Beyond the Bounds
After breakfast, I pedaled over to the opera house to finish helping Alex with another set of sound reads from the data.
While I was working on the Opera house Loki did some digging. And digging isn’t that easy here, because we are slightly behind the times when it comes to technology. It takes awhile for people to bring forward enough memories and expertise for complete ideas, and the entire working knowledge of something from start to finish. These things take time to develop, so we are still working on some of the technologies we know for certain are finished on Earth.
It wasn’t so bad for me, though, because books had been around Hel for a very, very long time. It was fantastic. I could read all day, find just about anything I wanted in one. And, not really remembering much had a distinct advantage. I didn’t miss things as much. So, knowing that, I sent Loki to the library to figure out where we were going. In his new clothes he didn’t stick out so badly, and he was able to ask around a little about the myths he was talking about. The library was able to help direct him to the map room, where some valiant souls had started the great and giant task of mapping out Hel.
He had done a comprehensive job of things, finding ideas of how to get places, where to go, even the name of a few authors we should try to look up if they were willing to help us. He had spread his notes and lists out on my tiny kitchen table, categorizing them, drawing a rough plan out of what he found useful from the library.
“I found that maybe there’s a group of people here,” he said, stabbing his finger on a point of a crudely copied map, “who might be able to tell me. And there’s one person who has been living in an enclave called Biarmaland that has written a few books. I thumbed through them. They’re not totally accurate but I can see that they are pretty good best guess.”
“So you’re saying that she made a lot of assumptions about Asgard, of your home, of how this realm relates to that one and she’s spot on?”
“I wouldn’t go so far as to say spot on. But she’s close in many regards. I think she’s our best guess, or at least the best place to start.”
“So, if she’s over there and we’re here,” I gestured to the map, “Then she’s two days and two train tickets away.”
“Yeah. Are you sure you don’t want to rent a car?”
“Loki, can you drive?”
“No, and I don’t have an ID anyways.”
“Yeah, I’d still like some semblance of a life with no criminal driving tickets when I get back home because I don’t drive either and I’m not renting you a car if you don’t drive.”
“We’re working on flying under the radar. Train it is, I guess.”
“Ok, what do you know about Biarmaland?”
“Well, it’s inhabited mostly by the souls of ancient Norse people. They’ve kept their customs over the millennia but a few people have modernized. The author I’m telling you about actually began as an ancient Icelandic Viking woman, pretty ordinary she says, didn’t bring a whole lot further, but as other people died and came forward she recorded their stories. Over time she’s collected a lot of information, stories, worked on projects, educated herself, and now she’s one of the leading experts here in Hel on how everything works.”
“Sounds like a good plan to start with her, then. Think she’d be willing to talk with you and not tell on you?”
“I think so. I mean, what’s the worst that could happen?”
“She refuses to help, calls whoever it is you’re afraid of, and you end up going into the underworld you are terrified of and are trying to stay away from?”
“I mean, yes, I’ve calculated that cost. But knowing her, and her understanding of me, she worships me as a god, even still. I’m Loki, of Asguard. She’s known of me since the dawn of her life. I’m the only thing she brought forward and it was important enough to her that she chose to spend the rest of her days in Hel studying everything that had to do with me and my family.”
“I mean, if you think it’s worth the risk.”
“It’s a risk I have to take. As soon as I’m there I’m going to send you back home on the train.”
“Why even take me at all?”
“Because I can’t get through Hel without you. You are the one who makes me normal here, two souls on some stupid adventure to the ends of Hel. It’s not that uncommon for people to wander here together, take trips that last centuries, use their income cards to fund travel without working, check everything out. You know that! You and I, that’s what were doing.”
“Can’t I just give you some cash?”
“Aren’t you curious, Autumn? Don’t you ever wonder what’s beyond this little section of Hel you live in? Don’t you want to go see and discover the place you have come to spend your final days?”
“I don’t know, Loki. I don’t think I’m curious. At least not yet.”
“How long have you been here?” He asked, a bit sarcastically.
“You know we don’t understand time any more once we are here, how days and hours work. I mean we know about them, as a fact, but they don’t stack up here. They seem off. When we begin to understand how long an hour is it changes, so one day all our hours are sixty minutes like they were before, and another day all the minutes are only twenty seconds. It’s almost like something messes with them. I’ve been here maybe six years? Maybe sixty?”
“I know how long you’ve been here. In Earth years. I can tell you that.”
“Are you making that up?”
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“Autumn, I’m so far above the layers of this realm. That’s why I’m so dangerous. You are merely in it. I was there at the creation of it.”
“So you know everything about Hel?”
“Oh, Autumn, I know her so very well.”