Page 6 of Bottoms Up
Turns out, Freyr’s sister, Freya, had a magical boar namedHildesvinithat she used in combat. Considering Freya had owned the original necklace, that was probably important.
The dwarves who made Freyr’s pig — Brokkr and Sindri — were famous for making magical objects. What were the odds they’d made the necklace, too? I looked them up in the book, and they’d made the golden ringDraupnir, the golden-bristled boarGullinbursti, and the hammerMjölnir.
Draupnirdidn’t seem to have anything in common with Freya’s ring — unless we were counting shiny gold jewelry with a mind all its own — butMjölniris none other than Thor’s hammer, andthatwas legit cool.
I looked up Freya’s ring next, which was calledBrísingamen, which I already knew since I’d looked it up before, but apparently needed to reexamine now that my life had turned into a crash course in Norse drama.
According to the book, the dwarves who made it were named Alfrik, Berling, Dvalinn and Grerr. They wouldn’t take money for the necklace, so she paid the way most mythological goddesses pay when they really, really want something sparkly. She slept with all four of them, though the story might be more fun if she’d taken them on all at once, rather than one per night.
Loki found out how she’d paid for it and tattled to Odin, who I guess was in a relationship with her at the time, so he blew his temper and decided a fitting punishment was to force her to kick off an unending war between two kings.
And then, because what else would Loki do, the trickster god stole the necklace from her, someone else fought him for it and returned it to Freya. No idea if she fuckedthatguy or not, but I figure there’s a decent chance she did.
Next, I tried searching for a naked Roman guy on a chariot, but nothing looked like what I’d seen. I addedswordandhelmetto the search, and boom, there it was. Not similar to it, butexactly like it, though the one pictured was bigger. It was Ares, sometimes known as Mars. Both were gods of war. The statue guy didn’t look a whole lot like Mordecai, but I looked up Ares, and…Fuck me. It was Mordecai.
When I compared the two statues, the younger version had the same nose, mostly the same mouth.
My heart beat faster, because if that statue was really him, if he’d once been worshipped, what the hell was he now? Was I standing in a room with anactualgod?
“I’m not him anymore,” Mordecai said from across the room.
His voice was so calm, so ordinary, it grounded me. I’d already known he picks up on way more than Marco. Rather than launch back into fluster edging toward the road to hysterics, I considered how long it’d been since people believed in the old gods. Since the beginning of Christianity? Longer? I was pretty sure the pantheons were mostly history by then, but I wasn’t sure.
I had other questions, though, so I told Mordecai, “Will is different when he’s Lord Byron. I mean, on stage, and for a couple of hours after we perform. Suli and Hailey aren’t two different personalities, and yet, they kind of are. Not as much as Will and LB, though.” I shrugged. “I’m always Silver.”
“But there are still two versions of you.”
It took me a minute to realize he was right, and also wrong. “Right now, I’m not especially male or female, and I guess that’s the base version of me, who I was before I formed the boy-me and girl-me versions, in an effort to fit into society — so I think there are actually three versions of me. We’re all the same person. I know we can look different, and I am, because I naturally walk like a girl sometimes, or a boy. There are times, like now, when I’m either both or neither. I think it’s the latter, but the former can also be argued.”
“And Animal versus Mikey?” he asked.
“Other than the hat, they’re the same guy. He’s real no matter what.”
“As are all of you. As am I, no matter what name I go by.”
“Where are the rest of the old gods?”
“Most live on Olympus. Humans started fighting over us, so we all agreed to stay out of the affairs of men. A couple of us stayed here, but they’ve insinuated themselves into supernatural society, a way to live in the human realm and still stay out of the legal definition of theaffairs of men.” He lifted a shoulder. “Mostly.”
“So, there’s a golden pig without an ear? Is he pissed?”
“He is, but he’ll grow it back. I had to decide between part of the head or part of the tail. Heads and tails are another layer of symbolism. Yin and yang. Good and evil.”
“Two sides of the same coin?” I asked.
He didn’t grin, but looked amused. “You are an impressive human. You’re good for Julian, and if you one day move into Homewood, you’ll be a worthy resident. Kirsten and Cora have accumulated an interesting household, and it keeps growing.”
Chapter 3
Silver
The chair was comfortable enough, I fell asleep and didn’t awaken for hours and hours, because the three metals had been fashioned into strands of twisted metal, and the old man was braiding them together when I woke and looked around.
Once he had them braided, he put them through a roller that smashed them together a couple of times, then he hammered at them and stuck the ends into two little balls of what I thought were copper, sitting off to the side.
“We had the most copper,” Mordecai told me, as if that explained why the balls were copper, and I supposed it did.
The jeweler pounded the balls into flat squares, rounded the corners a little, held the whole thing in fire, running it back and forth to get it hot again before he molded it around a pipe-shaped piece of metal, hammering it into submission. Once it was bracelet-shaped, he grabbed it with tongs again, held it over the fire again, dunked it into ice water, and finally offered it to me while still holding it with tongs.
