Hammered [3] (24 page)

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 fuck 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.”

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.

But I am not gone from all brains yet. There are some who remember me. There are some who still worship. I will not die until they forget.

Yet I am weak like kitten. Not strong like days before Christ came to my lands. And reason is Odin and Thor.

At first I think only Thor did this. Later I think Odin ask him to do it. Thor comes to me and say, “My people build me finer statues than yours. They love me more than your people love you. Nothing is finer than statues and stone tributes.”

He shows me his statues in Sweden. He shows me his tributes in Norway and Denmark, and they are fine indeed. I become envious. I become jealous. I ask my people to build me stone tributes. Wooden ones too. Not only for me but for my pantheon. This is how you show love for me, I say. And so my good people do this, and soon I have monuments and statues better than Norse ones.

But later I see truth. Is hard to write on stone. So hard that it is better to write nothing at all. And any writing that goes on statues gets worn away by time. So then Christ comes with his reading monks and their printed word, and idea of Christ remains and grows while idea of Perun washes away in rain and wind.

This is how gods are strong today. Christ, Allah, Yahweh, Buddha, Krishna: They have pages and pages of words about them. These words travel everywhere to bring idea of them to new generations. I have stone statues that travel nowhere. If lucky, I get half hour of man on History Channel asking who I was in deep voice.

Odin saw this coming. He sent Thor to me to trick me into slow death. Then he sent Thor to Iceland to have their skaldic poets write
Eddas
. Centuries later, when it is too late, I see what happen. Norse remembered because
of
Eddas
. They still weaker than before Christ, but much stronger than me. Because of words. Because now children in many parts of the world hear about them. And so they are bigger ideas.

What can I do now? If I appear to men and say, I am Perun, I am a god, they will say, No, you are just very scary hairy man. This has happened. A man in Minsk said to me, Put down that axe and I will give you brush for hair.

If I say to men, Look, I control thunder, they say, No, that is natural force. Is science. Or coincidence. Magic does not exist. Gods do not exist. No belief, you see, is as strong as their disbelief.

And besides, they say to me, even if gods are real, you cannot be god of thunder. That is Thor.

You see what Thor has done? Among all thunder gods in world, he is now supreme in minds of men. He has done this with words and by tricking me. He has stolen my thunder, as saying goes.

And not only mine. I pay visit to other thunder gods. Shango in Africa, Susanoo in Japan, Ukko in Finland. All of them get visit from Thor, and Thor say to them, Oral tradition is best, or carve this in wood, or scratch this on rock, and you will be remembered. But none of them remembered now like Thor, except Olympians.

Zeus and Jupiter doing fine. Much written about them by their people. Thor and Odin doing very well. And I think they see this time coming long ago. Old One-Eye throws runes, or he talks to Norns, and he sees what he must do to remain strong in age of science. He sees that he must make idea of Norse become bigger than ideas of Slavs or Celts or other peoples. And he sees he can do this with words instead of spear. He sends Thor out to world, statues and carvings get made, and many gods of world fall prey to bigger ideas.