Stories: All-New Tales

Joanne Harris WILDFIRE IN MANHATTAN

IT’S NOT MY NAME-WELL, NOT QUITE-but you can call me Lucky. I live right here in Manhattan, in the penthouse suite of a hotel just off Central Park. I’m a model citizen in every way, punctual, polite and orderly. I wear sharp suits. I wax my chest hair. You’d never think I was a god.

It’s a truth often overlooked that old gods-like old dogs-have to die sometime. It just takes longer, that’s all; and in the meantime citadels may fall, empires collapse, worlds end and folk like us end up on the pile, redundant and largely forgotten.

In many ways, I’ve been fortunate. My element is fire, which never quite goes out of style. There are Aspects of me that still wield power-there’s too much of the primitive left in you Folk for it to be otherwise, and although I don’t get as many sacrifices as I used to, I can still get obeisance if I want it (who doesn’t?)-after dark, when the campfires are lit. And the dry lightning strikes across the plains-yes, they’re mine-and the forest fires; and the funeral pyres and the random sparks and the human torches-all mine.

But here, in New York, I’m Lukas Wilde, lead singer in the rock band Wild-re. Well, I say band. Our only album, Burn It Up, went platinum when the drummer was tragically killed on stage by a freakish blast of lightning.

Well, maybe not so freakish. Our only U.S. tour was stalked by lightning from beginning to end; of fifty venues, thirty-one suffered a direct hit; in just nine weeks we lost three more drummers, six roadies and a truckload of gear. Even I was beginning to feel I’d taken it just a little too far.

Still, it was a great show.

Nowadays, I’m semiretired. I can afford to be; as one of only two surviving band members I have a nice little income, and when I’m feeling bored I play piano in a fetish bar called the Red Room. I’m not into rubber myself (too sweaty), but you can’t deny it makes a terrific insulator.

By now you may have gathered-I’m a night person. Daylight rather cramps my style; and besides, fire needs a night sky to show to best advantage. An evening in the Red Room, playing piano and eyeing the girls, then downtown for rest and recreation. Not a scene that my brother frequents; and so it was with some surprise that I ran smack into him that night, as I was checking out the nicely flammable back streets of the Upper East Side, humming “Light My Fire” and contemplating a spot of arson.

I didn’t say? Yes, in this present Aspect, I have a brother. Brendan. A twin. We’re not close; Wildfire and Hearth Fire have little in common, and he rather disapproves of my flamboyant lifestyle, preferring the more domestic joys of baking and grilling. Imagine that. A firegod running a restaurant-it makes me burn with shame. Still, it’s his funeral. Each of us goes to hell in his own way, and besides, his flame-grilled steaks are the best in the business.

It was past midnight, I was a little light-headed from the booze-but not so drunk that you’d have noticed-and the streets were as still as they get in a city that only ever shuts one eye. A huddle of washouts sleeping in cardboard boxes under a fire escape; a cat raiding a Dumpster. It was November; steam plumed from the sewer grates and the sidewalks were shiny with cold sweat.

I was just crossing the intersection of Eighty-First and Fifth, in front of the Hungarian meat market when I saw him, a familiar figure with hair the colour of embers tucked into the collar of a long grey coat. Tall, slim and ballet quick; you might almost have been forgiven for thinking it was me. Close scrutiny, however, reveals the truth. My eyes are red and green; his, on the other hand, are green and red. Anyway, I wouldn’t be seen dead wearing those shoes.

I greeted him cheerily. “Do I smell burning?”

He turned to me with a hunted expression. “Shh! Listen!”

I was curious. I know there’s never been much love between us, but he usually greets me, at least, before he starts with the recriminations. He called me by my true name. Put a finger to his lips, then dragged me into a side alley that stank of piss.

“Hey, Bren. What gives?” I whispered, correcting my lapels.

His only reply was a curt nod in the direction of the near-deserted alley. In the shadows, two men, boxy in their long overcoats, hats pulled down over narrow, identical faces. They stopped for a second on the kerb, checked left, checked right and crossed over with swift, effortless choreography before vanishing, wolfish, into the night.

“I see.” And I did. I’d seen them before. I could feel it in my blood. In another place, in another Aspect, I knew them, and they knew me. And believe me, they were men in form alone. Beneath those cartoon-detective overcoats they were all teeth. “What d’you think they’re doing here?”

He shrugged. “Hunting.”

“Hunting who?”

He shrugged again. He’s never been a man of words, even when he wasn’t a man. Me, I’m on the wordy side. I find it helps.

“So you’ve seen them here before?”

“I was following them when you came along. I doubled back-I didn’t want to lead them home.”

Well, I could understand that. “What are they?” I said. “Aspects of what? I haven’t seen anything like this since Ragnarók, but as I recall-”

“Shh-”

I was getting kinda sick of being shoved and shushed. He’s the elder twin, you know, and sometimes he takes liberties. I was about to give him a heated reply when I heard a sound coming from nearby, and something swam into rapid view. It took me a while to figure it out; derelicts are hard to see in this city, and he’d been hiding in a cardboard box under a fire escape, but now he shifted quick enough, his old overcoat flapping like wings around his bony ankles.

I knew him, in passing. Old man Moony, here as an Aspect of Mani, the Moon, but mad as a coot, poor old sod (it often happens when they’ve been at the juice, and the mead of poetry is a heady brew). Still, he could run, and was running now, but as Bren and I stepped out of his way, the two guys in their long overcoats came to intercept him at the mouth of the alley.

Closer this time-I could smell them. A rank and feral smell, half rotted. Well, you know what they say. You can’t teach a carnivore oral hygiene.

At my side I could feel my brother trembling. Or was it me? I wasn’t sure. I was scared, I knew that-though there was still enough alcohol carousing in my veins to make me feel slightly removed from it all. In any case I stayed put, tucked into the shadows, not quite daring to move. The two guys stood there at the mouth of the alley, and Moony stopped, wavering now between fight and flight. And-

Fight it was. Okay, I thought. Even a rat will turn when cornered. That didn’t mean I had to get involved. I could smell him too, the underpinning stench of him, like booze and dirt and that stinky sickly poet smell. He was scared, I knew that. But he was also a god-albeit a beat-up Aspect of one-and that meant he’d fight like a god, and even an old alky god like Moony has his tricks.

Those two guys might yet have a shock coming.

For a moment they held their position, two overcoats and a mad poet in a dark triangle under the single streetlight. Then they moved-the guys with that slick, fluid motion I’d seen before, Moony with a lurch and a yell and a flash from his fingertips. He’d cast Týr-a powerful rune-and I saw it flicker through the dark air like a shard of steel, hurtling towards the two not-quite-men. They dodged-no pas de deux could have had more grace-parting, then coming together again as the missile passed, moving in a tight axe-head formation towards the old god.

But throwing Týr had thrown Moony. It takes strength to cast the runes of the Elder Script, and most of his glam was already gone. He opened his mouth-to speak a cantrip, I thought-but before he could, the overcoats moved in with that spooky superhuman speed and I could smell their rankness once more, but so much stronger, like the inside of a badger’s sett. They closed in, unbuttoning their coats as they ran-but were they running? Instead they seemed to glide, like boats, unfurling their long coats like sails to hide and envelop the beleaguered moongod.

He began to chant-the mead of poetry, you know-and for a second the drunken voice cracked and changed, becoming that of Mani in his full Aspect. A sudden radiance shone forth-the predators gave a single growl, baring their teeth-and for a moment I heard the chariot chant of the mad moongod, in a language you could never learn, but of which a single word could drive a mortal crazy with rapture, bring down the stars, strike a man dead-or raise him back to life again.

He chanted, and for a beat the hunters paused-and was that a single trace of a tear gleaming in the shadow of a black fedora? — and Mani sang a glamour of love and death, and of the beauty that is desolation and of the brief firefly that lights up the darkness-for a wing’s beat, for a breath-before it gutters, burns and dies.

But the chant did not halt them for more than a second. Tears or not, these guys were hungry. They glided forward, hands outstretched, and now I could see inside their unbuttoned coats, and for a moment I was sure there was no body beneath their clothes, no fur or scale, no flesh or bone. There was just the shadow; the blackness of Chaos; a blackness beyond colour or even its absence; a hole in the world, all-devouring, all-hungry.

Brendan took a single step, and I caught him by the arm and held him back. It was too late anyway; old Moony was already done for. He went down-not with a crash, but with an eerie sigh, as if he’d been punctured-and the creatures that now no longer even looked like men were on him like hyenas, fangs gleaming, static hissing in the folds of their garments.

There was nothing human in the way they moved. Nothing superfluous. They Hoovered him up from blood to brain-every glamour, every spark, every piece of kith and kindling-and what they left looked less like a man than a cardboard cutout of a man left lying in the dirt of the alleyway.

Then they were gone, buttoning up their overcoats over the terrible absence beneath.

A silence. Brendan was crying. He always was the sensitive one. I wiped something (sweat, I think) from my face and waited for my breathing to return to normal.

“That was nasty,” I said at last. “Haven’t seen anything quite like that since the End of the World.”

“Did you hear him?” said Brendan.

“I heard. Who would have thought the old man had so much glam in him?”

My brother said nothing, but hid his eyes.

I suddenly realized I was hungry, and thought for a moment of suggesting a pizza, but decided against it. Bren was so touchy nowadays, he might have taken offence.

“Well, I’ll see you later, I guess,” and sloped off rather unsteadily, wondering why brothers are always so damned hard, and wishing I’d been able to ask him home.

I wasn’t to know, but I wish I had-I’d never see that Aspect of him again.

I SLEPT TILL LATE the next day. Awoke with a headache and a familiar post-cocktail nauseous feeling, then remembered-the way you remember doing something to your back when you were in the gym, but didn’t realize how bad it was going to be until you’d slept on it-and sat bolt upright.

The guys, I thought. Those two guys.

I must have been drunker than I’d thought last night, because this morning the memory of them froze me to the core. Delayed shock; I know it well, and to combat its elects I called room service and ordered the works. Over coffee, bacon, pancakes and rivers of maple syrup, I worked on my recovery, and though I did pretty well, given the circumstances, I found I couldn’t quite get the death of old Moony out of my mind, or the slick way the two overcoats had crawled over him, gobbling up his glam before buttoning up and back to business. Poetry in motion.

I pondered my lucky escape-well, I guessed that if they hadn’t sniffed out Moony first, then it would have been Yours Truly and Brother Bren for a double serving of Dish of the Day-but my heart was far from light as it occurred to me that if these guys were really after our kind, this was at best a reprieve, not a pardon, and that sooner or later those overcoats would be sharpening their teeth at my door.

So I finished breakfast and called Bren. But all I got was his answering machine, so I looked up the number of his restaurant and dialled it. The line was dead.

I would have tried his mobile, but, like I said, we’re not close. I didn’t know it, or the name of his girl, or even the number of his house. Too late now, right? Just goes to show. Carpe diem, and all that. And so I showered and dressed and went off in haste under gathering clouds to the Flying Pizza, Bren’s place of work (but what a dumb name!), in the hope of getting some sense out of my twin.

It was there that I realized something was amiss. Ten blocks away I knew it already, and the sirens and the engines and the shouting and the smoke were just confirmation. There was something ominous about those gathering thunderclouds, and the way they sat like a Russian hat all spiky with needles of lightning above the scene of devastation. My heart sank lower the closer I got. Something was amiss, all right.

Looking around to ensure that I was unobserved, I cast the visionary rune Bjarkán with my left hand, and squinted through its spyglass shape. Smoke I saw; and lightning from the ground; my brother’s face looking pale and strained; then fire; darkness; then, as I’d feared, the Shadow-and its minions, the wolves, the shadow hunters, boxed into their heavy overcoats.

Those guys, I thought, and cursed. Again.

And now I knew where I’d known them before-and they were pretty bad in that Aspect, too, though I had more on my plate at that time than I do nowadays, and I’ll admit I didn’t give them my full attention. I did now, though, casting runes of concealment about me as I skirted the funnel of black smoke, the funeral pyre of my brother’s restaurant-and for all I knew, of Brendan himself, who had looked pretty wasted in my vision.

I got there at last, keeping an eye out for overcoats, to find fire engines and cop cars everywhere. A line had been cordoned off at the end of the road, and there were men trying to spray water over the great fizzing spume of fire that had already dug its roots deep into the Flying Pizza.

I could have told them they were wasting their time. You can’t put out the work of a firegod-even a god of hearth fire-like it was just a squib. The flames sheeted up, thirty, forty, fifty feet high, clean and yellow and shot through with glamours that would probably have looked like dancing sparks to your kind, but which, if they’d touched you, would have stripped you, flesh to bone, in one.

And Brendan? I thought. Could he still be alive somewhere?

Well, if he was, he must have run. There was no way anyone could have survived that blaze. And it wasn’t like Bren to flee the scene. He had turned and fought; I’d seen as much in my vision, and my brother was so dead set against the use of glamours among the Folk that he wouldn’t have used them if he’d had any kind of choice.

I used Ós-the rune of mystery-to scry my brother’s fate. I saw their faces, thin and wolfish; saw his smile, teeth bared, so that for a second in my vision he could have been me, wild and furious and filled with killing rage. He could be okay, my brother, you know; it just took more time to fire him up. I saw him draw his mindsword-flaming, it was, with an edge that shivered translucent light. A sword that could have cut through granite or silk with the same easy slice; a sword I hadn’t seen since the last time the world ended, a flickering flame of a firegod’s sword that just touched the shadow inside an unbuttoned overcoat and went out like a puff of smoke.

Then, in the dark, they were on him. Question answered. Well, at least my brother went out in style.

I wiped my face and pondered the points. Point one: I was now an only twin. Point two: unless he’d taken his assailants with him (which I doubted), by now the two coats would be on my tail. Point three-

I was just embarking on point three when a heavy hand fell onto my shoulder, another grasped my arm just above the elbow and then both applied a painful pressure, which soon became excruciating as the joint locked and a low, familiar voice rasped in my ear.

“Lucky. I should have known you were in this somehow. This shambles has got your mark all over it.”

I yelped and tried to free my arm. But the other bastard was holding me too tight.

“Move, and I’ll break it,” snarled the voice. “Hell, perhaps I ought to break it anyway. Just for old times’ sake.”

I indicated to him that I’d rather he didn’t. He locked my arm a little further-I felt it begin to go and screamed-then he shoved me hard towards the alley wall. I hit it, bounced, spun round with mindsword ready, half drawn, and found myself staring into a pair of eyes as grim and colourless as a rainy day. Just my luck-a friend with a grievance, which is the only kind I tend to have nowadays.

Well, I say friend. He’s one of our kind, but you know how it is. Fire and rainstorm-we don’t get along. Besides, in his present Aspect he stood taller, weighed heavier, hit harder than me. His face was a thundercloud, and any thought I had of fighting the guy evaporated like cheap perfume. I sheathed the sword and took the better part of valour.

“Hey,” I said. “It’s Our Thor.”

He sniffed. “Try anything, and I’ll douse you cold,” he said. “I’ve got an army of stormclouds ready to roll. You’ll be out like a light before you can blink. Want to try it?”

“Did I ever? Nice greeting, friend. It’s been a long time.”

He grunted. “Arthur’s the name in this present Aspect. Arthur Pluviôse-and you’re dead.” He made it sound like some weird kind of naming ceremony.

“Wrong,” I said. “Brendan’s dead. And if you think I’d be a party to the murder of my own brother-”

“Wouldn’t put it past you,” Arthur said, though I could tell the news had shaken him. “Brendan’s dead?” he repeated.

“’Fraid so.” I was touched-I’d always thought he hated us both.

“Then this wasn’t you?”

“My, you’re fast.”

He glowered. “Then how?”

“How else?” I shrugged. “The Shadow, of course. Chaos. Black Surt. Choose your own damn metaphor.”

Arthur gave a long, soft sigh. As if it had preyed on his mind for such a long time that any news-even bad news-even terrible news-could come as a relief. “So it’s true,” he said. “I was beginning to think-”

“Finally-”

He ignored the gibe and turned on me once more, his rainy-day eyes gleaming. “It’s the wolves, Lucky. The wolves are on the trail again.”

I nodded. Wolves, demons, no word exists in any tongue of the Folk to describe exactly what they were. I call them ephemera, though I had to admit there was nothing ephemeral about their present Aspect.

“Skól and Haiti, the Sky-Hunters, servants of the Shadow, Devourers of the Sun and Moon. And of anything else that happens to be in their way, for that matter. Brendan must have tried to tackle them. He never did have any sense.”

But I could tell he was no longer listening. “The Sun and-”

“Moon.” I gave him the abridged version on the events of last night. He listened, but I could tell he was distracted.

“So, after the Moon, the Sun. Right?”

“I guess.” I shrugged. “That is, assuming there’s an Aspect of Sól in Manhattan, which, if there is-”

“There is,” said Arthur grimly. “Her name’s Sunny.” And there was something about his eyes as he said it, something even more ominous than the rain-swelled clouds above us, or his hand on my shoulder, horribly pally and heavy as lead, that made me think I was in for an even lousier day than I’d had so far.

“Sunny,” I said. “Then she’ll be next.”

“Over my dead body,” said Arthur. “And yours,” he added, almost as an afterthought, keeping his hand hard on my shoulder and smiling that dangerous, stormy smile.

“Sure. Why not?” I humoured him. I could afford to-I’m used to running, and I knew that at a pinch, Lukas Wilde could disappear within an hour, leaving no trace.

He knew it too. His eyes narrowed, and above us the clouds began to move softly, gathering momentum like wool on a spindle. A dimple appeared at its nadir-soon, I knew, to become a funnel of air, stitched and barbed with deadly glamours.

“Remember what they say,” said Arthur, addressing me by my true name. “Everywhere you go, you always take the weather with you.”

“You wrong me.” I smiled, though I’d never felt less like it. “I’ll be only too happy to help your friend.”

“Good,” said Arthur. He kept that hand on my shoulder, though, and his smile was all teeth. “We’ll keep to the shadows. No need to involve the Folk any more than we have to. Right?”

It was a dark and stormy afternoon. I had an idea that it was going to be the first of many.

SUNNY LIVED IN BROOKLYN Heights, in a loft apartment on a quiet street. Not a place I visit often, which accounts for my not having spotted her sooner. Most of our kind take the discreet approach; gods have enemies too, you know, and we find it pays to keep our glam to ourselves.

But Sunny was different. For a start, according to Arthur (what a dumb name!), she didn’t know what she was anymore. It happens sometimes; you just forget. You get all wrapped up in your present Aspect; you start to think you’re like everyone else. Perhaps that’s what kept her safe for so long; they say gods look after drunks and half-wits and little children, and Sunny certainly qualified. Transpires that my old pal Arthur had been looking after her for nearly a year without her knowing it, making sure that she got the sunshine she needed to be happy, keeping sniffers and prowlers away from her door.

Because even the Folk start getting suspicious when someone like Sunny lives nearby. It wasn’t just the fact that it hadn’t rained in months; that sometimes all of New York City could be under a cloud but for the two or three streets surrounding her block; or the funny northern lights that sometimes shone in the sky above her apartment. It was her, just her, with her face and her smile, turning heads wherever she went. A man-a god-could fall in love.

Arthur had dropped his raingod Aspect, and was now looking more or less like a regular citizen, but I could tell he was making a hell of an effort. As soon as we crossed the Brooklyn Bridge I could see him beginning to hold it in, the way a fat man holds in his gut when a pretty girl comes into the room. Then I saw her colours-from afar, like lights in the sky, and the look on his face-that look of truculent yearning-intensified a little.

He gave me the critical once-over. “Tone it down a bit, will you?” he said.

Well, that was offensive. I’d looked a lot flashier as Lukas Wilde, but looking at Arthur right then I thought it a bad time to say so. I turned down the volume on my red coat, but kept my hair as it was, hiding my mismatched eyes behind a pair of snappy shades.

“Better?”

“You’ll do.”

We were standing outside the place now. A standard apartment at the back of a lot of others; black fire escape, small windows, little roof garden throwing down wisps of greenery into the guttering. But at the window there was a light, something rather like sunlight, I guess, occasionally strobing here and there-following her movements as she wandered about her flat.

Some people have no idea of how to go unnoticed. In fact, it was astonishing that the wolves hadn’t seized on her before. She’d not even tried to hide her colours, which was frankly beyond unwise, I thought-hell, she hadn’t even pulled the drapes.

Arthur gave me one of his looks. “We’re going to protect her, Lucky,” he said. “And you’re going to be nice. Okay?”

I made a face. “I’m always nice. How could you possibly doubt me?”

SHE INVITED US IN straightaway. No checking of credentials; no suspicious glance from behind the open drapes. I’d had her down as pretty, but dumb; now I saw she was a genuine innocent, a little-girl-lost in the big city. Not my type, naturally, but I could see what Arthur saw in her.

She offered us a cup of ginseng tea. “Any friend of Arthur’s,” she said, and I saw his painful grimace as he tried to fit his big fingers around the little china cup, all the while trying to hold himself in so that Sunny could have her sunshine…

Finally, it was too much for him. He let it out with a gasp of release, and the rain started to come down in snakes, hissing into the gutters.

Sunny looked dismayed. “Damn rain!”

Arthur looked like someone had punched him hard, right in the place where thunder gods keep their ego. He gave that feeble smile again. “It doesn’t make you feel safe?” he said. “You don’t think there’s a kind of poetry in the sound, like little hammers beating down onto the rooftops?”

Sunny shook her head. “Yuck.”

I lit the fire with a discreet cantrip and a fingering of the rune Kaen. Little flames shot out of the grate and danced winsomely across the hearth. It was a good trick, though I say it myself-especially as it was an electric fire.

“Neat,” said Sunny, smiling again.

Arthur gave a low growl.

“So-have you seen anything strange around here lately?” Stupid damn question, I told myself. Move a sun goddess onto the third floor of a Manhattan brownstone, and you’re apt to see more than the occasional pyrotechnics. “No guys in suits?” I went on. “Dark overcoats and fedora hats, like someone from a bad fifties comic strip?”

“Oh, those guys.” She poured more tea. “Yeah, I saw them yesterday. They were sniffing around in the alleyway.” Sunny’s blue eyes darkened a little. “They didn’t look friendly. What do they want?”

I was going to tell her about Bren, and what had happened to Old Man Moony, but Arthur stopped me with a glance. Sunny has that effect, you know; makes guys want to do stupid things. Stupid, noble, self-sacrificing things-and I was beginning to understand that I was going to be a part of it, whether or not I wanted to be.

“Nothing you need to worry about,” Arthur said with a big smile, clamping a hand on my upper arm and marching me onto the balcony. “They’re just some guys we’re looking for. We’ll camp out here tonight and keep an eye out for them for you. Any trouble, we’ll be here. No need for you to worry. Okay?”

“Okay,” said Sunny.

“Okay,” I said between gritted teeth (my arm felt like it had been pounded several times with a hammer). I waited until we were alone, and Sunny had drawn the curtains, then I turned on him. “What’s the deal?” I said. “We can’t hold back the Shadow-wolves. You must know that by now, right? You saw what they did to Moony and Bren. Our only chance is to outrun them, to take your lady friend with you and to run like the blazes to another city, to another continent if we can, where the Shadow has less influence-”

Arthur looked stubborn. “I won’t run.”

“Fine. Well, it’s been a blast-Ow! My arm!”

“And neither will you,” said Our Thor.

“Well, if you put it that way-”

I may be a trifle impetuous, but I know when to surrender to force majeure. Arthur had his mind set on both of us being heroes. My only remaining choice was whether to set my mind to helping him, thereby possibly saving both our hides, or to make a run for it as soon as the bastard’s guard was down-

Well, I might have gone down either path, but just then I caught sight of our boys in the alleyway, sniffing and snarling like wolves in suits, and I was down to no choice at all. I drew my mindsword, he drew his. Glamours and runes distressed the night air. Not that they would help us, I thought; they hadn’t helped my brother Bren, or the mad old moongod. And Shadow-or Chaos, if you prefer-had plenty of glamours of its own with which to strike down three renegade gods, fugitives left over from the End of the World-

“Hey! Up here!” yelled Our Thor.

Two pairs of eyes turned up towards us. A hiss like static as the ephemera tuned into our whereabouts. A glint of teeth as they grinned-and then they were crawling up the fire escape, all pretence of humanity gone, slick beneath those boxy black coats, nothing much in there but tooth and claw, like poetry with an appetite.

Oh, great, I thought. Way to keep a low profile, Our Thor. Was it an act of self-sacrifice, a ploy to attract their attention, or could he possibly have a plan? If he did, then it would be a first. Mindless self-sacrifice was about his level. I wouldn’t have minded that much, but it was clear that in his boundless generosity he also meant to sacrifice me.

“Lucky!” It was raining again. Great ropes and coils of thunderous rain that thrashed down onto our bowed heads, all gleaming in the neon lights in shades of black and orange-from the static-ridden sky, great flakes of snow lumbered down. Well, that’s what happens around a raingod under stress; but that didn’t stop me getting soaked, and wishing I’d brought my umbrella. It didn’t stop the ephemera though. Even the bolts of lightning that crashed like stray missiles into the alleyway (I have skills too, and I was using them like the blazes by then) had no effect on the wolves of Chaos, whose immensely slick and somehow snakelike forms were now poised on the fire escape beneath us, ten feet away and ready to pounce.

One did-a mindbolt flew. I recognized the rune Hagall. One of my colleague’s most powerful, and yet it passed right through the ephemera with a squeal of awesome feedback, then the creature was on us again, unbuttoning its overcoat, and now I was sure there were stars in there, stars and the mindless static of space-

“Look,” I said. “What do you want? Girls, money, power, fame-I can get all those things for you, no problem. I’ve got influence in this world. Two handsome, single guys like yourselves-hey, you could make a killing in showbiz.”

Perhaps not the wisest choice of words.

The first wolf leered. “Killing,” it said. By then I could smell it again, and I knew that words couldn’t save me. First, the thing was ravenous. Second, nothing with that level of halitosis could possibly hope to make it in the music business. Some guys, I knew, had come pretty close. My daughter Hel, for instance, has, in spite of her-shall we say alternative-looks, a serious fan base in certain circles. But not these guys. I mean, Ew.

I flung a handful of mindrunes then: Týr; Kaen; Hagall; Ýr-but none of them even slowed it down. The other wolf was onto us now, and Arthur was wrestling with it, caught in the flaps of its black coat. The balcony was pulling away from the wall; sparks and shards of runelight hissed into the torrential rain.

Damn it, I thought. I’m going to die wet. And I flung up a shield using the rune Sól, and with the last, desperate surge of my glam I cast all the firerunes of the First Aettir at the two creatures that once had been wolves but were now grim incarnations of revenge, because nothing escapes from Chaos, not Thunder, not Wildfire, not even the Sun-

“Are you guys okay out there?” It was Sunny, peering through a gap in the curtains. “Do you want some more ginseng tea?”

“Ah-no thanks,” said Arthur, now with a demon wolf in each hand and that stupid grin on his face again. “Look, ah, Sunny, go inside. I’m kinda busy right now-”

The thing that Our Thor had been holding at bay finally escaped his grasp. It didn’t go far, though; it sprang at me and knocked me backwards against the rail. The balcony gave way with a screech, and we all fell together, three floors down. I hit the deck-damned hard-with the ephemera on top of me, and all the fight knocked out of me and I knew that I was finished.

Sunny peered down from her window. “Do you need help?” she called to me.

I could see right into the creature now, and it was grim-like those fairy tales where the sisters get their toes chopped off and the bad guys get pecked to death by crows and even the little mermaid has to walk on razor blades for the rest of her life for daring to fall in love…Except that I knew Sunny had got the Disney version instead, with all the happy endings in it, and the chipmunks and rabbits and the goddamned squirrels (I hate squirrels!) singing in harmony, where even the wolves are good guys and no one ever really gets hurt-

I gave her a sarcastic smile. “Yeah, wouldya?” I said.

“Okay,” said Sunny, and pulled the drapes and stepped out onto the balcony.

And then something very weird happened.

I WAS WATCHING HER from the alleyway, my arms pinned to my sides now and the ephemera straddling me with its overcoat spread like a vulture about to spear an eyeball. The cold was so intense that I couldn’t feel my hands at all, and the stench of the thing made my head swim, and the rain was pounding into my face and my glam was bleeding out so fast that I knew I had seconds, no more-

So the first thing she did was put her umbrella up.

Ignored Arthur’s desperate commands-besides, he was still wrestling with the second ephemera. His colours were flaring garishly; runelight whirled around them both, warring with the driving rain.

And then she smiled.

It was as if the sun had come out. Except that it was night, and the light was, like, sixty times more powerful than the brightest light you’ve ever known, and the alley lit up a luminous white, and I screwed my eyes shut to prevent them from being burnt there and then out of their sockets, and all these things happened at once.

First of all, the rain stopped. The pressure on my chest disappeared, and I could move my arms again. The light, which had been too intense even to see when it first shone out, diffused itself to a greenish-pink glow. Birds on the rooftops began to sing. A scent of something floral filled the air-strangest of all in that alleyway, where the smell of piss was predominant-and someone put a hand on my face and said:

“It’s okay, sweetie. They’ve gone now.”

Well, that was it. I opened my eyes. I figured that either I’d taken more concussion than I’d thought, or there was something Our Thor hadn’t told me. He was standing over me, looking self-conscious and bashful. Sunny was kneeling at my side, heedless of the alleyway dirt, and her blue dress was shining like the summer sky, and her bare feet were like little white birds, and her sugar blond hair fell over my face and I was glad she really wasn’t my type, because that lady was nothing but trouble. And she gave me a smile like a summer’s day, and Arthur’s face went dangerously red, and Sunny said:

“Lucky? Are you okay?”

I rubbed my eyes. “I think so. What happened to Skól and Haiti?”

“Those guys?” she said. “Oh, they had to go. I sent them back into Shadow.”

Now Arthur was looking incredulous. “How do you know about Shadow?” he said.

“Oh, Arthur, you’re so sweet.” Sunny pirouetted to her feet and planted a kiss on Our Thor’s nose. “As if I could have lived here this long and not have known I was different-” She looked at the illuminated sky. “Northern lights,” she said happily. “We ought to have them more often here. But I really do appreciate it,” she went on. “You guys looking out for me, and everything. If things had been different, if we hadn’t been made from such different elements, then maybe you and I could have-you know-”

Arthur’s face went, if possible, even redder.

“So, what are you going to do now?” she said. “I guess we’re safe-for a while, at least. But Chaos knows about us now. And the Shadow never really gives up…”

I thought about it for a while. And then an idea came to me. I said: “Have you ever thought of a career in entertainment? I could find a job for you with the band…” I wondered if she could sing. Most celestial spheres can, of course, and anyway, she’d light up the place just by stepping onto the stage-we’d save a fortune on pyrotechnics…

She gave that megawatt smile of hers. “Is Arthur in the band, too?”

I looked at him. “He could be, I guess. There’s always room for a drummer.”

Come to think of it, there’s a lot to be said for going on the road right now. New people, new lineup, new places to go-

“That would be nice.” Her face was wistful. His was like that of a sick puppy, and it made me even more relieved that I’d never been the romantic type. I tried to imagine the outcome: sun goddess and thunder god on stage together, every night-

I could see it now, I thought. Wild-re, on tour again. I mean, we’re talking rains of fish, equatorial northern lights; hurricanes, eclipses, solar flares, flash floods-and lightning. Lots of lightning. Might be a little risky, of course.

But all the same-a hell of a show.