Winter Lost

Interlude

The pain of the theft was not lessened because he was old. Experience meant he trusted less often and with more sureness.

He had believed.

When the phone rang, he’d been sitting in his chair before the dead fire for a full day, held suspended by sorrow and despair. By his trust, he had ruined everything. He let the telephone ring itself into silence.

When the phone rang again, the being known in this time and place as John Hunter refused to answer it. There was no information the phone would provide him that would make the situation better. The effort of centuries, in the face of fate, was brought to nothing because of him. Because he had trusted the wrong one.

The second silence lasted for long enough he believed they would not call again. He heard the memory of the music of the lyre transforming this mundane little cottage into something more, a magic that had less to do with the power of the artifact than it had to do with the roughened hands on the strings.

When the phone rang a third time, he picked it up.

He did not speak. Not once. But he didn’t need to. His name-brother knew what had happened in astonishing detail. He had suggestions—and he had a warning.

If this had been yesterday, John Hunter would have wondered how Ymir knew so much when Gary would have been in no condition to tell him anything. But it was not yesterday, and the frost giant was not Loki or Freya to pick information out from what was not said.

Hrímnir listened.

“They are coming, brother mine. Do not underestimate them.”

He set down the phone as Ymir’s words slid through him like poison.

His dog, who had been faithfully sitting at his feet, whined uneasily. But the dog had always been smart. Smarter than his master.

John Hunter died in the molten heat of Hrímnir’s fury—because anger was better than sorrow. Than pain. It felt good to give in to his rage.

“You want to go?” Hrímnir said, knowing his voice was nasty. He opened the door and let the growing wind and snow blow into the cabin with its false sense of home. With its vanishing warmth.

The dog cowered from his wrath—and the storm filling Hrímnir’s veins and bones insulated him from shame. Of everyone in this tale, the dog was the most innocent.

“Go, then,” he thundered. “It won’t save them.”

The dog ran from him into the forest outside as Hrímnir called winter’s wrath to the world.