Good Things

An Act of Love by Kat Jameson

The first thing Jesse was aware of was something in her eyes. She didn’t remember going to sleep, or even going to bed, so she had no idea what was on her face.

Right away, she could feel that it was hot, and wet. She tried to lift her hand to touch it, but found that something was around her hand. In fact, she felt entirely trapped in place. Her brain was moving out of unconsciousness slowly, and couldn’t reconcile the facts. In fact, she was having trouble understanding what the facts were.

“Don’t move,” a man’s voice said from beside her.

She didn’t recognize the voice and that jolted her closer to being awake. Now she tried to open her eyes properly, and found that she couldn’t. There was something on them, almost gluing her eyelashes. Panic began to set in and she started moving.

“Don’t move,” the voice repeated. She felt a squeeze and realized that someone was holding her hand, but she knew that it wasn’t Tom.

“Who are you?” she asked, hearing her own voice and how small it sounded. There was a strange, tinny echo to it. “Why can’t I open my eyes? Where’s Tom?” She started to struggle again, but remained trapped and when she moved too much, it hurt.

“You were in a car accident,” the voice said. Jesse kept trying to open her eyes. It hurt her eyelids but felt like with each attempt, she was able to achieve more. The voice continued, “Tom, I’m assuming he was driving. He’s right beside you, but he’s unconscious. I’ve called the paramedics, sweetheart, you just stay still. I don’t know what injuries you have.” She felt the squeeze on her hand again. “Help is on the way.”

Why couldn’t she remember a car accident? She felt tears well up in her eyes, but it actually helped. It loosened whatever was sticking her eyelashes together so she was able to peel them open, and she instantly found the truth of the stranger’s statement. Before her was the shattered windshield. Turning her head slightly, she was able to see him.

Jesse didn’t know this man kneeling beside her open car door. She was sure that she had never seen him before in her life, but he on the ground with her feeble hand clasped in his. “Help is on the way, I promise,” he reassured her. His voice was kind and he looked at her like he was earnestly concerned, even though they were strangers. She felt tears choking her throat again, but they hurt and she swallowed them back down.

Weakly, she tried to turn her head the other way. She saw Tom. He was slumped back in his seat and she saw blood covering his face. The tears returned and she couldn’t stop them. “Tom?” she asked in that weak little voice again, choking back emotion. “Tom? Wake up, honey, please. Tom? Tom?”

“Wait till the ambulance gets here,” the stranger said again. “They’ll be able to help him.”

Jesse tried to remember what had happened, but everything was so hazy. The effort made her feel like she was going to be sick and she let her head fall back against the headrest as she tried to take a deep breath around the nausea.

She closed her eyes again. “What’s your name?” she whispered.

He once more squeezed her hand gently. “Anthony.”

Jesse forced her breath in and out, slow and steady. “I’m Jesse.” She bit down on her lip, swallowing hard against the pain. She wanted to crawl into the seat beside her and hold her husband until he woke, but she knew she couldn’t. Her seatbelt had her pinned and she didn’t feel like she had the strength to unfasten it. What else might be broken was a deep concern to her mind, and she didn’t want to move too much and make it worse.

Sirens echoed in the distance, but she couldn’t tell from which direction. She listened as they grew closer and louder, overwhelming her aching head. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she heard the sound of rolling tires coming to a stop, doors opening and shutting as she opened her eyes again to try to look out. Everything beyond that broken windshield was a blur, but she saw those dark figures drawing near.

“Tom,” she told them weakly. “Help Tom.”

“Excuse us,” a paramedic said as he came around to the passenger side.

“Help Tom,” she whispered.

“We are, ma’am,” he said. “We are. We’re also going to take care of you.” As he began working on her, she tried to look beyond him to find Anthony, but there was no sign of him.

Sniffing, she felt her throat tighten again. “Thank you,” she whispered to someone who was no longer there as she listened to the sounds of their rescue.

Comparatively, Jesse wasn’t as bad off. She was covered in bruises and lacerations, and had a sprained ankle from where it had been resting when the car hit that tree, but the driver’s side had taken more damage. Tom had taken the hit for her, like he always did—or always tried to. Jesse was up and about in just a few hours, limping around and feeling like she’d been beaten.

Her husband was another matter.

She sat by his bedside. He was still unconscious. No, he wasn’t just unconscious, he was in a coma. The doctors had used words like “intracranial pressure” and “bleeding.” All she knew was that it was bad, and they didn’t know what was going to happen. They were doing things like “monitoring the situation” and “preparing for contingencies.”

As he lay there, she wrapped one hand around his, the other gripping her Tree of Life pendant, and pressed her forehead against the bed beside him. The possibilities rolled out before her in stark terror as her mind tried to suggest she consider a life without him. Those thoughts were shut down as hard as they came, because she couldn’t do it.

Tom and Jesse had met in high school, had become inseparable almost instantly and had stayed that way ever since. Married just after they turned twenty, they were coming up on their tenth anniversary. They had been planning to...

They had been planning.

“Tom,” she whispered at the floor, unable to lift her head. She had known this man for over half of her life, and she couldn’t imagine the rest of it without him. The doctors might be planning for all contingencies, but she couldn’t. He would be okay, because he just had to be. She squeezed his hand, but knew he couldn’t recognize it for what it was.

She was still in that position, half-dazed with the surrealism of it all, when the door to this small Intensive Care Unit room opened. It might have been a visitor for the other patient, so she didn’t bother looking up. Even when the footsteps approached her, she didn’t look up. Jesse felt a heavy hand on her shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” the owner of the hand said. She recognized the voice of Tom’s boss down at the autobody shop where he had worked for the past five years. Marcus was a good man and had even become a friend. She murmured a “thank you” but couldn’t summon the power to do much more. The hand left her shoulder and she heard a chair scrape closer. “What do we know?”

“Not much,” she said. It was an effort to draw in a deep breath, but she managed to do so and relayed what had happened and what little she knew of what the doctors said. Marcus, not being a man of many words, just offered the appropriate grunts of sympathy or frustration.

“If there’s anything I can do,” he said, patting her shoulder with his bear paw of a hand one more time. After she mumbled another word of gratitude, he left.

This was roughly how it went for the next two days.

She moved occasionally, strongly encouraged by the nurses to take care of herself. It never equated to eating much, but they managed to keep her fairly hydrated with cups of ginger ale and ice water. Others visited—Tom’s coworkers and friends with the volunteer fire department, and her sister came by as well, a pair of friends stopping by later. There were choked up phone calls with Tom’s parents.

In Tom himself, there had been no change. He wasn’t any worse, and that was something, but he wasn’t any better either. There was no sign of his waking any time soon.

Squeezing his hand often, she talked to him. It was the most energetic thing she had managed to do since they ended up in this terrible place. She felt like she nearly had roots stretching into the ground, to be uprooted when they came to move him to another room for longer-term care than ICU could provide.

Jesse didn’t like when that happened. “Long term” were words that poked holes in her brain and her heart, letting her hope leak out and run off down the hallway. The fog around her thickened and she followed the wheeled hospital bed with the orderlies through the hospital until they reached the new room.

This one had four people in it, all curtained off. Not all of them were in a coma, but they were all “long term” care.

Long term...

Sitting beside his old bed in its new location, she traced the lines on his hand over and over again. She’d lived with these hands for over ten years now, but had never spent as much time contemplating them as she had these past three days. The door opened, but now there was only a one-quarter chance it was for her. She didn’t bother looking up, but the clicking of a pair of professional pumps on the tile floor drew near her.

“Mrs. Dixon?” the voice belonging to the heels asked. As expected, the voice was female.

Jesse forced herself to look up and received an overly sympathetic smile. She introduced herself as Ella Ari, and she was a social worker at the hospital. She came to talk over...’things’ with the patient’s wife.

It had taken only the length of a breath for Jesse to decide she hated the woman. She stared at her like steel doors were shutting around all the open ports in her mind. She blocked away her hatred, but stared silently and blankly. The social worker just droned on, and everything she said sounded like a grief counselor come to console Jesse.

“He’s not dead yet, you know,” Jesse murmured.

“What was that?” the other woman asked, still with her funereal air.

“I said...” Jesse replied, forcing her voice louder as she lifted her dead gaze to Ms. Ari. “I said, he’s not dead yet. Stop talking to me like you’re here to help me mourn.” She spoke each of these words with enunciation, hints of her emotions slipping into it.

Ari blinked. “I... I didn’t meant to imply otherwise, Mrs. Dixon. But we must face the possibilities—”

Jesse cut her off harshly. “No, I mustn’t!” Pressing her lips together, she forced herself to reel it back in. There was nothing this social worker could do to her or Tom, except bother her deeply. She ground her back teeth together for a moment. “My husband is not dead and until they come in and tell me otherwise, that’s the only possibility I plan to focus on.”

To her credit, Ari recovered quickly and nodded. She put a card down on the small table beside Tom’s bed. “If you need anything,” she said and hastily made her exit.

When the door shut, Jesse shuddered with her entire body. Once again, she gripped Tom’s hand tightly in hers and then pressed her forehead against their fingers. Squeezing her eyes shut, she tried to stem the flow of tears as they welled up in her eyes but there was no stopping them and they spilled over their joined hands.

She cried for what seemed like forever before finally lifting her eyes to look over Tom’s face. It just looked like he was sleeping, nothing like he was hovering on the verge between this world and the next. What would it take to pull him off that point and into this existence again?

Rising, she stroked his cheek and then pressed her lips to his ear. “If I have to crawl into the hall of the gods and strangle the All-Father myself to bring you back, I will.” She pressed her lips to his cheek and then left his room.

Jesse knew she could do nothing for him just sitting and crying at his bedside.

Their studio apartment felt bereft the moment she walked into it. The emptiness and darkness was so total that she almost turned around and left again. She stopped herself from doing so and walked in.

She turned on all the lights, whether she needed them or not, and she turned on the television to a show Tom liked and let it run. It didn’t matter if she liked it, just that its noise filled the space. Jesse even turned the heat up to where Tom liked it, and where she was constantly turning it down from in their Thermostat War.

Some part of her knew that she should eat something, but instead she went right to her laptop. Setting it up on the bed, since she didn’t have a desk for it, she let the background noise start to soothe the gaping pit in her soul—which she could feel like a physical pain just below her breastbone—while she pulled up the internet.

Jesse accessed the saved links she had for her pagan studies. Although not wholly Asatru—those who were devoted to the Norse gods and reforging their ways—her pantheon was full of the deities of the Northmen. She knew others that she could call and ask questions of, but she didn’t want to.

There was an idea blossoming in her mind, but she didn’t want to share it. She knew they would think she was crazy, but she had always believed that the gods were all around them. If you looked hard enough, you could find them. She was more literal than a great many of her fellow pagans, but that was okay in their world.

Just searching the internet for the old tales from the North about how people used to gain the attention of the gods was overwhelming, and she knew there was a task ahead of her to sort through them all and find the ones that might be useful. She knew that simple prayers, even over her altar, would not call them down. If it did, then there would be a lot more chats over beer with Thor and Freyr.

Time ceased to have any meaning. At one point, she forced herself to get a glass of water.

She found a notebook on the dining room table and flipped past pages of shopping lists and things to do until she found blank pages. Setting it on the bed beside the laptop, she began taking notes. Some of them were direct from the pages she saw, and others were about eddas and sagas that she needed to find and research. She knew that she had some in books that she already owned.

Names and years and places began to swim before her vision and started to make less and less sense. When she had to re-read the same word four times and it still didn’t make sense, she began to wonder if maybe the lack of sleep and food was telling on her.

Closing the laptop, she put it on the nightstand and then laid down on the bed just as she was. She had taken off her shoes earlier, but left her clothing on.

She didn’t sleep.

Every time her eyes opened, she saw the empty side of the bed. When she flipped over, her bruised arm hurt and she saw Tom’s winter coat as it hung by the door until the season when it was needed again. She tried lying on her back, but just wasn’t comfortable. It felt unnatural to try to sleep that way.

Getting up, she grabbed her pillow and then Tom’s and carried them to the couch. With her own under her head and his in her arms, she resisted the pain from her bruises to keep that pillow clutched to her chest as she closed her eyes and tried to go to sleep.

Eventually, her exhausted body and mind forced both to shut down into a state of restless, dreamless sleep.

In the morning, she went back to the hospital. There had been no change in Tom’s condition, and she hadn’t really expected there to have been. This time, she laid down on the bed beside him. These beds really weren’t made for two, but for a few moments, she would make it work. Closing her eyes, she laid next to his unmoving form and choked her heart back down from her throat to where it was meant to be.

Her boss called while she was driving home.

“Jesse... How’re you doing?” She could tell that he was trying to sound sympathetic, but it had never been his strong suit.

“I’m holding up,” she replied. It was as honest as she intended to be.

He didn’t reply right away, like he was trying to figure out how to say whatever he wanted to say next. Either it would be some awkward question about Tom’s condition, or...

“Do you know when you’ll be coming back to work?” He took a straightforward approach, which suited him better. He simply was not a man prone to empathy or subtlety, but neither were traits that helped one succeed in the business world.

“I just need a few more days,” she sighed. “Isn’t Nancy managing alright?”

He grunted softly. “She’s fine, but you’re better at the job.”

That was only because she was the only secretary there who knew how to organize things in the way her boss preferred, and he didn’t like having to deal with people who didn’t know all of his systems and idiosyncrasies.

Work just wasn’t a priority for her right then, and she couldn’t force it to be. She had something more important to take care of. “I just need a few more days. I promise, I’ll be back to work soon.”

He grudgingly agreed and hung up without saying much more.

Jesse shook her head as she parked on the street outside the public library. She pulled the folded piece of paper out of her purse and went in, using the computer to pull up where all of the books she needed were. She took them down one at a time, bringing them to one of the long wooden tables in the center.

Open books and more handwritten notes. Once they were all put away, she had her paper scribbled over on both sides with notes being written in every direction. She emerged from the library with a single reoccurring theme, but she couldn’t know if it was the answer.

Could it really be that easy?

On her notebook were the words “blood oath” and they were underlined several times because she had found it come up in several different sources. When mortals wished to gain the attention of their deity, they took an oath marked in blood. The gods of the north took such things very seriously.

She also knew that they would not be kind if they didn’t feel she had summoned with good purpose.

When she got home, she found the apartment hotter than she liked. The heat made her choke up as she crossed the room and returned to her computer. Opening it up, she spent all of her time until dark researching blood oaths. Being that it was the internet, she had to spend a fair amount of that time avoiding websites about “vampires.” Searching for the word “blood” was apparently very risky.

Once it was dark, she closed the computer and moved to the window. She looked out over the cement jungle she lived in, and knew that this wouldn’t do. Seeing the lights across the city, she took a moment to ask herself what she was thinking. Did she really believe that she could summon a god? She believed that the gods existed and that a believer could call upon them, but she had never known anyone to gain a response. At least, not a response in as much as she needed.

However, this was 2016. It was not the days of battle and blood, not like it used to be when the gods walked the Earth at their strongest. Did anyone truly make proper blood oaths when they called upon their gods? Did they understand what it took?

Jesse hoped she did. Her life depended on it, because if she lost Tom, she lost everything.

She had to drive outside of the city just to find a small tract of forest. Her purpose was so intent that the shudder she’d felt when climbing into a car didn’t touch her now as she pulled onto the side of the road along the trees. She was pretty sure that, technically, it was private property, but not anything that anyone would come out to in the middle of the night. Not believing anyone would go in looking for her, she felt the most she risked was having her car towed and she was willing to risk that.

Shutting the doors and locking them, she stuffed her keys in her pocket. Everything else had been left at the apartment, because she wanted to be as little burdened as possible.

Jesse walked resolutely into the midst of the little forest until she was out of sight of both the road and the city’s skyline. It was dark and that amplified the faint chill in the air, making her pull her jacket closer. When she felt she was secluded enough, she pulled out the pocket knife that was the only other thing she carried with her.

She unfolded the blade. This wasn’t exactly something she was good at. In her adolescence, she hadn’t been a cutter. In fact, getting injured was something she generally worked hard to avoid. She knew that this, however, was her first test. It didn’t matter what she wanted or what she was good at, it was what she had to do.

As she pressed the tip of the blade to her palm, she winced. Finally, she just had to shut her eyes and let the blade slide down her skin, hoping she didn’t cut anything important. The blood ran hot and free, sliding down the wrist of her upheld arm. The strange, thin pain made her feel slightly lightheaded but she opened her eyes.

She squeezed her hand into a fist and let her blood drop onto the Earth. “I call upon Odin the All-Father, the god of wisdom and poetry and warriors. I call upon him with my blood to pledge myself to him in exchange for a boon of life and death. Please, hear my call.”

The blood tapered off until it stopped, and nothing happened. Jesse let out a long breath and dropped her hand. What really had she been expecting, she chastised herself. Of course Odin wasn’t going to show up just because she called. He was king of the gods, not a taxi driver.

Turning around, she shrieked and fell back on her ass.

Somehow, she had stopped being alone in the trees and she had never heard a thing. She looked up at the figure of a large man who had been standing a breath away from her, and she’d never heard a thing. Her eyes roamed from his boots up to his head, taking in quickly that he had to be well over six feet tall, almost as broad through the shoulders, with long blond hair tied back low, a blonde beard, and...

...a patch over one eye.

Jesse felt all of the air sucked out of her lungs.

“All-Father,” she breathed the word, feeling her heart skip every other beat.

“You sound surprised.” His voice was low, rumbling like mountains shifting against each other, but also amused as one brow rose. Swallowing hard, she saw that he was wearing...a suit, a dark suit with the shirt open. “Did you not call me in blood?”

“Y-yes, I did,” she said, swallowing her heart back down into her chest as she forced herself to get back up. Her gods did not ask for groveling but for strength, and she had already shown more weakness than she should have. Once on her feet, she pulled herself up straight and tossed her hair back over her shoulder. “Yes. I did.” She forced herself to be calm, even as her throat began to seize up for what she wanted to ask. “My husband hangs on the verge of death, in a coma. His brain is swollen and bleeding. I can’t lose him.

“They can’t do anything. I see that in their eyes, even if they won’t admit his. His life is...” She paused, realizing just how true her statement was. “His life is in the hands of the gods, and I want to weight the scales. I’ve called for your help.”

“You all do,” he replied, not angrily but resignedly. “You humans always call on us most when you are in need of something.” Locking his hands behind his back, he began to walk around her in a slow circle. He was so intimidating that she had to fight to keep her knees from audibly shaking. It wasn’t just his size, although that was considerable, but the aura he radiated that tried to push her to her knees. She wouldn’t let it. She didn’t turn to follow him with her gaze, because to her, that would show fear.

She was terrified, but she’d be damned—and maybe literally—if she showed it.

“What do you offer in return for this?” he asked while still behind her.

“What do you want?”

His laugh sounded more like a bark and it made her think of wolves. In the trees, large birds flapped their wings and she felt a chill. “That is not the point. I am Odin. I want for nothing. You are the one who wants. What are you willing to sacrifice to get it?”

Jesse didn’t reply at first. She would have died for Tom, but yet, she loved him too much to put the weight of her death on him. Not like this. And this was not like the devil of the Christians, who traveled around trying to buy souls. “I don’t know,” she whispered, already feeling like she had failed. “I would give my life if you demanded it, but couldn’t have him know I died for him and let him live out his own life with that. It would break him.”

“Hmm.” The king of the gods made a noncommittal noise. “So you are willing to give all for him.” His footsteps continued until his hulking form came before her again. His gaze was like steel as it stabbed into her. “You beings live in such a faithless age now. Your modern world is full of oathbreakers and those who do not value the blood they are given, or that they give. I cannot believe you will hold to your oath—”

“I will!” Jesse exclaimed, galling herself by interrupting Odin. She swallowed hard, almost wincing as she waited for rebuke, but didn’t stop. “I don’t break my promises.”

“I require your proof,” he said simply, unimpressed with her. “I will bring you to my realm, to the land of the gods, but you must find your way to my mead hall. Only when you do will I consider granting you this favor.” He held up his hand before her face just as a pair of large black birds—ravens—flew down and landed on his shoulders. She had just looked into the eyes of one of the great birds when the world went black.

When she lifted her face, she was no longer where she had been. She had no idea where she was at first and felt panic suffusing her, until she remembered Odin and what he had said about sending her to the realm of the gods. Once she remembered that, she panicked even worse.

“What have I done...” she whispered as she scrambled onto her feet, dusting off her clothing without even thinking about it. Then she thought about Tom lying on the hospital bed, needles piercing his skin, monitors stuck on, and tubes hanging around him. When she thought of him, she remembered and she squeezed her eyes shut to control the panic.

There was no chance of getting rid of it, so the best she could hope for was to control it rather than let it control her. She wiped her sweaty palms on her thighs and looked ahead to see what was before it.

The sight didn’t inspire confidence.

Stretching on towards the horizon was a grey wasteland. The land looked dead and covered in a haze, dried and broken trees jutting from the ground in random angles and the land itself parched and cracked. As she followed along the line, she saw a forest at the other side and the forest lived at the base of a mountain. At the top of that mountain sat a long wooden building that somehow managed to convey both rustic and stately.

Odin’s Hall.

Once that sunk in, it sunk to her feet as her eyes moved back to the dead ground. The only way to get there was through. She felt the call of the trees on the other side like a longing, but everything between her and it sent a chill of terror. She couldn’t imagine walking over such a land, to feel nothing beneath her. Even the concrete of the city still had the song of the Earth under it, but this, she just knew instinctively would not feel like that.

“Tom,” she whispered as she lifted a sneaker and set it on the grey, cracked dirt.

As she had suspected, it felt of nothing. She suppressed a shudder as she made each foot move one step at a time. It had to be harder than simply crossing unpleasant scenery, so she was waiting every moment for some beast of old to leap out at her or a giant to come running down that hill.

The first hint of something was far more subtle than that. A faint whisper came past her ear, like a voice on the breeze. She spun and looked, but there was nothing. She forced herself to keep walking forward. The whisper came past her other ear and she spun in a full one-eighty, but there was still nothing. Her heart felt like it had started skipping its beats while her breath shuddered in and out. Turning, she moved forward again.

Then, all at once, the sound assaulted her. A maelstrom of whispers and shrieks and groans came at her like a tornado. She could just pick out words as she clutched her ears to either side of her head, trying to block them out as the pain in her ears drove her to her knees. She was crying before the ground rose up to meet her.

“...you’re going to lose him...”

“...he’ll die and you’ll be left alone...”

“...you can’t live without him, but you will have to...”

“...going to be taken from you...”

“...be left alone...”

“...will die...”

“...gone...”

“Stop!” she shrieked against the wind, but it did not listen. The words kept assaulting her and she felt physically battered.

That’s when she realized that it wouldn’t stop. It wouldn’t stop until she was on the other side, so the only way to get there was through. Even though she felt like her ears were bleeding, she forced herself to push back onto her feet. She started walking, then began running. Her face was wet and she could even feel her tears in her hair, but she kept running. She tried to ignore the voices, but they wouldn’t stop. Like being hit with metal rods, they drove hard into her.

She tripped more than once, but every time she did, she kept running. She wouldn’t stop, because she couldn’t stop. If she stopped, she would die.

With each moment, the trees grew closer. As she neared the edge of the wasteland, the voices became louder and their words harsher. So thick and so fast, she began to feel like she was pushing through a tangible cloud. The air itself was thick and her breathing became labored, like choking on sobs that weren’t coming.

Her eyes remained hard on the trees, knowing somehow instinctively that if she could just reach the trees, the voices would stop.

Putting her head down, she pushed ahead. She started screaming back at the voices to shut up, and she screamed so much that her voice became hoarse and incoherent to her own ears until the trees came to meet her. She ran so hard that she almost drove herself head long into one and fell to the ground just to stop, crashing in the wet grass.

As she had known, the voices stopped as she fell on the forest floor.

She stared up at the canopy, panting and gasping. There was a stitch in her side that made her want to cry again, but she had nothing left.

It seemed like forever that she laid there, but Odin’s Hall was not here. It was on that mountain, and that’s where she had to go. To prove to him that she was willing to do whatever it took, she had to climb that mountain. To find the key to saving her husband’s life, she had to get through this forest. To save the key to her life and sanity, she had to get up.

And so she did. She took one last rasping breath, she pushed herself up to her feet and started trudging through the trees. Her legs felt like lead. Jesse was a fairly athletic woman, but even she couldn’t have done all she did without feeling like she was about to die.

She would not die. She would not stop.

The forest felt so much better than the wasteland. She could feel the song of the living here, rather than the silence of the dead. She did not trust it, of course, for she knew that her test was not over. She still had more to do until she got what she wanted.

Yet she continued to walk and nothing happened. She heard nothing and saw nothing, and it just made her anxiety and paranoia rise higher with each step. It was like watching a horror movie when you knew The Scare was coming, but you didn’t know what or how or when. You just knew that it was coming, and grew preemptively scared.

Then she saw that she was coming upon a clearing. It looked almost like the one that Odin had come to her in, and she wondered what would be in it.

She didn’t have to wonder long before she crested the edge and entered the clearing, where she saw another giant of a man sitting beside a giant of a wolf. The man wore jeans and a black t-shirt with bare feet, leaning back against the base of a tree with those long legs stretched out before him. She took in his long hair and goatee, as well as the giant grey wolf that lay beside him like a big dog. His arm rested over the wolf’s back, and when she saw the stump instead of a hand, she knew.

“Tyr,” she said slowly, coming to a stop at the edge of the clearing. If he was Tyr, that meant the wolf was... “Fenrir.” She greeted the wolf son of Loki with respect as well, for he was a magnificent creature.

“You are Jesse Dixon.” The god smiled, although she couldn’t find that it was the happiest or most welcoming of expressions. “You are here because you need something, and the gods are tired of granting favors that have not been earned.”

“I’m here to earn it,” she stated brazenly. She knew that Tyr, god of things like justice and battle, only respected strength.

“That has yet to be seen,” he replied. “You know my friend here.” He nodded toward the wolf, who was easily the size of a horse and who twitched his ear lazily. “You knew enough to summon the king of the gods, so you must know how I lost my hand.”

She nodded. “I do,” she said. There was a sinking feeling in her stomach. “It makes your friendship here a surprise.”

That actually drew a short laugh from him. “We live in strange times now, don’t we?”

“That’s hard to dispute.” Jesse inhaled deeply and held his gaze. “So, what would you have of me to prove myself?”

“Do you have courage?”

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

He laughed again, the same short, near-bark sound. “That might as well prove that you’re a fool.”

She felt herself bristle inwardly. God or not, he stood between her and her best chance to save her husband’s life. She would not be laughed at, nor would she be delayed. However, she knew she had no chance if she fought him. “I suppose time alone will tell.”

Was that a look of approval in his eye? She didn’t risk hope. “I suppose it will.” Again, he nodded to the wolf. “Prove it.”

Jesse lost her annoyance when she didn’t understand what he meant. It wasn’t until the giant wolf opened his mouth that she understood, and her stomach dropped into her feet. This was the wolf that had bitten off the hand of a god... What could it do to a mere human? If she felt like she had breathed shallowly before, she was sure that she stopped entirely now.

She could live without a hand, right?

Even as her brain made that resolution, her feet didn’t seem to agree. They were filled with concrete as she forced herself to take those steps closer to the creature. He remained as still as a statue, just waiting for her. Just as her hand was close enough to slide between those giant, terrifying jaws, she put her slender hand between those giant jaws. She winced, but refused to let her eyes shut.

He hadn’t said for how long, so she simply stood there and trembled from head to toe.

Jesse stared at the face of the wolf. It stared back at her. As her hand trembled, he made no move at all.

It was just as she was going to ask how long he expected her to wait when she saw the first twitch from the wolf. Suddenly, those jaws were shutting. It all moved in slow motion as she watched them begin to close, but some force she didn’t understand kept her from trying to tear her hand away. She knew that she would fail if she did, so she held firm and let out a small shriek.

Just as the jaws closed, the non-corporeal teeth passed through her and the wolf vanished.

She gasped and shook, unable to pull her hand back as she looked at Tyr. He was smiling, and this time, the expression was less dark. “Fenrir and I are not friends,” he said, his voice low like he was sharing a conspiracy. “Perhaps you do have courage. Climb the mountain, girl. Odin awaits.”

With that, he stood from his indolent position and left the clearing.

It took her a moment before she was able to swallow her heart and force her trembling body to move forward again.

As she cleared the edge of the forest and came to the base of the mountain, she felt like she was breathing again. Barely. Putting her hands on her hips, she waited until she stopped feeling lightheaded. Lead bars were still in her legs and she knew her hands were still shaking, she could feel it on the inside.

At the top of this hill was where she needed to be. She was almost there and she could almost feel him up there. His power radiated like a storm cloud and she felt it pull her. The metal in her legs and the shallow breaths in her chest could not stop her. She started walking.

It was easy at first with the shallow incline at the base, but it soon became harder. The mountain rapidly became steep. The ground was dry and dusty, with rocks that came loose of their spaces too easily to use them as grips. It came to the point where she had to dig her hands directly into the dirt.

Grit pricked underneath her fingernails. She coughed as the dust climbed down her throat, coming up in puffs as she panted from her exertion and couldn’t avoid inhaling it. She felt the strain in her muscles rapidly moving from sore and fatigued to painful. It felt as though her bones were going to break with each step.

The mountainside was just shy of being impossible to climb without gear.

It felt like the further she got, the further the top was. She began to despair of ever reaching it. How could she have thought she could do this? The gods themselves had literally set out these challenges, so she couldn’t imagine how she thought she’d be able to do this... It was too hard...

She stopped right where she was, clinging to the side of the mountain. These thoughts got her nowhere, and she began to feel like she had when she heard the whispers and when she moved nearer to the image of Fenrir. This was another test. She had to get through. The only way to get there was through.

Inhaling deeply, she looked up again. Suddenly, the hall seemed a lot closer.

If she hadn’t been so exhausted, she would have smiled. Instead, she just started climbing again with renewed determination. The rocks still tumbled away from her grasp, tumbling down the mountain behind her. She stopped looking at the top and just focused on moving forward, hand after hand and foot after foot, until suddenly, she crested the top.

There before her stood the Hall of Odin.

After having collapsed for several long minutes just to find her breath and heart beat again, she pushed herself up and strode into the hall of the gods.

When she opened the heavy doors, she had expected the revelry and drinking that one might hear about in a tale of the Norse. Yet it was perfectly silent. The sound of the door slamming behind her made her jump as she strode between the long, empty wooden tables. The tankards remained in their places, some overturned and some upright, plates scattered, all as though they had left suddenly.

At the far end of the hall was a large but otherwise plain wooden chair, with a one-eyed man in a dark suit waiting for her.

He rose as she approached.

“I have made it to your hall, All-Father,” she announced. She was out of breath and wanted to collapse, and just weep, at any moment, but she would not fall just before the finish line. It was there before her, standing with an unreadable expression. He stepped down the short dais as she neared him.

“Yes, you have,” he agreed. “You have earned the right to ask your favor.”

Something inside her was suddenly suspicious. She had earned the right to ask, but he did not say he would grant it. “You know what I want,” she returned, her throat thick with her exhaustion and emotion. “I have passed your tests. Will you grant this?” Desperation seemed to flood her limbs, because she had nothing left to give. She might fall to her knees right at that moment, or die herself if he said no.

He didn’t reply. Instead he stepped until he nearly pushed her back by his presence alone, but she did not relent.

In a flash of movement she barely even saw, his hand was at her throat. She gasped in shock, grappling at his thick wrist but he did not relent. With just enough room to breathe, she still could feel her head growing light. Tears sprung up at the corners of her eyes. She simply had no strength to fight him as he practically slammed her back against one of the empty tables, knocking over mugs and pressing a plate into her back.

“You would do anything,” he demanded, his voice still low yet now flooded with intensity bordering on anger. “Anything at all would you give for this man you say you love.”

“That I do love,” she corrected, practically spitting in his fate. “I would have let the wolf bite off my hand to get here.” Tears flooding her throat made her breath even less, but she would not let go of the fire in her gaze as she stared at this god holding her by the throat. “I swore anything, and I will! Name it! If you say no, I will call upon you again. I’ll call upon Thor and Baldr and Freyr and all of your house until someone grants me this. I will not stop.”

“You would call on Loki?” he said, the intensity suddenly gone.

She didn’t reply right away. “No,” she finally said. “That silver tongue is not to be trusted and I would just as easily end up in Tom’s body and he in mine before I was granted the favor I have wished.”

The stern countenance broke into a knowing smile, slight but real. “I like you, mortal. I will grant you what you ask and will return your man to you, hale and whole.”

Her heart suddenly felt like it might burst, and she practically forgot he held her.

“However—” he continued and she froze inside. “—there can be nothing granted without something given. Your heart is mighty, and it is what will truly grant the favor. From this day forward, the Norns shall weave your thread together will his, and a great deal of any luck they would have favored with you shall be used here. No road taken onward shall ever be easy, and there will be little more than existence for either of you without the other. You must be sure in your answer, for you will be nothing without each other and thus will forever be bound in more ways than your mortal mind could ever conceive.”

She swallowed painfully, fighting against his still iron grip. Staring up into his single, pale-colored eye, she forced herself to not answer right away. She forced herself to envision a hard life with him compared to an easy life without. They were still young and marriages changed, ended, every day. They would wither away without each other, but might wither away with each other...

No. Deep down in the very center of every cell of her body, every corner of her spirit, she knew that wasn’t so. She would be nothing without him, regardless of what the Norns wove.

“I accept,” she whispered. “I want him back and I will live with nothing so long as I have him. Please, grant me the favor I have asked and I will pay that price.”

“I hope you do not regret your choice,” he rumbled.

“I won’t.” She spoke with confidence and her gaze remained unwavering on his.

He smiled, and the world went black. As she fell under, she thought she heard the sound of wooden needles clicking together.

Jesse woke up in the forest where she started.

She found herself on her back and as soon as consciousness entered her body, she sat up hard and fast, gripping her throat and hacking for air. When she finally felt like her throat and lungs were no longer burning, she looked around. It was still night. In fact, it looked like no time at all had passed. She began to doubt herself that it had been anything other than a dream, but her eyes fell on a black feather by her hand.

As she lifted it and examined it, her phone rang.

She answered it, both in a rush and in a daze. She recognized the number of Tom’s boss and she choked up instantly as she answered.

“Where are you?!” he shouted. He seemed to realize that he was being too loud and his next words were quieter, more level. “I’ve been trying to reach you for an hour, but your phone kept going to voicemail.”

“W-what’s wrong? Is i-it Tom?” she stammered.

“Yes,” he replied. “He’s awake!”

She stared ahead in shock for several long moments before she started sobbing. If her hand hadn’t been frozen around her phone, she would’ve dropped it.

“Do you need a ride? Maybe you shouldn’t drive,” Marcus said, although he didn’t sound sure of himself.

Jesse started to say no, but then she thought he might be right. She didn’t care about her car, she could come back for it. She told him where she was. He paused and asked what she was doing out there.

“It’s a long story,” she said, her voice still thick as she pushed herself to her feet.

They hung up and she walked to the street.

Her car was missing. It had been towed.

It took every ounce of self-control that her poor, exhausted body had left in it to keep from sprinting through the reception area. She had to check in and get her visitor’s pass, Marcus right on her heels. She walked, very fast, through the halls to Tom’s room, just barely keeping from knocking people down. She just didn’t care.

She reached his room and stopped in the doorway, trembling again as she found herself fearing it was a mistake. Tom wasn’t awake. It wasn’t okay. Nothing had changed, or worse, it had taken a downward turn.

Swallowing hard and forcing a breath, she once more fought her wooden legs and pushed herself into the room. When she reached his bedside, she found him sitting up. He was alert and awake, talking with a nurse. The nurse turned to Jesse as she gripped the plastic railing at the foot of the bed just to keep from falling down.

“The doctors can’t explain it,” the nurse said before either Tom or Jesse even had the chance to speak. Jesse could only stare at her husband, and he looked back. “The swelling and bleeding have just gone away, and all of his vitals are...normal. He’s a very lucky man.” The young woman paused, like she was waiting for something.

“Thank you,” was all Jesse said.

The nurse seemed to take the hint and left. Jesse moved around to the side of the bed and crawled up beside him. It didn’t occur to her to wonder where Marcus was, but a good guess would’ve been he was giving them privacy. Tom didn’t say anything as he pulled her into his embrace and she burrowed against his chest. The fabric of the gown they’d put him in was coarse against her face, but she didn’t care. She cried. She sobbed.

“I love you. I love you. I love you,” she whispered over and over again, her fingers gripping fabric as if to hold herself to him, like she was afraid to let him go.

“It’s okay,” he murmured into her hair. “You heard the nurse. I’m alright.”

“I know, I know,” she said around a hiccup.

“Everything’s going to be alright now.”

She nodded and sniffed. “I know,” she whispered. “It’s you and me, and everything will be fine. I’m with you until the wheels fall off.”

Somewhere outside the window, she heard the sound of flapping wings, and thanked the gods.