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“I think you and I can do remarkable things together,” he says.
“Ah, I see,” says Freyja.
He can’t quite read what she’s thinking. He usually can – he’s always been good at reading people, and Bragi sharpened that part of him. But there’s something in her eyes that seems like she’s interested but at the same time not. There’s definitely something between them though. How else to explain the way he’s been drawn to her the moment he saw her? It doesn’t feel exactly like the way he’s drawn to most women, but what else could it be? Anders doesn’t have another level.
“I don’t have a problem with age, if that’s what you’re worried about,” he says, making the next move in the dance he’s done with so many women, almost always successfully.
“I was more worried about the fact that I’m your mother,” says Agnetha.
“Mum’s dead,” said Mike, standing in the doorway.
Anders barely glanced up from the TV. “Not funny, Mike.”
“It’s not a joke.”
“What?” said Ty. Axl edged closer to him.
“Mum’s dead.” Mike looked around at them, pale and blank. “It’s just us now. God. It’s just us now.”
After a long silence, Anders says, “You don’t look like my mother.”
“Draw your own conclusions, Anders. It’s been sixteen years since I left, yet here Freyja is in a body that’s clearly not thirty-seven years old, even assuming I was reincarnated immediately.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I shed Elisabet’s form to become a tree for years, but then I got bored.” Agnetha walks around to seat herself at her desk. “The goddess of prosperity isn’t suited to growing leaves. So when a chance came, I took it.”
Anders shakes his head. “What?”
Agnetha indicates her body with a wave of her hand. “This woman was dragged out into the forest to be killed – by her husband, incidentally. She died in front of me. I saw a convenient body. I took it.”
“And the husband?”
“He died,” she says. “I had no interest in another abusive relationship. Take a seat.”
Anders got to his feet. He cleaned up the blood he split on the floor – then suddenly shoved a pile of dishes off the counter and ran out into the backyard before Johan came to see who broke them.
He hit me too, he thought. He hit me too.
Behind him, he heard Elisabet come down the stairs. “How dare you hit a child!” she screamed. “How dare you hit Ty!”
“Why did you come back?” he asks, pulling up the nearby couch to sit on it.
“Curiosity,” she says. “Checking in on my boys.”
“Checking i– Is that what you call it? You tried to kill Axl.”
“Technically I never made an attempt myself.”
“My bad. You tried to have Axl killed. And locked into a marriage with the goddess of death.”
Agnetha shrugs. “Water under the bridge. I have a proposition for you. We need to look to the future, Anders, not the past.”
“All right, out with it. What happened?”
“We were playing rugby in school today,” mumbled Anders.
“Anders is too small to play rugby properly,” said Ty in an attempt to prop up the lie. Anders glared at him.
“Uh huh. The only way anyone gets like that is if the entire rugby team stampeded across their face. Did someone do this to you? Mike?”
“I didn’t touch him! Anders – annoyed someone in school because he couldn’t keep his mouth shut.”
Elisabet pursed her lips. “Maybe this will teach you to stop being such a smart-aleck.”
Anders laughs. “You ditch us for sixteen years, come back with a hangman’s noose in your hand, and the first thing you want is a favour?”
Agnetha smiles. “Now you know where you got it from.”
“I don’t remember you being like that.”
“Elisabet isn’t just a body,” says Agnetha, looking down at it. “I have her memories, her personality rattling around inside. Elisabet’s too. It’s a bit complicated – it’s not easy to be sure where Elisabet ends and Agnetha begins, more so when it’s been over a decade. You understand, you have Bragi. Even when you were a child, I often thought Bragi must already have had an eye on you.”
“How well you know me,” says Anders.
“And that’s why I’m sure you’ll like the proposition I have for you.”
"Anders, eat your food. Please finish your food.”
“Bloody hell, woman, teach him who’s boss around here,” said Johan from the opposite end of the table, dumping meat on Mike’s plate. “Make him eat his food instead of begging him to. He’s nearly three already.”
“I’m not force-feeding him,” snapped Elisabet.
“Throat hurts,” whimpered Anders.
“I know it does, baby. You have to eat otherwise you won’t get better.”
“Don’t want.”
“I’ll put more honey, okay? You like honey, right?”
Anders sniffed. “Yes.”
“And I’ll read you a story before bedtime. But you have to eat. Open up. Will you do that for mum?”
"Okay." Anders opened his mouth.
“I’m guessing it’s not sex,” Anders drawls, leaning back.
“Don’t be disgusting. I’d have thought you get enough of that with the mortal women you bring back every other day. You’re really indiscriminate in your choices, by the way.”
“You’ve really been checking up on us, haven’t you?”
“I told you, I wanted to see how my boys were doing.” Agnetha pulls out a folder from a drawer, setting it on her desk.
“Or feeling out the competition? Now that we’re all gods.”
“Let’s just say a bit of both.”
“Did we worry you?”
“Hardly.”
“As competition or as your children?”
Turning the folder upside down, Agnetha slides it across to him. “Take a look, my darling son.”
Anders flips it open. “It’s a tree,” he says.
"Mike says it hurts.”
“Mike should have thought of that before he decided to go tree-climbing.”
“But he says it really hurts.”
“Anders, can’t you see I’m in the middle of bathing Ty? Tell Mike to wait a while. Try to sleep.”
“But mum, he thinks his ankle is sprained.”
“Where’s your dad?”
“I don’t know, he went out.”
“Typical. I’ll be up as soon as I can.”
“My head hurts too.”
Elisabet ran her hands briefly over the back of Anders’s head. “That’ll teach you to follow Mike everywhere without thinking. I don’t feel anything.”
“Ouch!”
“It’s just a bump. Pass me the towel.”
Ty splashed water everywhere with a fist and laughed. Elisabet smiled down at him as she lifted him out of the water, wrapping the towel around him.
“Not just any tree.”
“Do you just like trees or something?” says Anders. “My mother, the hippie dippy greenie goddess.”
“Don’t confuse me with Idunn,” says Agnetha. “That tree is Yggdrasil. The World Tree.”
“I thought it was a myth. Metaphorical.”
“It isn’t.”
“What about it?”
“It’s real, and it’s powerful. I want you to go get it for me.”
Anders closes the folder. “Why should I? You walked out on us, remember. I don’t owe you anything.”
“But I’m your mother,” says Agnetha, and she tilts her head and smiles.
“Mum, Anders is squashing me!”
“Ty’s being selfish!”
“It’s my bed!”
“Keep it up and there’ll be no story,” warned Elisabet. “Anders, stop pushing your brother. You’re getting too old for bedtime stories anyway, you’ve already got your own bedroom. You can spare a bit of space, Ty, budge up a little.”
“Anders stole my cookie from the fridge today,” Ty said sulkily. “Dad gave it to me, not Anders.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll get you something else,” said Anders. “Now move or else.”
“Mum!”
“Enough,” said Elisabet, and both fell silent.
“I’m listening,” says Anders. “I don’t promise anything though.”
“Here’s the deal. Go to Norway and bring back a branch of Yggdrasil for me. You’ll have to hunt around – all I have is old sayings and riddles from over a hundred years ago when the Hovding first docked in New Zealand. It’ll take a while. In return I’ll reimburse you for all expenses, naturally, and I’ll pay you thirty thousand per month or part thereof while you’re there. Think of it as a working holiday.”
“I have a business here, you know. I can’t just run off and leave it.”
“If that’s what you can call it.”
“I do call it a business,” Anders says a little too sharply to pretend he doesn’t mind her jab.
“Very well,” says Agnetha. “I’ll take care of it while you’re gone. Don’t worry, I’ve got nothing to gain by destroying what my son built up. And don’t forget I’m Freyja. Whatever I touch prospers, as you well know if you did your homework.”
“Even then,” says Anders.
Agnetha rolls her eyes. “It’s your little secretary who does most of the work anyway.”
“I’m not stupid, mother,” says Anders. “If it’s powerful, why would I want to bring it back for you? I don’t intend to bring my executioner a gun.”
“You didn’t seem worried about my backstabbing you when you were all ready to … how did you put it? Move forward together.”
Anders shrugs, refusing to be embarrassed. “That was different. That was before I knew you’re my mother.”
“You accepted it pretty quickly,” says Agnetha. “I’m going to take that as a sign of trust.”
“I know you’re my mother,” says Anders. “That doesn’t mean I trust you.”
"But what if I don’t like the teacher? What if the teacher is fierce?”
“You’ll just have to deal with it. Mike’s been going to school and he hasn’t died yet, has he? Go on, you don’t want to be late on your first day of school.”
“Promise me!”
“You’ll be fine.”
“Okay.” Anders relaxed enough so Elisabet could pull her skirt out of the death grip he’d had it in.
“We don’t have to be on opposing sides, Anders.”
Anders sprawls out on the sofa, swinging his legs over the armrest. “Funny, I thought you drew the line pretty clearly when you started the mother-son bonding process with a little wine and assassination.”
“Like I said, water under the bridge. You wanted to move forward, let’s move forward. Although not quite the sort of moving you had in mind.”
“I want fifty thousand per month or part thereof. And Dawn remains with JPR no matter what, I’m not losing her if you two get into a cat fight. And I want to be there when you tell my brothers you’re our mother.”
“I can do that.”
“First-class flights. And cards with unlimited credit.”
“Done.” Agnetha smiles. “I knew you’d take my offer.”
Mummy? Mummy? The mall was too big for him to be on his own. His lip trembled. Go play outside. What do you mean she’s dead. She can’t be dead. Here’s your birthday cake! Happy birthday, darling. All right, what happened? He said Mum's never coming back and she wasn't that great a mother anyway! What the hell did you say that for, you prick? He won't stop crying, that's why! And he bloody punched me in the stomach! Where's Anders? There he is! Come to Mum. Maybe that will teach you to stop being a smartarse. I said go play outside.
“Did you now.”
“Of course. A mother knows her child. With you it’s money. With you it's always the money.”
"Are you scared?” Elisabet picked him up from his bed. “Mum’s here. It’s just a thunderstorm.”
“How did you know I’m scared?”
“A mother always knows. Want to hear a story?”
Anders kissed her cheek, loud and smacking and wet. “Love you mum.”
“Yeah,” says Anders. He smiles in that way he has, close-lipped, dimples showing. “You know me too well. I’ll do it. See you, mum.”
He leaves, taking the bottle of vodka with him.