Page 31 of Odin

"I have heard her voice in my dreams. She calls us, tries to awaken us. Does she not know we are already awake and bound to protect already?"

"She seeks us still, so perhaps she does not. That is why we are here. Together, we may defeat her and the abomination, and remove this curse upon us."

"I cannot help you. I am bound to protect her, and in order to do so, I must return to my slumber. If she does not have a body of a man from our time, she will face a trial for theft."

"That won't work, you know. Awake or asleep, you're not human any more, and we have technology now that will show that. But no one believes in curses or magic or any of this stuff any more, so no one will believe the findings. She'll look like a fool. All of us will."

"So...we need another body. One that isn't mine or yours or Thor's. Do you know where the rest of our men were buried?"

"No. The witch took them away. She said I would see them again when it was time to lead them to victory in Erik's name, and not before then."

Someone exploded into laughter. "As though you would ever serve Erik!"

"There are many things I would do to preserve the lives of my men, though I feared he would not honour the bargain. To see you here, to hear your voices again, brings joy to my heart I never thought to feel again."

"Look, the blossoming bromance here is really lovely, and I think we should absolutely come back to it later, probably with popcorn and drinks, but didn't you just say that you're all going to stay cursed unless you can defeat this witch, and to do that requires all three of you, and you boys need the three of us, because you'll never survive in this time on your own."

"Ye-es..."

"But in order to make sure you have three of us, and poor Freyja doesn't get arrested, we need to find a body in the ice. The sort of body Karl has only found once in a decade of searching, and then, it was just you."

"I will find one."

"We don't have a decade. We only have two days, and with the sunlight thing, it's only really two nights."

"One day and a night is all I need. A day of searching the ice, and a night to fly the body back here."

"You have to make sure the body is old enough. At least a thousand years, maybe more. Perfectly preserved, so it looks like it's just sleeping. And no nazis."

"What in the gods' name is a nazi?"

"Well, he likely would have been wearing a symbol like this on his clothing somewhere."

Several of them burst out laughing. "That is Odin's family crest. If he'd been wearing clothes, you would have seen that symbol on him."

"So what are the chances of finding the dead body of one of Odin's relatives in the ice?"

"Very low. We burned the bodies of our dead in my family, and I was the last one left when we fought against Erik."

"So, leave anyone wearing this symbol, or in modern clothes you don't recognise. And steer clear of the witch. If you fly back tonight, you'll have all of tomorrow to search, and return the following night, before the police arrive. Do you think you can do it?"

"For Odin and his beloved, I will. But first, I must return your wife's brooch. Thor, do you have it?"

"Sibyl said she had to put it somewhere safe. Can you get it, Sibyl?"

"Hush. She stirs."

Freyja wanted to believe she was dreaming, but she knew those voices too well. Most of them, anyway. Even if nothing they said made any sense.

Maybe she had suffered a bad head injury when she'd lost control of the scooter, and none of this was real. The whole week with Olaf and the ice mummy going missing. She'd open her eyes and...

Olaf beamed at her. "How are you feeling?"

She squinted at him. "How are you not dead? You were cold, just like a cadaver, and naked..." Now he was wearing his overalls again, with his name on the breast pocket and everything. Like she'd imagined everything. "Can you look in the fridge and tell me if the ice mummy is where it's supposed to be?" Because that would solve all her problems. Well, most of them. She'd still have a head injury, but the healthcare system here in Norway was every bit as good as the one at home. She wouldn't have to go to prison, and she'd never eat another pineapple pizza again. But maybe that stuff with the jam...

He frowned. "Loki will see to it that you have your body before the police arrive."

Loki? The man who was going body hunting was called Loki? No. This was a bad idea. Freyja heaved herself up, off the table and onto shaky legs. She had to get to the fridge, to see for herself.

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