Take Pains, Be Perfect
We decided I needed to go home. I needed to go home as soon as possible. Even I decided that, along with them. I heard clear fear in Dotta’s voice as she explained to me how what I knew was something she had spent years trying to unravel, and that it was the one thing she could never, in all her study, correlate. What I knew would wake us all up from Hel, and this realm, so meticulously designed would collapse.
Even Loki’s voice shook as he agreed with her. It seemed as if the weight of what he had so flippantly told me had sunk in, and he regretted it. He didn't say it, but I knew it.
The decision was made. I would leave Loki with Dotta, who knew Hel better than I ever could. My seven years was nothing to her thousand years of study. I was no longer needed, and could return to the opera house, the velvet seats, small study, hard work, reading and coffee in the morning, the sunlight filtering in. I could sleep in my own bed with its down comforter and return to the rhythm of the days. I could try to resist the urge to count them, count down the days until someone who knew me might join me.
“Before you go straight home,” Dotta said, “I want you to head over to my friend Collin’s house.”
“Didn’t you just say I needed to go straight home?”
“Yes, you need to go home, but before that I need you to be here for a bit, have some sort of reason for coming on the train. Loki visited me, they watch me, they know you were here and they were here, but we need to make your visit here mean something, something beyond Loki and myself. We want you to look like Loki’s visit was just something that happened to coincide with your own visit to this part of Hel. So you’re being cordial, dropping him off, and then going on with your own visit. Does that make any sense?”
“Perfect sense.”
“Yes, and if we get you out of here quick we’ll be in great shape. So, you stopped for tea, now you’re visiting Collin.”
“And why him?”
“He’s an acoustical engineer. You’re doing research.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, it’s perfect. It’s everything we need. I phoned to let him know you are coming over and he has a place for you to stay, he’s put a hotel room for you on his company credit card.”
“But I look like a backpacker, not a business traveler.”
“Honey, this is Hel, and this is a very old section of Hel. We’ve seen it all. You wear whatever you want!”
They walked me to the door and Dotta pushed it open, the sunlight suddenly flooding the dark living room. I stepped onto the stoop but Dotta and Loki remained inside. Loki put my backpack down in the doorframe, and stepped halfway out, squinting against the sunlight he had been out of for the last hour.
There was a subtle smile playing on his face, something forced and terse, with dark, worried eyes behind that.
“Thanks for the tea!” I smiled to Dotta.
“You are so welcome!” she smiled back but the worry in her eyes didn’t recede. I knew nothing was going to make this go away. She handed me a piece of paper with a hand drawn map to Collin’s house. “It’ll be easy to find it if you just follow these directions! Thanks for stopping by and dropping my friend off for me - it was great to meet you!”
And just like that we were three untrained actors in some farcical play. I half knew it then, as Loki stepped back into the house and the shadows that spilled out from the doorway, that these were the performances that everything depended on. They mattered most of all for him, and a little for me, and maybe even some small way for Dotta. Everything was known now, interconnected like the spinning top of time. Invariably linked. Dangerous.