Arthur Quinn and Hell's Keeper (26 page)

‘So when the life of the tree is threatened,' says Skuld, ‘we can act.'

‘And you, Loki,' says Urd, ‘you threatened the life of the tree.'

Arthur is walking around the boulder nearest the well when Loki spots him.

‘You can't hide, Arthur Quinn!' he shouts at him. ‘Get back over here! I need to kill you before I go back to Midgard.'

‘No, Loki. You're going somewhere. But you're not going back to Midgard.'

‘What
are
you talking about?' Loki jeers as he storms towards Arthur.

Arthur simply lays his hand on the boulder and then the god sees what he's been up to.

Gleipnir is coiled right around the rock, criss-crossing itself countless times so that the rock is held tightly in its grasp. There is no knot keeping it in place; the end is bound to the rest with magic, sealed forever. Loki's eyes follow the other end of the ribbon as it trails across the ground, between pebbles, over dust. Finally, his gaze follows it off the ground, as it rises towards him. He cries out in horror when he sees that the other end of the ribbon is wrapped around his wrist.

Arthur smiles. While Loki was preoccupied with strangling him, he had sealed it around the god's arm.

Loki tugs at it. His face turns beetroot red as he struggles to slide it off or snap it in two but, throughout the assault, Gleipnir stays firmly fixed around his arm.

Arthur has somehow, somewhere found the strength to slide the boulder up onto the lip of the well. It balances there, precariously. Like the eye of the storm, this could all end with a tip either way. Loki, still struggling to release himself from Gleipnir, turns his attention back to Arthur in time to catch the boy's smile.

‘
Noooo!
' Loki screams, rushing towards him. But he's too late. Arthur throws all his remaining strength against the boulder.

It's as if time stops in that moment. The Norns turn to watch. Arthur stares. Loki can't take his terrified eyes off the boulder. It seems to take forever to grind over the lip before toppling down into the water with a slow-motion splash that barely even ripples the surface. Once it hits the water, it disappears from sight, sinking into the eternal depths of the well.

Loki watches as the ribbon grows taut above the ground. He grasps it tightly, but this is a tug of war he can't win against the inexorable pull of gravity and Gleipnir simply slices through the soft flesh of his palm. He lets go with a cry and is dragged forward in the direction of the well. With a flash of light, he transforms into Joe.

‘Arthur!' he pleads to the boy in his father's voice. ‘You have to help me. I'm not really Loki. It was all a trick. I'm your dad! Let me go.' His feet scrape along the ground, struggling to find some purchase.

Arthur looks on with pity and shakes his head.

With another green flash, Joe becomes Rhona.

‘I love you, Arthur,' she says. ‘Even if you won't save me.'

‘You're not fooling anyone, Loki,' Arthur says.

Loki transforms a third time. His feet keep sliding across the craggy ground, scrabbling frantically as he tries to pull himself back from the water's edge. He claws at the ribbon, doing his best to break free. But his best isn't good enough. Gleipnir is so strong that it shows no sign of being shredded by the rock lip around the well. In fact the reverse is happening. The ribbon is cutting a shallow dip in the stone itself. And all the while, Loki is pulled relentlessly on and on.

He has become Ash now, who is begging Arthur with pained eyes.

‘You'll be sorry, Arthur,' she says. ‘You'll realise that I really am Ash. Loki tricked you and now you're killing me.'

‘Just give up,' Arthur sighs wearily. ‘Can't you see it's over? You're nothing, Loki.'

And now Arthur remembers all that Loki has done to him, to his friends, to his family. As he recalls the pain, the hardship, the pure wickedness of every action, sudden red-hot anger rises in him.

‘You're nothing, Loki!' he screams, his voice breaking on the higher register. ‘You hear me?
Nothing!
'

The god is so shocked by Arthur's outburst that he instantly changes back to his own form. He falls to his knees and claws at the ground to try and slow his progress, but the ribbon keeps dragging him towards the well. As Loki's feet touch the water, he shrieks in anguish.

There is one flash of green after another as Loki becomes Ellie and Ex and Stace and Max and Morrissey and Fenrir and Donal and Orla and Drysi and Nurse Ann and even Ruairí and Deirdre and Luke Moran and everyone else Arthur has met in the past few months. All these faces plucked from Arthur's memories and meant to stir his sympathy. And finally, finally, Loki becomes Will. The boy with the platinum-blond hair and distinctive nose – the boy who betrayed Arthur – grips the edge of the lip. The rest of him is submerged in the water and Arthur can see that the muscles in his hands are white from the strain of trying stop himself being dragged completely under the water.

‘Arthur …' Will says. ‘Help.'

‘Goodbye, Loki.'

With one last burst of green light, Loki reappears. His face is an expression of torment, of dread, of fury. His hands grip tighter around the stones. But now three pairs of watery hands reach out from the cascade. They stroke his fingers, teasing them apart and away from the stones, making them slippery and slick.

He loses his grip.

And with one last look at Arthur, the Father of Lies, the trickster god, the god of mischief, the Lie-Smith, Loki, is gone.

It was the sunlight coming through the window that woke him.

He turned in his bed, still too tired to get up and hoping he'd fall back to sleep. It usually helped if he concentrated on the dream he'd just had, so in his mind's eye he visualised the well and the Norns' fingers and Loki sinking into a bottomless pit and–

Arthur sat bolt upright.

That wasn't a dream. It couldn't have been a dream. Could it …?

He'd been in Asgard one second and in his bed the next. He gingerly reached over to the locker, expecting his ribs to ache as he did so, but he didn't feel any pain. Picking up his phone, Arthur touched the screen and checked the time and date. It was 11:23 on a Sunday in early March.

Arthur flung back the bedcovers and swung his legs over the edge of the mattress. The pendant wasn't around his neck so he surveyed the room. It wasn't on the desk by the window either, where he always kept it. He fell to his knees; the only things under his bed were a stack of old
Beano
s, a burst basketball and a deserted spider-web. No hammer to be seen. There was no sign that what he'd experienced had been real. Had it all been a dream? The missing Viking weapons and lack of pain certainly seemed to indicate that this might be the case.

‘It's not, though,' Arthur said to the room. ‘I didn't imagine it all. That's the kind of thing that happens in lazy movies, not real life.'

He stood back up and looked around the room once more. There was still something he was missing, some little clue he hadn't noticed yet. The furniture was all in its correct place. His clothes were folded on the chair. He usually left them lying on the floor, but Joe sometimes tidied them up when he was sleeping, so nothing out of the ordinary there.

Finally, he saw what he was missing. There was nothing unusual in the room at all. What was unusual was the room itself. He was back in his Dublin bedroom, not the one in Kerry. He ran to the window and pulled open the curtains. Sure enough, the scene through the window was the one he'd gotten used to over the past few months. There was no sign of a flood; in fact, the ground was bone dry. The sky was a cloudless blue wonder and the sun gave off a fresh spring warmth that he could feel through the glass. People were coming and going around the estate, some walking dogs, some coming back from the shops with the newspaper and the makings of a Sunday morning fry-up. The Barry house was just as it had always been. There was no sign that any explosion had taken place and the family people carrier sat in the driveway as usual.

As he pulled back from the window in quiet, hopeful awe, he caught a glimpse of his own reflection. The black semicircle of the eye-patch was there still, looking like a hole in his head. He raised his fingers to touch it.

Standing there by the window, he caught the aroma of frying from downstairs. He threw his clothes on as quickly as he could, opting to take a shower after eating. His stomach was growling at him like he hadn't eaten in days.

Arthur raced downstairs and into the kitchen to find Joe standing over the cooker. He flicked the handle of the frying pan and a pancake flipped in mid-air before landing back in the pan and sizzling as Joe placed it back on the heat. Then he scooped sausages and bacon out of the other pan and stacked them on plates on the sideboard. The toaster spurted up some fresh slices just as Arthur spoke.

‘Uh … morning, Dad.'

Joe jumped and he swivelled to look at his son. His surprise at the sound of Arthur's voice was instantly replaced with a warm smile. He ran to him and picked him up in a tight embrace.

‘Morning, sleepy-head,' he said, setting him down to take a seat at the breakfast table. ‘We were wondering when you'd ever wake up.'

‘We?'

‘Yeah. We.'

Just then, the door leading to the small back garden opened behind him. The woman coming in was wearing gardening gloves smudged with moist patches of earth. She was carrying a small watering can in one hand, along with a trowel, and had her hair tied in a loose ponytail looped through the back of a baseball cap.

‘Mum?'

‘Morning, Arthur.'

‘
Mum!
' He kicked back his chair and was on his feet, sliding over the laminate floor in his socks. She had just enough time to set the gardening tools aside before Arthur knocked into her, sending them both into a spin. He held her as tightly as he could. Part of him was afraid that if he did, she'd just disintegrate, that she wouldn't be there any more, that he had imagined her. Then she hugged him back and Arthur knew – he really knew – that she was real.

Eventually, Joe's voice brought them back to the kitchen.

‘Your breakfasts will go cold, you two.'

Arthur and Rhona loosened their grips and looked into each other's faces.

‘You're here,' Arthur murmured.

‘I'm here.'

‘You didn't die.'

‘I never died. At least not in this reality. So at least that's a few uncomfortable conversations I won't have to have.'

‘But how?'

Rhona went to the sink and ran her hands under the tap. Arthur sat at the table next to Joe, who was chomping down his food. Arthur held his cutlery but just kept staring at his mother.

‘We don't know,' she answered as she wiped her hands dry and sat next to them. ‘We just remember being on Loki's battlefield. And then I tried to stop him but you touched him.'

‘Next thing we knew,' said Joe between chews, ‘we were all back in our beds, you included. The flood was gone, the Wolfsguard were gone. The world was back to normal and no one remembers a thing about Loki.'

‘But you do.'

‘Only those who were at the battlefield seem to remember,' explained Rhona.

‘And Ash and Max and–?'

‘They all remember. And they're all fine.'

‘I need to go see them!' Arthur started to get up from his seat.

‘No, you don't,' said Rhona in a stern voice he remembered and loved well. ‘Not yet anyway. I'll let everyone know you're awake and tell them to come over later. They've been looking forward to seeing you. But right now, you need to eat your breakfast. You've been asleep for the past three days.'

‘I have?'

‘Yup,' Joe said with a sausage suspended on the end of his fork. ‘But your mum knew you'd wake up soon enough. She told us not to worry.'

‘What happened, Arthur?' Rhona asked him. ‘While you were sleeping. What happened with Loki?'

Both his parents looked at him expectantly, so he told them.

It took surprisingly little time to recount the vanquishing of a god and Arthur finished the story between bites of food. ‘So Loki's gone. He can never return.' He hesitated, afraid to ask his mother the question that was gnawing at his gut. ‘What about … Hel?'

‘She's gone too,' said Rhona. ‘She was a part of Loki, but she couldn't stay in control once you called to your mammy for help.' She smiled at him.

They ate the rest of the breakfast in silence, just glad to be in each other's company.

After three helpings of pancakes and allowing time for the food to be digested a bit (during which Joe explained that work at the Metro site was starting back up in a week and that it seemed as if he had never quit his job – most likely thanks to some grateful gods, Arthur figured), Arthur helped his parents clean up. Joe washed, his mum dried and he put away the dishes. Every time Rhona handed him another bowl or bunch of cutlery, they smiled at each other in silence. Afterwards, they retired to the living room and watched an old murder mystery that had just started on TV. It was set on a train and they'd seen it more than once down the years but, to Arthur, it was still the best feeling in the world: sitting there and sharing a lazy Sunday afternoon together. Finally, just as the moustachioed little detective was unmasking the killer, the doorbell rang.

Arthur rushed to answer it and was immediately swept up in a warm embrace that smelled of lilies. Mrs Barry nearly pulled him outside she was cuddling him so forcefully, repeating over and over how thankful they all were that he'd rescued them from that terrible man. Mr Barry, who was standing stoically behind her throughout, offered his hand to Arthur when she was done. This was more acknowledgement than Arthur had had from him in all the months they'd known each other.

When the adults were finished expressing undying gratitude, Mrs Barry and her husband stepped out of the way to let Arthur's friends through.

Four pairs of feet thundered across the threshold. Ash was in front, trailed closely by Max and the Lavender siblings. They ran straight into him, enclosing him in a group hug. Ex somehow managed to lift them all a few inches off the floor.

When they were done, Ash stood a few steps back from him and looked him up and down.

‘You're alive. Really alive.'

‘I guess so.' Arthur blushed. He really didn't know how to take all the sudden praise. ‘Thanks to all of us.'

‘And Loki?'

But before Arthur could answer, Joe had appeared behind him and started bustling everyone into the kitchen. Arthur waited for them all to pass by him before shutting the door. As soon as he did, the bell rang a second time, an urgent
ding-a-ling-a-ling
.

Stace was standing there, looking pleased as punch to have her arm around a handsome boy close to her own age. Without saying a thing, she grabbed Arthur, covered the crown of his head in kisses and then planted a sticky lip-gloss mark on each cheek. She stepped away from him, blushing.

‘I'm … I'm just so grateful, Arthur,' she said in a breathless voice.

Embarrassed, Arthur flattened his hair where her kisses had disturbed it, shrugged nonchalantly and turned to her companion. He was a tall young man with broad shoulders, choppy hair the colour of hay and a flawless smile. Arthur was sure he'd never met the man before but something about his pale eyes told him that he should know him.

Stace's date put out his hand and said, in a deep and slightly accented voice, ‘You saved us all, Arthur.'

Finally, the penny dropped.

‘
Eirik?
'

There was no sign of the dark leathery skin that Arthur had grown used to in the Viking, and his cheeks and hands were fleshier than before but, staring into the young man's eyes, there was no denying that this was Eirik standing before him.

And he had spoken!

‘But … how …' Arthur stuttered into silence.

‘We woke up,' said Eirik, enunciating every sound clearly and evenly. No more grunts. ‘Just like everyone else did. Only we had our lives back.' His fingers went self-consciously to his throat. ‘Even our vocal cords.'

Stace hugged one of Eirik's toned arms.

‘This is our third proper date,' she told Arthur.

He had a million questions he wanted to ask, not least of which was how Stace felt about her ‘new' boyfriend having been dead for a millennium under the city, but he bit his tongue when his mother called him from the kitchen.

‘Arthur! Come on! We're waiting for you!'

Stace and Eirik stepped into the house and hurried past him into the kitchen. He shut the door finally and went after them.

A banner hung in front of the kitchen cupboards. It was a birthday banner that Rhona had had printed up years ago. It used to read ‘Happy Birthday, Arthur!', but someone had covered up the first two words and replaced them with handwritten words so the banner now read: ‘Thanks for Saving the World from Certain Destruction, Arthur!' The breakfast table was covered in party food of every description: cupcakes, finger sandwiches, cookies, sausage rolls and bagel pizzas. And they all surrounded a three-tiered chocolate fudge cake in the middle.

A cheer rose from everyone in the kitchen as Arthur entered, startling him slightly.

‘What's this for?' he asked when the cheering petered out.

‘It's for you,' said Joe. ‘We wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for you.'