The Eye of Odin Read online

  ~*~

  From a wind-torn tree the Wanderer hung, pierced by his spear, staring down into the darkness, hollow, helpless.

  Violet opened her eyes to darkness, blind. She sat in a chair, in a wide space. The air smelled sterile. Her laserfly suit had been removed and cold metal bands held her around her waist, chest, and thighs.

  “Warden Scott,” a male voice said from across the hall. In the cavern of her gut she sensed a group of people in front of her, silent, stirring only slightly in the current of a deep, twisted conviction. The Ministry.

  “What did you do to me?” The last thing she remembered was an empty voice in her skull, initiating a command.

  “The Eye of Odin is not without shortcomings,” said a woman, farther to the right. “But even this is useful under the right circumstances. We have a proposition for you.”

  Violet withheld what she thought of that, which was extremely nasty and not likely to elicit a favorable response. “What did you do to me?” she repeated.

  Valknut. She remembered that, suddenly.

  “We disabled your access to the Eye. A necessary fail-safe for events such as this. You have proven to be unreliable.”

  Interesting choice of words. “Do you think I wanted to blow up the Icarus?” she said. “I didn’t mean to.”

  “Impossible. The Eye of Odin does not function without intention.”

  The response startled her, brought her mind to a still point that drew her deeper into the night. Intention was not a thing of the Light, not structural. Intention gave rise to events. Light came from the Void. And for the Ministry to say this…

  He keeps to his own, the Magician; he cannot be trusted.

  Her realization synthesized into a new pattern of illumination. The raven shadow she had seen on the Icarus had shadowed her since, taunting her to release the darkness again. She saw the same shadow on entering orbit—the one she had brushed off for the sake of honoring orders and not getting into more trouble—and again, just before the bat ships came. The Ministry had come to her in person on Balor to prevent her from using the Eye before they had a chance to get to her. And they had let her keep the ship in order to discover her capabilities.

  Deep down she wondered, with a tiny thorn in her womb, if they knew about Mael.

  She sat there like a chained animal, her heart thumping and a nauseous feeling growing in her solar plexus. “It was you. The raven shadow on the Icarus. You did that so I would see it. To see what I would do.”

  “And you did,” the first Minister said. His audible smile felt like a thumbnail moon. “You have exceeded our expectations, evading each obstacle we put before you. Now we are offering you a choice. Under the careful,” he said the word almost delicately, “supervision of the Ministry, you shall use your abilities for special operations.”

  In the pause that followed, during which they undoubtedly assumed she was considering their request, Violet searched for a way through the shadow-maze in the center of her skull. When she did not respond, one of them said, in a thin, watery voice:

  “Your first assignment will be to destroy Earth.”

  Violet stared at their dark faces and snorted a laugh. They were serious. They said nothing; they did not have to. With the flip of a switch, they would kill her unless she signed up to be their cosmic assassin.

  Earth did not offer much, and she had not planned to return one day, but it was still her ancestral homeworld, albeit half-covered in ice. Her thorny prickle returned. Perhaps they knew Mael lived there, and were probing her to see if she cared. It was possible. They could have found out about him before she learned to hide her thoughts from them.

  She resumed her work of finding a way around the ugly concrete barricades they had raised in her mind. For this, she had to take a chance. They could interfere with the structures of her outward perception, but she did not believe they could see her in Void—unless they were setting a trap. That would be worth knowing.

  “Warden Scott,” said the man with the snide-moon voice. “What is your answer?”

  Time to stall. “Why Earth?”

  Ice-blue fire rushed across her forehead. “That is not for you to question.”

  The heat did touch the undersides. Violet lowered herself into a frog pond, deep, dark green and warm. Naked and soft, the flesh of her mind came alive as the water caressed it.

  “Your answer?” the Minister repeated.

  “Will you restore my sight?” she asked with girlish hope.

  “As you were,” came the dispassionate reply. “But at any time, should you stray from your duty, we will end your assignment.”

  Violet only half heard this as she dove down, an otter into a cave, reveling in freedom. As she reached the darkest depth, the point of mystery, she slowly turned, surrendered, and opened her eyes.

  Nine days and nights Odin suffered, knowing that he knew nothing, until he reached deeply into the hollow and took up the runes with a triumphant cry.

  The room came into focus as if a light had turned on. At once, she held her eyes and head still so that the Ministry would not realize she could see. There were six of them, dressed in raven-wing black. Violet half expected to see twelve. Close enough: multiply by two to get the quintessential manifestation of humanity gone mad with a god complex.

  She remembered her grandfather as he lay dying. Don’t you fret over that chip! he had told her. One day humans will evolve beyond it.

  Same day humans stop killing wolves, she thought sourly. It had not happened yet.

  Her grandfather smiled, his blue eyes glassing over, seeing far away. To honor the wolf, you must become a dragonfly.

  It was the last thing he ever said.

  Violet perceived the complex of Gladsheim around her, and the land outside: rain, dust swirling on the surface of pools, steam rising from the rocks. She merged with the universe, pulsing with consciousness as a mother holding creation in her arms. She felt the etheric body of Asgard, conscious of its denizens but knowing eons without them. The metal bands holding her body vanished. The people sitting before her, talking, they were nothing. Then she remembered why she was here.

  The Ministry gazed down at her. One of them said, “Warden Scott?”

  Violet stood up. As she walked across the floor, she looked over her shoulder at the rooks, rising to their feet in astonishment.

  Odin rides on high with thunder and woe, a great Hunter chasing the kill.

  “I refuse your offer,” she said.

  “You might want to reconsider,” spoke a different voice. “If you love him.”

  Violet stopped in her tracks and turned. The one who spoke stood in the center of the assembly like some strange, punishing god. As she thought of Mael, the warm pond spiraled down into the hollow of her womb, sentient and pulsing.

  Love.

  “We are holding him,” the Minister continued. “If you continue on your present course, he will be terminated. We cannot have it known how you acquired your abilities. If you accept our proposal, he will live, though you will not see him again.”

  Love? Violet stood there, her mind clicking around the word like a broken clock.

  The Ministry had laid her a crooked path. They could not kill her, perhaps, but they could kill her lover. Had she agreed to their request initially, he would have died anyway, of that she was sure. So either the Earth assignment was a bluff to reveal her feelings—or the threat to Mael was. The common denominator? Her heart. This was not about Earth, or a man. It was about love. Somehow, the Ministry had discovered the source of her power.

  Maybe her heart was not so foolish, after all.

  She burst into laughter. These imbeciles had just given her the answer: the Void was not the opposite of Light, a source without purpose or cause. It was love. It lived in her womb with primal longing. She stepped back and turned her vision inward, knowing the wisdom of creation. Mael lived within her, now. Somehow.

  And with that, Violet knew something else. She opened her eyes to
blackbirds rustling on a cold wind. “You already killed him, didn’t you.” Their expressions were hard as stones. A tear spilled from her eye. “You’ll see Hel for that.”

  Grieving, Odin’s son descended into the depths, past hound and gate to plead before the pale mistress of death, dark-eyed Hel.

  An alarm sounded. Doors boomed shut; lights flashed and armed soldiers poured into the corridor. From a distance, Violet heard commands, shouts and weapons fire.

  She moved in Void, flowing sinuously as a fish between the latent projections of other selves. Dragonfly. Grown beneath the water, reborn to the air. A creature of light, the iridescence of the soul, the imagination, seeing with thousands of eyes. Balanced between the Light and the Void, Violet walked through the soldiers like a shade, a different shape for every change. The Ministry attempted to free her soul to the next world from their control station in Valaskjalf, but the Void was stronger, being the source of all paths, all beams and lines, signals, energy, electricity. From the waters grew new lines, new paths darting in every direction, freed to the sun.

  She reached the small hangar complex where the Ministry kept their ships, crafts shaped as creatures Earth once knew when life had flourished there: an eagle, a swallow, a salmon, and other creatures Violet did not know. But then she saw one that lifted her heart with a joy she had not felt since knowing the love of a man.

  A dragonfly.