Sleipnir moves like nothing you’ve ever seen: neither horse nor centipede, he bunches and stretches in two rippling phases. A wave. An earthquake. And fast.
The good thing, of course, is while he’s getting all that horse up to speed a desperate stable boy can just about keep up. Ehrich pelts madly and snatches the bridle–there! He’s got it, but they’re on Bifröst now, slick as rain, and he’s sliding toward its fiery rails–
Sleipnir takes the bit in his teeth, jerks him up with one contemptuous toss of his head, and Ehrich is riding the horse of the gods.
Now you can make chili in a pot on the stove in an hour, if you hate Jesus, but the proper way to do it is a slow cook, two hundred degrees all day. Benton can’t leave anything hot at home, though, he’s got a kid, and he can’t have his delicious chili unattended in his cubicle. Plus his wife just died. Anyway, he solves the problem.
One day Morocco collects five bucks from everybody and asks, “how’s it working out?”
Benton straightens with difficulty. “What?”
“The Crock Pot,” says Morocco, pointing headwards, “with the bungee cords?”
“It’s hot,” says Benton.
“Power?” he asks, judging the size of the empty room.
“Out,” she says, and flicks the lights to demonstrate. “Sorry. We’ll get that turned on very soon. And we have an excellent furniture rental service…”
Valentino stands in the middle of the carpet, hunching, hands in his pockets. He seems to have no intention of putting on a shirt.
“I know this isn’t ideal,” says Yelena. “The situation changed on short notice and we’re doing our best to–look. It’s hard to guess what you people want, sometimes.”
“What does any god want?” he asks.
“Power?” she guesses.
“Out,” he says.
Camellia’s new to the building, only six months, right? She insists as much in silence and closes the door behind her, trying not to wake the man asleep on his mattress in the living room. Weird. Not as weird as bumbling into a stranger’s apartment.
Next day she does it again, dammit, why does her key even open this door? He’s still there, black hair wild, legs in a bar of sunlight.
Camellia sits down beside him. No movement. She puts her hand on his chest, feels it rising, falling; she tells herself this isn’t creepy. His skin feels really good.
Owlbears with machine guns! WHOOOR!
“What kind of roar is that?” pants Sandal as she slams the stairwell door; bullets rattle off the other side. “Are they trying to eat me or protest my choice in relationships?”
“Hopefully neither,” grunts Bud, hauling himself up the stairs and fishing something out of his shirt. Below, talons rip open the steel door. Sandal scrambles onto the roof.
“Okay!” she gasps. “Now what?” But Bud’s busy, blowing red-faced into a busted whistle.
“WHOOOR!” shriek the owlbears, piling out. Bud drops the whistle and grins. Sandal sees swooping shadows, sudden hope, looks up: orcabats.
When he realizes he’s putting jelly on both sides of the bread, Solange puts the knife in the sink and sits in the corner with his head between the walls: this is all he can do. Confine his world to here, now, the carpet and baseboard. Small.
Stop it, he breathes to himself, drag it back. He blots his eyes with the heel of his hand and writes on his palm with his felt-tip that DISSIPATION DIDN’T WIN THE WAR. This time the mocking mental refrain doesn’t ask him exactly what did win it: oh, it says instead, you won?
“Tomorrow we’ll get drunk and sunburnt,” smiles Glass: a circle of chuckles around the dying fire. “Yesterday we didn’t sleep. Two days from now we’ll dress in gowns, get our magic papers. Two days ago we we started our final sprint.
“Tonight.” Steam whistles; she lifts an iron pot from the embers with a poker. “Tonight we have four hilltop acres, darkness and music, a path to the water’s edge.” She tips the pot, fills a goblet. “Drink. Stay up nine more hours. Speak to each other as you won’t speak again.”
They sip, and pass, and forget how to lie.
“Pirate ships don’t come with instructions,” hisses Sacker. “If those nice men find out you’re not really a captain–”
“Okay!” Sherrinford paces the cabin. “Go get the whatsit. Cabin boy. He’ll know how things work, but he won’t sway the crew.”
Sacker does. Sherrinford squats. “Hi, Simon,” she smiles. “Pop quiz! When your old captain wanted to go to Bermuda, what would he do? Slowly.”
“First,” says Simon slowly, “he’d get the instructions.”
Sherrinford looks hard at Sacker, who rolls his eyes. “You’re lying, boy,” he growls.
“Yes,” mutters Simon.
“The truth this time?”
“Very first,” Simon sighs, “he’d bugger me.”
The Katherines circle, and Katherine hands Katherine the knife. She feels the glowing heat of the blade through the sharkskin handle. Katherine’s never held a knife before. In Badulla, only Katherines are permitted to hold knives.
Katherine believes that once there were prayers that went with the quenching ceremony, or songs, but Eli stole those from the world: the Katherines wheel in silence. The knife blade has a liquid sheen.
Katherine stabs herself in the belly. Heat. Cold. Screaming. The Katherines pull the knife out, red and bloody. They wipe away the blood with a smoking cloth, but the red remains.