Valhalla

[WP] Warriors who die honourably are taken to Valhalla and reincarnated with special powers. You're not a warrior. You're a caretaker of an orphanage and an animal shelter. You were killed when some people raided your home. You wake up again, but this time you feel great power within you.

*****

I’d been walking for as long as I could remember. Hill after hill of shrivelled, drought-scorched grass — like the heads of old men with their last wiry wisps of hair. I cooked and ate weeds and spent the nights shivering in hillside clefts.

On the third day I saw smoke, still a day’s walk away. Fingers of thick grey smoke twisted into the air and hung dark in the sky like a demon watching over the world. What was burning, I had no idea.

As I walked, a sense of my life returned. Feelings, rather than specific memories. Shame and guilt came first, turning and spinning in my stomach like the gears of some great mechanism — like a lowering of a bridge. I sensed I’d commited a great sin and had later attempted to atone. But atonement is like the devil wearing the mask of a lamb. A surface-deep healing, nothing more.

On the fourth day, from a hill’s apex, I saw the burning kingdom.

I could almost imagine it at full glory: a dozen white towers shooting like javelins into the sky. A moat frothing from a mountain-stream to the east. A marble wall protecting the homes and palaces inside.

Now only two towers stood to their full height, like two teeth left in a gum, and even they showed signs of rot. The water in the moat ran red. The great wall lay scattered like pebbles.

I had arrived at the end of an empire.

On the fifth day, as I neared the ruins, I found the man’s body.

I stood beneath the crucifix and stared up at his remains. Crows pecked at patches of skin — skin charred and blackened, as if the man had been cooked first. Tufts of cloak glued themselves to white bone. Other crows sat perched on the arms of the crucifix.

“What happened?” I said.

”That was Odin,” came a voice.

I turned to find a girl sitting in the grass, watching me. She must have been eleven or twelve.

“Odin?”

“That’s right,” she said. ”Odin. You must have known Odin, else how did you get here?”

”Odin? The Norse God Odin?”

She looked at me like I was slow. “That’s right. God of poetry, of death, of wisdom.“

I took a deep breath — then regretted it as the sulphurous tang of burnt hair pushed itself down my lungs. I began to cough.

The girl walked up to me and handed me a leather flask.

“Drink.”

I did. I hadn’t eaten since arriving, and the only water I’d had was from licking the morning dew off the dying grass.

”What happened to this place?” I asked, returning the flask.

”A battle. Demons came, I think.”

I looked around. ”Guess the demons won.”

She nodded. “You could say so. I heard plenty of screams — we all did. But I didn’t see much.”

”You were hiding?”

”That’s right. The children, most of us anyway, were in the caves beneath the kingdom. Most of them are still down there. They don’t want to find the bodies. Especially of their parents.”

I couldn’t blame them. “But you didn’t have that worry?”

She shook her head, staring up at Odin’s remains. “My parents died before I remember. I didn’t have much scary left to find. So up I came. But when I found Odin… I don’t know. It made me very sad, you know? I’ve been mostly sitting here staring at him, hoping he’ll come back to life. But he won’t. He’s like my parents.”

Great. I’d ended up in some kind of afterlife just destroyed by demons. Some luck.

A flash of my old life came back. Of betting, gambling, losing. Was that where the guilt originated? In my gut, the gears were still spinning, the bridge still lowering. Once it was fully down, what was going to come across?

”Can you take me to the adults?” I asked.

She gave me that strange look again. She sure knew how to make a man feel stupid.

“I told you, they’re dead.”

“All of them?”

She shrugged.

”It’s just kids left?”

”For now. Until the demons come back. ”

They were coming back? That opened up a bag of questions. But I tightened the strings and kept the bag shut for now. I wouldn’t be much good if I let myself be crippled by fear.

”You must have been the last person Odin summoned,” said the girl.

”The last person?”

”I guess so. I don’t think there’s anyone else coming.”

”Why would he summon me?”

The crows cawed above the skeleton. Had Odin’s last breath been to summon me? Had his finaly words been a total waste?

”Guess he didn’t mean to,” I said. “A wrong number.”

”A wrong number?”

”Never mind.” I looked at the girl. The bones of her face pushed against her skin. When had she last eaten?

”What are the caves like where the other kids are? Is there food?”

“We didn’t take food with us. There wasn’t time. Then the silos up here were set alight so there’s really not any food left. There’s water down there though.”

Great — we could all have a long slow death drinking an infinite buffet of crisp, delicious water while slowly starving.

”By water, you mean there are underground pools?”

”And streams. Sure. It’s a really big network of caves.”

“Are there fish?”

She nodded. “Some. But they’re hard to catch. They slip out of your hands.“

“Ah ha,” I said. “You’re trying to snatch them. You might as well be trying to wrestle water.”

”You know how to fish?”

I thought for a moment. I did know how to fish — I was certain. In fact, I could remember details of old rods and bait. But I couldn’t recall anything around them, like where I‘d fished.

”I can fish,” I said. “How many of you are there?”

”Fourteen.”

Fourteen. That was a lot of mouths but at least they were small mouths. Nets would be better than rods, at least in the long run. “Will you take me to them?”

”You’ll help us?”

I stared up at Odin a last time. “I think it was why I‘m here. I’ve got a feeling that I was brought here to make amends.”

”Amends? Did you do something wrong?”

”Yes.”

“Do you forgive yourself? It’s okay to forgive yourself.”

“I can’t remember what I did, exactly.”

”Oh. Memories can be like that, sometimes. They can snag on rocks in your head, like how clothes can on twigs or bushes. But sooner or later, a breeze will come along and free them.”

”Maybe you’re right,” I said. But part of me hoped she wasn’t. Enough had already returned to unsettle me. I’d been a gambler, yes. A drinker too. And something I’d done had torn my family — my wife and children — away from me.

If I couldn’t look after my own family, how could I look after anyone else?

I hadn’t been able to look after myself, even.

The bridge in my gut lowered fully and a cold darkness swept across it, infecting every organ and muscle. If I could have swapped places with Odin, I would have.

”Ready to go?” she asked.

I wasn’t.

But how much longer could she go without food? I was the only adult here — maybe the only adult left in this world. I had a duty to help them. And what I wanted to do was sit here and feel sorry for myself. Pathetic.

Whatever my failures had been in my past life, it was true that I couldn’t change them. Life didn’t work that way, nor did death. Mistakes stain you, but they don’t necessarily dictate what comes after.

I took a deep breath. “Ready.”

She glanced up a Odin, then hopped off the grass and took my hand. Squeezed it.

It’s going to be okay,“ I said. To her or to me, I wasn’t certain.

She looked at me, and for the first time, she smiled