to be here, with you. But some day, I’d like to show it to you, if..."

  If, somehow, they avoided the coming apocalypse. The silence fell on them again like a thick white blanket.

  "Come. We can walk from here."

  "Are you sure? We shouldn’t leave the car," she objected, used to the mantra of the Australian bush. Always stay with the car.

  He turned, ghostly pale in the snow light.

  "I promise we will not get lost. I want to show you something. It’s not far."

  She looked doubtfully at the wilderness around them, but took his hand. They walked down towards the frozen river, their boots sinking into the fresh snow. When she stepped in a hole and sank knee deep, Baldur lifted her out easily and carried her on his back. Mortal though he was, he seemed not to sink into the snow but to glide over it, graceful as a leopard.

  "It’s not far."

  As they reached the narrow river, he stopped and set her down.

  "That is where Hodr and I lived, when we first were banished to earth."

  She looked across the ribbon of ice, and saw a dark building set into the hill on the other side, its roof thatched in brilliant white. The windows were shuttered, and the door barricaded with snow.

  "It is the house of Hodr’s father, Harald. My mother used to come here, even after his death, to remember him. He was the only man she ever loved, I think."

  "So she wasn’t in love with your father?" Green said carefully.

  "My father was an immortal, one of the last to die in the wars. It was a political alliance."

  Stepping out confidently over the frozen river, they crossed in a matter of minutes. The shuttered windows stared blankly at them, the bulk of the house dark and uninviting. Baldur set her down and they squelched together across the frozen yard. He kicked the snow aside, piled up high against the steps leading up to the thick wooden door, and pulled it open.

  The house was as cold and deserted as it looked. In three strides, Baldur was at the fireplace and arranging a pile of kindling and logs with casual expertise. He struck a flame to it, and the bare room leaped into life. Green saw a rough wooden table, with two benches on either side, a rocking chair, and a thick white rug.

  "Is that what I think it is?"

  Baldur looked rueful. "Hodr’s father hunted bear, but only for meat and furs. It’s a polar bear, if that’s what you’re thinking. It was kill or be killed, I’m sure."

  She touched the huge pelt. It was surprisingly soft to the touch.’ "I hope so." She hugged herself. "It's still c-c-cold in here."

  "It will take some time to warm the room. Meanwhile, there is something that I want you to see. But you must take your clothes off first."

  "Take my clothes off! You've got to be kidding!"

  He shook his head. "It is necessary." A smile played on his lips.

  "Ok." She stripped hurriedly. If this was some kind of mad Scandinavian roll in the snow naked experience, she could do without it. But Baldur was already naked, the firelight flickering over his smooth muscles. "This had better be good."

  Baldur took her hand, and led her through another door. Suddenly they were out in the snow again - but the air was somehow warmer, steamier. Smellier.

  A rock-fringed pool gleamed darkly at their feet, the snow melting as it trickled towards the edges. Baldur stepped in, the black water up to his waist, and held out his arms. She put her foot in: it was as warm as a bath.

  "It is a hot spring," said Baldur, enclosing her in his arms as she lay back in the unbelievably hot, sulphurous water. "I think my step father built this house here because of it. We will lie here a while - and then it is time for a roll in the snow."

  His hand cupped her breast, and she looked back at him incredulously. "No fucking way."

  "I beg your pardon?" He raised both eyebrows, shocked, and then laughed out loud. "No, I was only teasing you. But it was worth it to see your face, little beast."

  "Don't call me that!" She turned to meet his lips, damp with steam. His hands enclosed her face.

  "Try to stop me."

  His tongue flickered inside her mouth, a delicate journey of exploration while his fingers teased her nipples, standing up above the water in the freezing air. Green let her body float outwards, her head tipped back towards him. It was a strange conflicting ecstasy of sensations - Baldur's warm mouth, the freezing caress of fallling snowflakes on their skin, the heat of the water, the bite of the freezing air on exposed arms and shoulders. Above it all, t
he glow of the aurora in the night sky - not seen directly, but casting its spell of brilliant colour even to this hidden lee.

  After a while, they climbed out of the spring, naked again to the weather. For the moment, Green still felt warm, her body immunised to the cold. They went inside and closed the heavy door behind them: the room was cosy now and there was no immediate need to get dressed.

  His nakedness backlit by the red light of the fire, Baldur opened the wooden shutters, so that they could see the sky through the thick glass of the windows. The aurora in its full glory danced across the dark, dappling the white washed walls with luminous greens, purple and deep pink. Green sat on the bearskin rug and watched, enthralled. Baldur lay down beside her, his hand lightly stroking her bare thigh.

  "You are so frail and soft," he said with a deep tenderness. He kissed the indentation of her waist, and her wrist where it sank into the fur.

  "I’m not frail, I’m strong."

  "Strong and frail at the same time, like a thread of silk." His lips felt like gossamer. She let herself melt back into the softness of the rug, while Baldur leaned above her, tracing her inner elbow, the slender bones of her chest and shoulder, her small earlobe. She arched into him, wanting more.

  He dragged his long fingers around the curve of her breast, first one, then the other, then slowly, slowly down the centre of her body towards her navel. She closed her eyes, letting herself float on the tide of pleasure. On the inside of her eyelids she pictured him, silver-haired, bronzed, with the face of an ancient angel. A rush of love and lust, all twisted together like a plaited rope, swept through her body.

  She felt his fingers reach her pubic mound, slide into the valley below, light as a warm breeze. His body pressed against hers, side by side and skin to skin, cool skin to hot. She felt his penis rise smooth and hard against her hip. She wanted him inside her right now - but he held her still with one hand, while he used the other to stroke within her, whispering words she couldn’t understand.

  "What did you say?"

  He laughed low.

  "I’m speaking to you in my language, the language of my birth. Ur harath, my love, ur sigath, my beautiful. Em hadroth, I want to devour you.