Page 26 of Thor

"Of course I've seen it! I'm the one who pulled it out of the ice. Where I first found you, I guess. That was your hand, wasn't it? Reaching for the hammer?" Of course it was. "We should have kept digging, instead of stopping early for dinner as soon as we found the hammer. Then you'd still have it, and when this monster you keep talking about appears, you'd know what to do."

"I do know what to do, Miss Sibyl, and if you say the hammer is back at your camp in the mountains, then we shall go there. Do you still wish to watch this movie? You seem distracted."

She sighed, and paused the film. "I've seen it before. I already know what happens. Is...is it anything like you remember?"

"Well, that man is certainly not me," he said, pointing at the frozen Hemsworth on the screen, surrounded by Frost Giants. "I never marched into battle without Odin. While I did lead our men, it was never without his command to do so. We were like brothers, though he was older than me. As for Loki, well, those who did not know us thought all three of us brothers, we looked so alike. He was nothing like that man."

Right. So the Norse gods were just men who looked like Hemsworths. Or better than Hemsworths, if they were all like Thor.

"But Sif...she was a true warrior maiden, or she would have been, if she'd lived." Thor smiled fondly.

Sibyl had to rack her brain to remember who Sif was in the movies, as well as the mythology. "Sif was your wife?"

Thor laughed so hard he choked. "No, never! Sif had vowed never to marry, though she might have changed her mind, if she met the right man. Sif was my sister. She died in battle against that abomination when Erik attacked our village, and it is to her spirit I will dedicate the blow when I send Fenrir to Hel, where he belongs."

"Isn't Fenrir a wolf?" she ventured.

"Half wolf, half man, and all monster. He must die," Thor said.

"Right." So the stories had gotten a little garbled over the centuries. But they'd been right about his hammer... "So, this hammer of yours. Does it have any magical powers?" Sibyl asked.

Thor laughed. "You mean does it summon lightning, or make me fly? No, it is just a hammer. A tool for hitting things."

"And you're not really the god of thunder, either."

Thor tilted his head to the side. "Well, there was that one time we had a lightning storm, and I said it would not strike the village, but it would likely strike a tree on the hill above it. Moments later, a bolt of lightning split the sky, and the tree, too. My father knew how to predict the weather, and he taught me, so I always knew when a storm was coming. There was nothing magical about it, but people believed it might be, and nothing I said would persuade them otherwise. Sometimes, it's nice to believe in magic, when it will help you. Not when it's a curse that turns people into monsters."

"My cousin Callie would say that you can't turn people into monsters. They either are, or they aren't, and curses have a way of separating monsters from the rest of us. Then again, the curses she cast weren't really magic so much as...well, downright diabolical. She filled some dick's pants with chili powder once, and changed the language on his phone to Korean, because he was rude to a waitress. He turned out to be allergic to chili, and he had a terrible rash as a result." She wondered what Callie would make of this wolf monster Thor kept talking about. She was pretty sure chili was bad for dogs, too.

"Your cousin is a witch, then?"

Sibyl sighed. "Callie would say some people call her that, but magic is just people's word for things they can't explain. She says magic doesn't really exist."

"So if you were to tell her about me, she would not believe you."

"Oh, god, no. She'd tell me I was crazy, or that you were lying. That foundation sacrifices, gargoyles like you, couldn't possibly exist." Her tone turned wistful. "I'm disappointed about the flying bit, though. I think that was the sweetest scene in the movie, where he flies off with her in his arms." Too late, she realised they hadn't watched that part yet, so Thor couldn't possibly know what she meant.

Thor snorted. "Preposterous. How anyone could believe a hammer could make a man fly. You need wings to fly. Wings like these." He rose to his feet, rolled his shoulders and...

"Fucking hell. Are those real?" Sibyl whispered.

They stretched from one wall to the other, all the way up the ceiling, like someone had stuck a giant bat to his back.

"Must I remind you again that every part of me is real, Miss Sibyl? If you wish to fly, then I shall take you." Thor held out his hand.

Sibyl didn't hesitate. She took it.

THIRTY-ONE

Thor burst through the roof, Sibyl held tightly in his arms, and spread his wings. Up, up, up, until the whole town was spread beneath them. The mountains were little more than looming shadows to the west.

"Oh, wow. That's the aurora, isn't it? I thought you couldn't see it in summer," Sibyl breathed. "It's so beautiful."

Thor spun around. Now he could see the green waves rolling across the sky. They should not be flying in this. He angled down, back toward the roof. "We should stay here, where we won't be seen," he said as they landed.

"Is it not safe to fly during an aurora?" Sibyl asked. "I've never heard that. I mean, thunderstorms are dangerous, but I thought auroras were just ionised particles from the solar wind, burning up in the upper atmosphere. Not even planes fly that high."

So many words he did not understand. Thor just shook his head. "My father told me those lights are made by the reflections off the Valkyries' armour as they ride across the bifrost, ferrying the dead from Midgard to Valhalla, and to take care not to look too closely, lest I alert them to my presence, and they take me too early. Even after a thousand years, it is too soon. I have not killed Fenrir yet."

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