Page 19 of Odin

"So she came into the patient's room with me, reminded me what time the party started, and to make sure I picked a few last minute items up on my way home. I said I would, and then I picked up the patient's chart to record my last set of observations. I had to lift up the death certificate to do it – the doctor had already put it in there, signed it with the day's date and everything, which just made me want to cry for this guy I didn't know. But when I put the chart down, I found him staring at me. This bloke who couldn't have been any older than I was.

"And he said, 'I wouldn't mind being your date for the party. I've never been to a Halloween party before.'

"I looked at him and he looked at me, and something unspoken passed between us, that all the things he hadn't done, he never would now. So I blathered something about hospital procedures and how he was in safe hands here in hospital and how parties weren't all they were cracked up to be, because I'd be mopping up vomit by morning, for sure. He just nodded like he understood, and I left. I just left."

She stared hard at the beer can. She couldn't meet Olaf's gaze now, or she'd cry. She was probably going to cry anyway by the time this story was over, but now she'd started, she had to finish it.

"So I finished handover, stopped at the shops, and went home. The house was full of people, inside and in the backyard, and maybe I had a few more drinks than I should have. Someone had invited some firestick twirlers, and everyone went outside to watch them, so I curled up on the couch, just for a minute. It'd been a long day and a long week, and I'd had a bit to drink, so I fell asleep.

"The party ended. My roommate got called in to work because babies like being born at stupid o'clock in the morning, and she just sort of tiptoed out without waking anyone or checking on anyone because we were all supposed to be responsible adults, or adults, anyway, and everyone else was still asleep.

"So I woke up, on the couch, mid morning, with a slight hangover, but nothing too bad. There was a guy there, too, using my legs as a pillow, who'd fallen asleep on the other end of the couch. We're all fully clothed, nothing dodgy, so I just sort of slid my legs out from under him, letting him flop onto the couch as I got up.

"I don't know what it was. Whether he just didn't fall right or maybe I saw his face first or...I don't know. So I reached out, to feel for a pulse. And it wasn't there. The guy was dead.

"I screamed for someone to call an ambulance, and I laid him down on the floor, so I could start doing compressions. But even as I did, I knew it was no use. He was cold, and his skin was kind of grey, and even my alcohol fogged brain was telling me he was a corpse, but I kept up those compressions until the ambulance arrived to take him away.

"It wasn't until about an hour later that I realised I knew him. He was the guy from the hospital. The patient I had definitely left behind in his room, who should not have been in my house, let alone on my couch. That's also about the time his parents turned up at the hospital, having rushed home from some remote hiking trip, absolutely hysterical that they weren't in time to say one last goodbye to their darling son. But when the hospital went looking for his body...well, it wasn't in the morgue, now, was it? So his parents raised absolute fucking hell, calling everyone from the cleaners to the consultants incompetent, until they got a call that he'd been taken to the state mortuary for an autopsy, and they needed to come and identify him.

"The police got involved, hospital administration got involved. Every newspaper and reporter in the city turned into terriers, trying to bite my heels in search of the story. Never mind that it was my roommate who'd given him our address, not me, or that he'd discharged himself from hospital, gotten into a taxi and invited himself into my house to crash my Halloween party, before collapsing on my couch to breathe his last. No, he was my patient, and people had taken pictures of us on the couch together, and the news got hold of all of it...

"They called me the fucking Body Thief, because he'd entered a time on his own death certificate when he left the hospital, that said he was already dead by the time he got into that cab, so the newspapers said I'd stolen his corpse. Someone said it was for necrophilia, while others said he was a macabre Halloween decoration, and I don't remember the rest. The police even came and arrested me as a fucking murder suspect. The hospital fired me. All because some selfish wanker called Amal wanted to spend the last hours of his life at my party."

Freyja wiped away her tears with her hands. Even now, it was still so fucking frustrating. All so unfair. She hadn't done anything wrong, except have a few adult beverages at her own house and fall asleep on her own couch. While Amal had just quietly died, and left her in the middle of a fucking shitstorm.

"The police dropped the charges, eventually, after they found the cab driver who'd driven Amal to my house, because his story backed mine up, and so did the autopsy. But it was already too late for me – between the media storm and the hospital's very public condemnation of my actions, stirred up by Amal's angry parents...I had no job, and no one was willing to hire the Body Thief.

"For a week, I hid at home, scouring the job boards for something I could do, somewhere I could go where no one had heard about it. Finally, I saw this job advertised – Karl was leading an expedition to the Jotunheimen Mountains, and he needed someone with experience in dissections to manage the lab here. I was the only one who applied with a medical degree, so he hired me on the spot. I scraped together some money for a plane ticket, and caught the next flight out."

Freyja blew out a breath. She picked up her beer to take another swig, only to discover it was empty. "So now I'm going to get drunk for the first time since that night, because as soon as the snow clears, the police are going to come here, and probably arrest me again, because the body of a thousand year old Viking that Karl entrusted to me is missing, and I have no fucking idea where it is. But because everyone knows I'm the Body Thief, everyone's going to blame me for it going missing. Just like last time. And when I lose my job this time...I don't know what I'll do."

She glanced up, to find she'd been talking to herself. Olaf was gone.

TWENTY-TWO

Odin could not help but be mesmerised by Freyja. As her words flowed, she occasionally paused to take a swig from her ale, before she pursed her lips as though she did not like the taste. Every time she did this, Odin wanted to lean forward and kiss her, but he dared not interrupt. This telling was too important to her. She had given him a hug when he'd needed it most; he would do her the same courtesy, and give her his full attention for as long as she needed it.

There was much in Freyja's tale that Odin did not understand, but he could certainly sympathise with her trying to heal a man, only to lose him to illness, and then be accused of his murder. Never mind that she'd been found innocent...he could not have lived among people who would believe such a thing of him, either.

He'd been on the brink of saying so, when she'd mentioned the missing body of the thousand year old Viking.

A thousand years...

His mind had gone blank.

Was that why he understood so little of the world around him? The witch had made him sleep for a thousand years.

Only to wake, frozen, on Freyja's metal table, to both save her and turn her life upside down.

His feet carried him swiftly out of the feasting hall and down to the lab, as she called it, where he'd first awoken. He could not pass through the walls to enter the cold storage chamber, but the stone floors yielded to him.

He lay down on the table again, in the tub of icy water, and remembered. The chill in his bones from being frozen for a thousand years. His spear, all that was left of his things, after all this time, for no tunic or cloak or boots survived that long.

He almost wished he could return to that unknowing slumber, no longer beset by his crushing grief for Vali and Vidarr, or the guilt at not having loved Frigg better. Or the loss of his men, leading them against Erik when he knew how vast the man's armies were, yet also knowing his men would choose to die in battle, avenging their families, so that they might see them in Valhalla, rather than live under Erik's rule.

All but Thor and Loki. If he'd known he was bargaining not just his own life in service to the man who'd killed his family, but a thousand years of sleep for the lives of his two remaining brothers in arms...he would do it again.

And Freyja? Where did she fit in all of this?

---