He yanks the rune away and some additional strips of skin come away with it. He releases my arm and calls to a pair of Valkyries. “Bring the water.”
I miss where they come from or how long it takes for them to get there—an eternity of pain—but two Valkyries arrive with a large vase sloshing with cold water. I thrust my arm into it, and the lancing fire abates somewhat. Then I’m able to shut off the nerves, pull it out in relief, and examine the hole in my biceps. There’s not a trace of Loki’s mark left—just crispy Granuaile. I can’t flex my arm, but I laugh in delirium anyway. The god of lies used some dark unholy thing to break most of my bones and then branded me, thinking it would break my mind too, turn me into his meek servant. Well, it hadn’t quite worked.
“Haha. Hahahahaha. Fuck Loki.” I turn to Odin and grin broadly, not caring if it looks as unhinged as it feels to my own muscles. “Am I right?”
CHAPTER 3
While the bathwater ran, I unwrapped one of those laughably small hotel soaps and then looked at the mud caked on Oberon’s fur, especially his belly. It was a David and Goliath situation, but I had little choice except to proceed and hope the wee bar of soap would win.
“All right, buddy, here we go,” I said, starting out by splashing him underneath and then pouring cups of water on his back. “No shaking yourself until we’re through.”
<Hee hee! It tickles, Atticus! Hurry up and distract me.>
“Okay, let’s begin,” I said.
To understand what happened to me, you have to know a little bit of Toronto history first.
I had come to Toronto in the fall of 1953 as a pre-med student. The world had learned a lot about surgery and patching up bodies after shooting the hell out of everything in two world wars and another war in Korea, and I thought I might be able to pick up something useful, so I enrolled in the University of Toronto under the name of Nigel Hargrave, with every intention of staying a few years as an earnest wanna-be doctor. I wound up staying only a few months, and the reason for that is a spooky old building and a tragedy in the nineteenth century.
The University of Toronto was actually a collection of old colleges, many of which were religiously affiliated, and one such college—now the Royal Conservatory of Music on Bloor Street—used to be a Baptist seminary long ago. It’s a red stone Gothic marvel built in 1881, the kind of building where you’re sure the architect was laughing maniacally to himself as he huffed a lungful of lead-based paint fumes. Pointy spires and sharply sloped roofs and large windows. Wood floors that echo and creak when you step on them. And attending the seminary in the late nineteenth century was a young man named Nigel, betrothed to Gwendolyn from Winnipeg, dark of hair and possessed of a jealous eye.
Oberon interrupted my narrative with a question. <Hey, isn’t there a monster named Jealousy, Atticus? You told me about it once, and I remember because it didn’t treat meat well.>
“Oh, yes, that was a Shakespeare thing, from Othello. Jealousy is the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on.”
<Not a sensible monster then.>
“No.”
One summer day way back when—these were the days before automobiles, when people rode around in horse-drawn carriages or else they walked—Gwendolyn was crossing the hard-packed dirt of Bloor Street to pay a visit to her Nigel. She had baked a cake specially, and she had a red dress on with a thin matching shawl about her shoulders. Nigel had bought the dress for her, and she knew he was wearing a gray pinstriped suit she had bought him, and she probably thought privately that the two of them made a very smart couple with excellent taste. But because she was worried about dropping her cake, she didn’t cross the street to the seminary college as quickly as perhaps she should have. And she wasn’t paying attention to her surroundings. That’s why she didn’t even try to get out of the way of the horse and carriage that ran her down—she didn’t see it.