Deorum (Of Gods)
All right, this is the last (and longest) part of Deorum! The rest of the story is in this tag (Parts I, II, III, IV, and V). This takes place a about a week and a half after Part V, and includes the grand reveal about Jack’s…situation. I hope you guys like it, and thanks so much for sticking with me through this mess of a story! If you have any questions, I have a bunch more stuff worked out for the universe, so feel free to ask away.
The newly arrived family across the hall from Jack hadn’t tried to invite him over again, but Marcus and his wife—Dorothea-call-me-Dot, as Jack learned upon meeting her—still greeted him when they passed. He knew that the son, Jesse, was quiet and smiled shyly at him, and Apollo had been elated with the boy’s interest in art, and that Mac, the daughter, was buoyantly energetic at all times and drove her parents to distraction. Dot was handling the adjustment better than her husband, which he knew for a fact because he had seen her talking to Sekhmet about getting blood out of clothes after Mac’s latest mishap.
Marcus, on the other hand, had almost swooned when he saw Hapi and Bragi together in front of Starbucks. Jack had been more than a little judgmental when he saw Marcus waver and grip the edge of the table outside.
So it was a shock when there was a sharp hammering on his door on Wednesday afternoon, and Jack opened it to reveal Marcus standing there and looking disheveled.
“What’s wrong?” Jack asked, sweeping a glance over the man. His usual tidy suit was missing its jacket and his hair stuck up in clumps as if he’d been dragging his hands through it.
“Have you seen my kids?” Marcus asked, skipping any semblance of polite greeting.
Jack paused. “…no? Are they not where they’re supposed to be?”
“They were supposed to walk back after school.”
“And that was?”
Marcus raked both hands back through his hair, setting up a new collection of spiky clumps. “An hour ago. You’re sure you haven’t seen them?”
“No,” he said. “Have you asked around?”
“Called the school,” Marcus said. “I got the principal—Sara something?”
Jack barely restrained a roll of his eyes. “Saraswati, yeah.” He might pay good money to see Marcus call her ‘Sara’ to her face, but he suspected that the man had never met the goddess in person. “Did she know where they were?”
“She said they’d started walking home,” Marcus reported. “I was hoping you could help me look for them.” He fidgeted for a moment, rocking from one foot to the other, and said, “I don’t…really know anyone who would help, and you know everyone.”
Jack sighed, leaning one shoulder against the doorjamb. “Do you know where they might have gotten off to? Somewhere to start? I know a couple people who are attuned to children, but I can’t promise they’re trustworthy.”
“I’ll take anything.”
Briefly torn between the knowledge of a time limit and the overwhelming desire to make a cutting remark about sheer idiocy, Jack raised his eyebrows at the man. “Remember what I said about making deals you don’t know the consequences of? Some of those ‘untrustworthy’ people might keep your kids if they help find them, so how about you give me somewhere to start.”
Marcus paled as dramatically as if he had been stabbed. “Um. Right. I don’t know…before we moved here we lived in a really safe neighborhood, Mac was always dragging Jesse around. They haven’t liked being cooped up in the apartment. They might have gone into the city.”
“It’s still a pretty safe neighborhood,” Jack said. The first time he could remember getting into serious trouble, he had almost died falling off a roof when he was six—he didn’t recall how he’d gotten up there—and Anansi, passing by, had plucked him out of the air mid-fall as if he was merely a feather. Then again, he had almost been caught throwing pebbles absently at a house not long afterward and Set had made a viable threat to skin him alive. “As long as you pay attention to who you’re hanging around,” he revised.
“This neighborhood is either possessed or full of lunatics,” Marcus grated out, and Jack made a hissing noise through his teeth.
“You’re in denial, that doesn’t mean we’re crazy,” Jack said sharply, feeling his hands make an aborted movement that wasn’t quite aggressive, more like the premonition of giving this foolish ex-suburbanite a good hard shake. But the kids, he reminded himself—even he was motivated enough to want to help them. So he took a deep breath and said, “You said they might have gone into town? Come with me, I know where we’re going to start. And we’re going to cure that skepticism.”
Jack ducked back through his door to snatch up his jacket and his cell phone, then swept out into the hall and past Marcus, inexorable and commanding as an avalanche. Marcus hurried after him as Jack hit the second speed dial on his phone and listened to it ring out.
“This is Kwaku Anansi,” said the voicemail said. “I’m busy or avoiding you. I assume you know the drill.” It beeped shrilly as Jack swung outside into the fading sunlight, Marcus still on his heels.
“Anansi, it’s me,” Jack said, ignoring the look he got from Marcus at the name. “I need you to call me back. My idiot neighbor lost track of his kids and we’re searching. They’re young, ‘Nans. Too young to know to stay out of trouble, especially with their dad telling them we’re just crazy. I’m starting at Ninkasi’s and I’m going to ask Odin to have the ravens look for them. Me daa si,” he added with a grin, and hung up.
“What was that language?” Marcus asked, voice stiff and shaky as he followed Jack down the street.
“Akan,” Jack said, distracted. “Twi, these days. From Ghana. Not sure where I learned it.” He scrolled through his contacts until he found the number he wanted and tapped it.
This time, the phone was picked up, and a soft accented voice spoke on the other end. “Hello?”
“Hapi,” Jack said. “It’s Jack.”
“Jack,” they said with an audible smile. “What can I do for you? Stolen any bronze rings lately?”
“Someday you’re going to explain that to me,” Jack muttered. “Listen, I need a favor. It’s…kind of serious.”
“Of course,” Hapi said, their voice going solemn. Hapi did solemnity well, with the quiet calm of their deep voice.
“My idiot neighbor—no, you know what, you earn a name when I’m done being annoyed with you,” Jack said when Marcus made an irritated noise.
Marcus glared at him. “Hey, listen, kid–”
Jack made a rude noise. “Oh yes, great sage, impart your wisdom to me, such a lowly and foolish youth,” he said, and he heard Hapi muffle a laugh on the other end of the line. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, my lord and master?” He raised his eyebrows at Marcus, silently daring him to continue, and when he didn’t, Jack went back to the phone. “My idiot neighbor seems to have misplaced his two kids. Mac and Jesse, dark hair, the boy’s quiet and the girl’s usually bloody, do you know them?”
Hapi made a tuh sound, tongue on teeth in amusement and irritation. “What’s the saying? To misplace one child is misfortune, to misplace two is carelessness? Where have they run off to?”
“He’s not sure. They were supposed to walk home after school and they got sick of their dad keeping them inside the apartment away from the lunatics.”
“Ah,” Hapi said in revelation. “He’s the one who almost fainted the other day. You should tell him that Bragi thinks he was very rude.”
“Yep, that’s the one,” Jack sighed. “But the kids might be in trouble, so could you make some calls?”
“I’m offended, Jack,” Hapi said, a light laugh touching their words. “I love children, of course I’ll help. It’s not their fault that their father lacks an open mind.”
“I’m taking him to Ninkasi’s to check with that group,” Jack said, and Hapi laughed harder, a burbling chuckle like water over stone. “I think it’ll be good for him.”
“You enjoy that,” Hapi said. “I’ll tell you if anyone sees them.”
“Thanks,” Jack said, and hung up.
“Who’s Hapi?” Marcus asked, and Jack let out a slow breath through his nose. “Have I met him?”
“They’re the god of the Nile,” Jack said bluntly. “And no, not really. You saw Hapi and their partner the other day, though.” He sketched a line about five and a half feet off the ground. “Yea high, black goatee, busty, blue skin. Bragi’s taller, built like a linebacker, lots of blond hair. Free advice, by the way,” Jack added as he steered the pair of them onto the helpfully labeled Sumer Street that served as the main drag of shops. “You should play nice with the pair of them. They’re in good with their respective pantheons, and their respective pantheons are huge.”
Marcus laughed half-mockingly. “Egyptian and…what, Russian?”
“Norse,” Jack said as he slowed to a halt in front of a building with a neon sign in an alphabet that he couldn’t even identify, let alone read. A lot of deities had their particular eccentricities—Ninkasi was such a fixture that no one begrudged her determination to have her sign in cuneiform. “Still think we’re all crazy?”
“Ye-eah,” Marcus said, drawing the word out into two syllables with a hitch in the middle.
“That’s cute,” Jack drawled, and pushed open the door to the bar. “Go,” he ordered, and Marcus went.
“Jack,” Ninkasi called with a grin. Her skin was smooth and middling-dark, with laughter lines around her eyes and easy smile, her hands deft as they lined up shot glasses on a shelf. She was tall, even more so on the raised floor behind the bar, and moved with the utter confidence of a sun, certain that everything in her sight would orbit around her. “Here to join the party?”
“Sorry,” Jack said with a genuinely apologetic twist of his lips as he reached the counter and she bent over the bar to peck him on the cheek in greeting. Turning down Ninkasi’s alcohol was almost physically painful. The drinks she touched were smoother and richer than they should have been, the Platonic ideal of themselves without the hazards of Thor’s mead or Dionysis’ wine. Her bar had stood since the city was built and she kept the alcohol flowing freely. “He misplaced his kids, I was going to ask if any of them saw anything on their way here.”
Ninkasi turned her gaze on Marcus, smile going cool and edged. “I don’t believe we’ve met. My name is Ninkasi, Sumerian goddess of alcohol. How did you manage such carelessness?”
Jack snickered as Marcus went blotchy red across his cheeks and throat. “It wasn’t—I’m not—they’re–”
“He’s going to try to earn a name,” Jack told Ninkasi, ignoring the older man’s splutters. “Mind if I accost your patrons?”
“Accost away,” she said with a fond nod toward the largest group.
“Thanks,” Jack said with a grin, and bounced toward the closest person, a woman with her back to him so that all that could be made out was a fall of rich blonde hair. “Hel,” he cried brightly, slinging an arm around her shoulders. She turned to shoot Jack a look, a smile curving her mouth, and Marcus scuttled back until he bumped into a tall man who caught him by the arm and held him fast. One side of Hel’s face was flawlessly beautiful, with icy blue eyes and sharp features softened by her heavy golden hair. The other side was withered to the bone, grey-blue and terrible, lips curled into a perpetual sneer. Jack didn’t flinch, still beaming around the table.
The group, as ever, was massive, members coming and going moment by moment. There were fixtures, though, points of steady calm among the ebb and flow. Hel sat on the far side from her grandfather, whose ravens had taken the evening off from their usual stalking of Jack, and the two scrupulously ignored each other. Anubis, his jackal head missing in exchange for a human one, gave Jack a polite nod and a faint flash of teeth, and Donn raised a beer to him in a wry toast. Izanami, hovering near the edges of the group, glanced at him only briefly, sipping at a small cup of sake. A skeletal figure clad in a heavy black robe gave Jack a wary glance, and Jack barely restrained the temptation to test Kutkh’s remark about the Reaper. The dark-haired man who had caught Marcus by the arm released him and went to claim a seat of his own, clapping Jack on the shoulder as he passed.
“Hi, Hades.” The Greek raised an eyebrow, but otherwise said nothing as Anubis passed him a drink. “Right,” Jack announced, clapping his hands. “Everyone, this is my idiot neighbor. This is the weekly coalition of death gods. How’s that skepticism coming?” Marcus made a faint noise and Jack barreled onwards. “His kids have wandered off and they’re trouble-prone, so I was wondering if any of you had seen them on your way here. Dark hair, a boy and a girl.”
There was a moment of murmured conversation, then the Reaper cleared his throat and said, “I did. But I don’t know where they were going.” Jack waited and the Reaper sketched something in the air with a long, bony hand. “I saw them at the intersection of Lourdes Street and Green where it turns into Kinder, but I don’t know which way they went.” His hands flicked through the air, a quick half-turn of helplessness. “Even odds on the hospital or the woods.”
“Hospital?” Marcus asked, and Jack reached back blindly to pat him on the shoulder.
“Oshun is working today,” the Reaper added, and Jack nodded.
“Okay,” Jack said, chipper. “Thanks, folks. That’s real helpful. You,” he said, turning to Marcus, “you’re going to the hospital by way of Kinder Ave. Once you get there, ask for Oshun, sometimes kids are drawn to her. She’ll be working in the neonatal ward.”
Marcus nodded slowly and Hel looked at Jack, concern creasing the living side of her face. “Are you planning to go wandering in the woods alone, Askeladden?” she asked, and he gave one of her curls a friendly tug. The name was…familiar, he decided, in the same way that the languages were coming back to him.
“I’ll be fine,” he said with a wave of his hand. “Come on,” he told Marcus, grabbing him by the elbow and steering him toward the door by main force. The man was still staring at Hel in shock, and she bared her teeth at him, half a death’s-head grin on her withered side. “The hospital. I’ll check the woods.” He pushed Marcus out the door. Jack hesitated, then shook his head and succumbed to the impulse to lean back inside and ask, “Hey, Reaper…popast’v meshok moi?”
Jack had the novel pleasure of watching the Grim Reaper snap upright in alarm, eyes going wide as he swept the room with a sharp look.
"You are not funny,” the Reaper snapped, stabbing a finger at him, and laughter spilled from Jack’s lips as he ducked out of the bar, like water from an overfull glass.
“I assume you can find the intersection on your own,” Jack told Marcus, and the man nodded. “Great. I’ll meet you there in about an hour. I’m going to check the forest.”
Marcus said something behind him, and Jack ignored him, darting out to the curb and flagging down a cab. For once, one stopped almost immediately.
“Hey, I need out to the edge of the forest,” Jack said, flashing the driver his brightest smile as he slid inside. The man immediately looked wary. “You don’t have to stay and I’ll pay you extra to get me there fast.”
“Whatever you want, hermano,” the man said, voice touched with the curl of a Hispanic accent, and hit the gas before the back door had clicked closed. “Your funeral.”
“Hablas español?” Jack asked, the words as easy and familiar on his tongue as English.
“Si,” the man said, flashing him a grin in the mirror. “Me llamo Rafael, y tu?”
“Jack, muy bueno conocerte.” Rafael took an extremely sharp corner, apparently taking Jack’s offer of extra pay to heart, and Jack hung on to the door handle to stay upright.
“Tus acento español es muy bien. Where did you learn?” he asked over his shoulder.
“Working on figuring that out,” Jack said, and speech became impractical as Rafael slid through an intersection during the last heartbeat of a green light, the cab growling as it jumped forward again.
It usually took ten minutes to make it to the edge of the forest from Ninkasi’s by car. Rafael pulled up to a halt in four, according to the clock on the dashboard, and Jack was breathless with adrenaline, grinning fit to crack his cheeks in half.
“Your stop, señor,” Rafael said dryly, and Jack reached over the divider to pat the man on the shoulder.
“Next time I need to get somewhere fast, you’re definitely my guy,” Jack said. He reached into his wallet and pulled out a handful of bills without checking them—he didn’t recall having quite that many twenties in there, though. The money he pressed into Rafael’s palm made the cab driver’s eyes widen.
“Next time you want to tip me that much, I’ll take you wherever you want,” Rafael said. “Vaya con los dioses,” he added with a nod toward the tree line, and Jack twisted his lips, rueful, as he stepped out of the cab.
“Nah,” Jack said through the still-open door. “That’s what luck’s for.”
“All right, hermano,” Rafael said, and he looked skeptical as Jack shut the door and chose a direction at random to start into the trees.
Maybe his luck was sticking—it felt like his luck was sticking, that starlight brightness still bubbling in his blood—because he walked for five minutes, far enough for the city to be muffled and ghostly, invisible behind him, and heard the tell-tale shriek of a tree being snapped. He veered toward it and the ground shivered under his feet.
Only one thing that he could think of off the top of his head made the earth shake like a Tyrannosaurus was about to turn the corner, so he didn’t bother with surprise when he broke through the trees into a small clearing and almost tripped over Jesse. The boy looked dazed, like he’d hit the ground hard and hadn’t quite gotten his breath back, and Mac was standing over him, lips pulled back into a feral snarl. She had placed herself between her brother and a dilapidated old cottage that advanced on two massive chicken legs. It would be absurd if it didn’t exude such hungry malice, trailing splintered trees in its wake.
“I swear, someday she’s going to get bored,” Jack mumbled under his breath, and dragged Jesse onto his feet. “You hurt?” he asked, and the boy shook his head slowly, blinking at him in surprise. “Good. The city’s that way. Run.” Jack gave the boy a push and he reeled into motion. “Mac,” Jack said sharply and she looked up in surprise. “Get out of here.”
“What is that?” she asked, standing straight and stubborn. She barely reached his hip.
“Baba Yaga’s cottage,” he said, and to his surprise the girl nodded once, not a flicker of confusion on her face.
“Okay,” she said. “Will it hurt you?”
“No,” Jack assured her, as confidently as he could manage, and she nodded again before she took off after her brother. She caught Jesse by the hand and dragged him along with her at a sprint, leaving Jack facing the cottage.
The door flew open with a bang and the building screeched like a banshee.
“You are in my way, boy,” a voice from inside said.
“What did those two kids do to you, babushka?” Jack asked, planting his feet and doing his best impression of fearlessness.
Baba Yaga hissed and stepped out onto the shallow porch of her cottage, peering down at him from her lofty position. “Those two miscreants tried to break in through my windows.”
“They’re lost, frightened kids,” Jack said. “Your cottage looks normal when it’s not…going walkabout? They wanted help finding their way home. You know the kind of thing that lives in these woods, babushka.”
“They should have asked,” she snapped. “I’ll teach them some manners—I’m sure their parents will thank me when I send one of them back.”
“They don’t deserve to be punished,” Jack said, and she stared back at him, uncaring. He scrambled for a solution, and paused for a moment. “Could I make you a trade?” he offered, feeling a smile play at the corners of his lips. “A bargain.”
“I’m listening,” Baba Yaga said. “What do you have to offer me as a bargain, boy?”
Jack tapped a finger against his lips for a moment as if thinking, chewing the situation over. “What would you want?”
“The usual,” Baba Yaga said with a slow, toothy smile. “Gold. Fabulous riches. Service. What are you willing to offer for two children you barely know?”
Jack frowned, and slipped the Greek drachma into his hand from where it was tucked inside his sleeve. He rolled the coin over his knuckles in a tumble of gold, fidgeting it between his fingers, and called, “I don’t have much—I’m a barista, you know? Not even a very good one. But maybe we could work something out.” He palmed the coin and saw her gaze rivet itself to his hand.
Her tongue flicked out to wet her bottom lip. “What have you got in your fist, Ash Lad?” she asked, and he glanced down at the coin in his palm as if surprised to see it.
“This? Oh, it’s nothing. Just a trinket.”
“I know precious metals when I see them,” she said. “Where did you get that ‘trinket,’ Ash Lad? Did you steal it?”
“No!” he said, voice full of offense. “It’s, um.” He paused and tugged at the cuff of his jacket, pulling out every anxious tic he could think of. “It’s the coat,” he blurted.
Baba Yaga’s focus shifted up to his face, lingering greedily over his arms and shoulders. “What about the coat?”
“It was a gift,” Jack said, letting his words drag and swallowing back the warm rush trying to flood through him. “From Hephestaus and Wayland. It—look,” he said, holding up his empty hands to her. He turned them back and forth demonstratively before fiddling with the coat to make it hang straight and closing his eyes. He made a show of waiting for a moment, hands curled around the lapels of the coat, then opened his palm to show her the coin again, this time from the other face.
“Marvelous,” she breathed, and Jack masked his relief as thoroughly as he could manage. Her eyes narrowed shrewdly and she pointed a crooked, commanding finger at his chest. “I’ll have that.”
“I couldn’t,” Jack protested immediately, a desperate note in his voice. “It was a gift–”
“The coat or nothing,” the witch said, and the legs of the cottage creaked menacingly, shutters and loose shingles clattering against the walls. “You give me the coat—just a trinket, as you said—and I forget that those children ever tried to break into my home.”
Jack wavered, then let his shoulders slump. “I give you my coat and you leave those kids alone, indefinitely. That’s the deal, right?”
“Of course.”
“I’ll have a promise, if you don’t mind,” he said, looking up at her.
“You have my word that, if you give me the coat, those two children will never come to harm from me.”
“Done,” Jack said, shrugging out of the coat and setting it on the ground. “I wish you joy of it, babushka.” He spun and darted into the trees as the spindle-legged cottage started forward.
Jack was only about halfway back to the place where he had entered the woods when he found himself on his back rather abruptly, breathless and dizzy as the world reordered itself in his mind.
Memories were appearing in places they had never been, memories of golden eggs and cloud-dwelling giants, of bronze rings and enchanted sacks and seventh sons. He knew that he had lived lifetimes with no gods to be seen and lifetimes as divinely infested as this one, that they were all full of easy lies and tricks. Names tumbled through his mind—Ash Lad, Askeladden, Hans, Claus, Jack, Jack, Jack. Luck, that was the word for the champagne-lightness in his veins, for the way dice and coins fell where he wanted them now. He was lucky, Idunn had said as he flipped the coin, because she knew he always remembered who he was sooner or later.
“Jack?” called a familiar voice, and a lanky figure knelt beside him as Jack blinked up at the dusk-stained sky. “Do you want to explain what’s going on?”
“I just swapped Baba Yaga a crappy second-hand military surplus jacket for two kids,” Jack said, staring up at the man. “She thinks it makes gold.”
Anansi laughed. “There’s my favorite silver-tongued liar. Let’s go, on your feet.”
“Sure thing,” Jack said, letting Anansi pull him up. “We should probably run before she realizes I tricked her,” he said. Then he grinned, wide and wicked, remembering. “Just like old times, right?”
That brought Anansi to a halt. “Unless we’ve done a lot more trouble-making in this lifetime than I thought, you…remember.” Jack nodded and linked Anansi’s spidery fingers between his own, still grinning, and a broad smile flared white against the trickster’s face. “Jack, humanity’s own luck,” Anansi said, eyes dancing as he tugged Jack closer. “It’s good to see you again.”
“Yeah,” Jack said, and pushed up on his toes to kiss Anansi, hard. The kiss was fast and hard and as glittering as the luck in Jack’s blood, familiar after their centuries together, and when they parted Anansi was smiling, wide and delighted. Jack wondered, absent-minded, how many times Anansi had waited for him to remember himself, but before he could open his mouth to ask, there was a shout of rage in the near distance. “Oops,” he said, glancing back, and Anansi laughed, pulling him into a run.
“It’s good to see you again, Jack,” Anansi said, calling it over the sound of Baba Yaga’s fury behind them.
Jack flashed him a wide grin, laughing with the sparking rush of remembrance. “It’s good to be back.”
