Modern Goddess: Trapped by Thor (Book One) Read online

  Chapter 12

  The feeling of warm, clean water surrounding me was the most glorious experience I'd had in days. It was comforting to be able to relax back in my simple, white bathtub and watch a single candle flickering on the bench beside me. It was such a stark difference to running away from gods and sea monsters.

  Though the thought of it pained me, it was comforting to know that Thor was nearby to ensure no militant/cycloptic girl guides tried to force their way into my cottage temple.

  Then again, he was probably destroying my stuff as I languidly lay in the bath. Or worse, he would be searching through it. I imagined him grabbing my basket of old weather reports – the one I kept in my lounge room – and sniggering until he cried tears. That, or he'd be outside chewing on my roses as he read through one of the many diaries I had that kept a meticulous record of my days.

  The damn brute. I didn't know how to deal with him. He was a firecracker of a nong. What was worse, he was always more in control than me.

  I sunk farther into the hot water, allowing it to lap over my closed lips.

  I swirled my fingers around in the water, creating small eddies and vortices.

  At least I wasn't sandy anymore. About the only thing that I could be happy for. After this lovely, but brief, bath, I imagined things would get dirty again. They'd get loud, they'd get ridiculous, they'd get out of control. In the middle of it all would be the loudest, dirtiest, and most controlling nong of them all – Thor.

  I sighed again.

  “Details,” Thor thundered from the door.

  I gave a startled jump. “Don't you come in here, Thor,” I snapped.

  He paused in silence, then laughed heartily. “Are you threatening me again, Details? I have told you, you cannot best me in battle. Do not provoke me.”

  I stared at the door. I would not put it past the giant cactus to burst in and laugh at me while waggling his eyebrows.

  “You have bathed for long enough. We must save the world.”

  I glared harder at the door. If I was the goddess of deathly stares, then the door would have turned into dust by now.

  That thought sent an unsettled feeling mucking up my stomach. It reminded me that, if Thor was right and wasn't playing an outrageous game with me, then I couldn't be sure of what goddess I was. All these years I could have been convinced that I was the goddess of details and facts, only to be wrong.

  What was my legend? Where did I come from?

  “Details? You have gone quiet. Are sea monsters attacking you from the drains? Do you require rescue, again?” he said the last word with enough sarcasm to impress a school-full of rebellious teenagers.

  The door handle rattled.

  I leapt up from the bath immediately, water sloshing everywhere, and grabbed for my bathrobe.

  The door, despite being locked, opened anyway. In strode Thor (keeping in mind that my bathroom was only small and couldn't permit too many strides from a giant Nordic god).

  I had enough time to whip my bathrobe on and to prepare a shocked and indignant glare.

  “Details,” he said with a cheeky smile fattening his cheeks. He looked down at the bath and appeared to inspect it. “There are no sea monsters there, unless they are of the pitifully small variety.” He pressed his fingers together in case I didn't understand how small he was talking about here.

  “Excuse me,” I blustered at him, “But where I come from, you don't walk into people's bathrooms while they are in the middle of taking a bath!” I stamped my foot.

  He looked down at my foot then up at my face. “Where do you come from? Where I come from, I walk into bathhouses all the time. Two of the places I come from, anyway.” He shrugged his shoulders.

  I clutched at my bathrobe, aware that my knuckles were as white as the toweling fabric that surrounded me. What a lecherous jerk. “Thor,” I looked up at him, “What would Hera think if she heard about this?”

  At the mention of his half-wife's name from another identity, Thor lost the act. He paled. “She wouldn't think, she'd hit me.” He shrugged his shoulders, and this time it was a far more genuine move.

  “Right,” I said, happy that the mention of his paranoid, but still legitimate half-wife was enough to make my point. “I'm going to go get dressed. Then I'm going to reject your visa application.” I mentioned over my shoulder as I headed for my bedroom.

  Thor followed right behind me. He paused at my bedroom door.

  I had to turn and look at him pointedly. “I'm going to get dressed alone,” I pointed out, “I'm a big goddess, and I know how to put a sweater on.”

  “Toga,” he said automatically. “I thought we discussed how—“

  Luckily my bedroom door hadn't been damaged in Loki’s attack on my house, and I took the time to slam it in Thor's face.

  I waited several moments, ensuring Thor wasn't going to open it/kick it down/hammer it to pieces with Mjollnir.

  When it remained firmly closed, I dressed. I didn't put on a toga. I may not know what goddess I was, but I still wasn't one of those goddesses. Which was a comforting thought; it reminded me that regardless of what I found out about my past and my true powers, it would still not invalidate the life I’d been leading to-date. It would frame it in a different reference. Who I was – all those books, muffins, roses, and mulching – wasn't going to be wiped away if I found out I was the goddess of rejecting foolish god ideas. It would still remain as part of my history, I would just look at it differently....

  I grabbed something sensible. No skirt and heels for me, thank you. I put on a sensible pair of black work pants, a sensible shirt, and a sensible pair of shoes. I tied my hair into a sensible bun. If Thor was right – and I hoped he was wrong – and this all did end up with a god battle somewhere, I knew for a fact a toga wouldn't be a helpful thing to wear. Toga's had a habit of snagging on broken tree branches/spears of war gods who were chasing you. They also had a habit of slipping down at inappropriate moments.

  I patted my clothes neatly and reached over to pluck up a pair of thick, black-rimmed glasses from my dresser. I stopped. I didn't need glasses. I had no problem with my vision.

  My hand hovered there. My fingers closed around the glasses and I pushed them onto my face anyway.

  I didn't care if I didn't need them. I wanted to wear them.

  I walked over to my door and opened it again dramatically.

  Thor wasn't there.

  He'd been shadowing my every move, and now he'd nicked off. I checked through my bedroom window to ensure he wasn't hanging around there staring in through the gap in the curtains like a creepy giant stalker.

  Nope.

  I heard noises from the kitchen.

  I marched there only to find Thor with his head in my pantry. He had two tins worth of cookies and slices in his arms, and he had almost devoured his way through both of them.

  I let my lips slide open and I stared at him.

  He stared blankly back as he finished a swallow. “These are okay,” he shrugged his shoulders then wiped his fingers on my pantry door, “But I could do with a beer to wash them down.” He looked at what I was wearing. “Unless the fashion in togas has changed in the past two minutes, then you have disobeyed a direct order and are not dressed appropriately for divine adventures.”

  I shook my head and pushed my glasses further up my nose. “You can't order me around, Thor – I don't belong to your pantheon.”

  “That you know of, Details.” He dropped the tins, having finished their contents, and waggled a finger at me.

  “Precisely,” I crossed my arms and raised an eyebrow before he could, “For all you know, I could be from the Indian pantheon, or Chinese.”

  “You don't look Chinese,” he pointed out with an easy shrug. He appeared to find more crumbs on his fingers and wiped them on the rack of clean tea towels behind my pantry door – all of them.

  I responded by pushing my glasses further up my nose, though they hadn't slipped down from the last time. “You are
a slob.”

  “And you don't need glasses.” He walked past me and whipped my glasses off in a quick move that saw me unable to respond.

  When I tried to snatch them off him, he used his superior height and held them aloft with one arm.

  Yes, that's right, like a child keeping a toy from a younger sibling. There was no way I was going to jump for them. I did, however, consider a quick junk punch – that would fell the brute. If he wasn't Thor, that was.

  Instead, I settled for turning sharply and heading for the back door. “Are you going to act childishly in my kitchen all morning, or are we going to do something proactive about saving the world?”

  “Childishly?” he repeated, tone neutral.

  He wasn't going to comeback with “Takes one to know one,” was he? If this was going to degenerate that far, then I was ready to call Odin and have him pick up his son before the crotchety big baby needed a diaper change.

  “Where are you going?” He brought down the arm that held my glasses aloft and stared at the rims thoughtfully.

  I thought he was going to offer them back to me – realizing that the game was not funny to people who were divine and much, much older than preschoolers (by a factor of eternity). But as soon as I made a step towards them, he crushed them in one of his giant hands.

  The glass was just so much dust as it filtered through his fingers.

  My jaw could have dropped off.

  “You do not need glasses, Details,” he said. “You hide behind them.”

  “You, you—“ I couldn't form the words, but oh boy did I want to tell him how much of a giant, universe-sized jerk he was.

  He wiped his glass-covered hand on the apron strung up on a hook by my pantry. “If you are to find out who you are, then you can no longer hide from me.” He turned to the side, too quickly for me to see his exact expression.

  I saw my solid, cast-iron frying pan in my peripheral vision, and I was seconds from reaching over, grabbing it, and whacking Thor right on the nose.

  “Details, we must go.” He headed towards my living room.

  “The nearest God Transport Hub is this way,” I said through clenched teeth as I pointed out of my back door.

  “You have one in between the room in which you read and sleep. I thought you would have noticed that,” he said casually as he walked for the door.

  Yes. There was that. “You can't use it to get to the Immigration Office,” I said through clenched teeth as I followed him.

  “Perhaps if I was as uncreative as you, Details, that statement would be true.” He burst into my living room with the kind of drama and gravitas that my living room door didn’t enjoy. The damn thing fell off its hinges.

  I watched the door clatter to the floor.

  Words couldn’t express....

  “This temple of yours requires work, Details. Also, I have found through years of experience that marble is a sturdier building material.”

  If I kicked him in the back of his legs, would I break my foot? Or would I just bruise it?

  Thor stopped in front of the door that led to my tamed, library-loving spatial anomaly.

  “It only goes to libraries,” I pointed out with the lowest, most annoyed tone I could manage.

  “Perhaps for boring goddesses, like yourself. But there's one thing you should know about me, Details.” He paused to look over at me dramatically.

  Oh, there were plenty of things I should know about him. All of them were as annoying and useless as the next. “What's that, Thor? That you still sleep with a teddy bear?”

  He looked confused. “Who is this Teddy? Has he been spreading rumors that he has shared my bed?”

  My bottom lip wobbled, but I tried to look as stony as I could. “It is a small toy in the shape of a bear.”

  “I see, you use it to remind yourself – as a visually striking image – to dream of fighting bears and other creatures of great strength. Fitting images to dream of. I see,” he looked thoughtful, “I will have to look into these Teddy Bears.”

  I could kill him, and, who knew, I would by the end of this all.

  “But there is another thing you should know about me: I’m anything but boring,” he admitted with a flash of a smile.

  I rolled my eyes, but not before he simultaneously grabbed for my wrist and wrenched the door open. He plunged us both through the gaping anomaly before I had time to register what was going on.

  I stumbled right out of a broom closet in the center of the Integration Office. Not the front door, mind you – but a broom closet.

  The god of cleaning stood right outside of it, blinking.

  Thor walked out behind me, grinning lasciviously.

  The cleaning god raised one arched eyebrow, then looked slowly from Thor to me. He shook his head at me and walked off.

  I tugged firmly on my shirt. “It's not what you think, Barney,” I called after him. “I—“

  “She likes tight, enclosed spaces,” Thor called in a louder voice. “Or at least she likes sharing them with—“

  I stood sharply on Thor's boot. It hardly made an indent, but it did shut him up.

  “Do you mind?” I turned on him, breath caught in the top of my chest. I was beginning to learn that I had untapped feelings that Thor was helping me to bring to the surface – feelings of exquisite embarrassment and indignation, mostly. “I work with him. How dare you—“

  “Shut up, Details.” Thor marched past me. “Where is your office?”

  I stared at him, my mouth opened, all muscle control lost. I couldn't deal with this guy, I just couldn't.

  “Is there something wrong with your jaw?” He flicked a curious look my way, then turned this way and that as he tried to figure out for himself where we were. “Ah ha,” he said, “I remember this corridor. I remember this broom cupboard,” he said with a thoughtful look. “You aren't the first goddess I've shared it with, let's put it that way.” He let his grin spread further.

  He was doing this to wind me up – I knew that, academically. But it didn't stop the hot flush from escaping over my cheeks. It didn't stop me from gripping my fingernails into my palms in an effort not to scream at him so loudly that I cracked the ceiling.

  This was all the height of fun for him. While he was having a hell of a laugh, he was bringing my reputation along for his unsavory ride.

  What would Barney think of me now?

  “You know, for a goddess, you spend too much time worrying what people think about you,” Thor pointed out as he strode off. He was reading my mind.

  “I've seen too many gods who no longer care, and I don't want to be one of those. They tend to be of the arrogant and insufferable variety,” I said pointedly.

  “The junction between faith in yourself and belief in the view of others is one that only the powerful can navigate, this is true. You – you care. You dress in human clothes, you follow their customs, you make their slices and delicious baked goods. You seem to care how you appear. Yet you have no idea how it is that you really look.” He glanced at me as he strode on. “Is that not a paradox, Details?”

  “It's not a paradox, and it's not strange,” I said, ineloquently. I followed it up with a huff.

  “I see. It often takes more – much more – than the words of another to enable someone to change their worldview.” He tipped his head up as he spoke, fancying it made him look more in-control – giving his words that extra, divine authority.

  It gave a better view of his nostrils. “Let's get to my office and get this over with.” I glared at him. I was beginning to realize that Thor – in his current mood – was not something I wanted walking around the Integration Office. The sooner we did what we had to and the sooner we were out of here, the better. I still wanted to have a job where I could show up with a measure of dignity and authority once this was done. That meant that I had to focus on managing Thor like a mother must concentrate on ensuring her unruly children don't tear apart the candy section of the super market.

  “You ar
e being determined. Well done, Details.” Thor nodded sagely.

  When this was over, I was going to ensure that every single visa application this brute put in would be rejected for the rest of eternity.

  We made it to my office, and thankfully we didn't run into any more of my colleagues. I could trust Thor, about as far as I could throw him. Which was not at all.

  Opening the door to my office and walking in sent an oddly familiar and pleasant sensation alighting across my middle. It felt a lot like everything was normal upon coming in and seeing my desk with all its neat stationary and my clean, comfortable chair.

  I let out a sigh.

  “You miss this that much?” Thor said immediately from behind me.

  It was all those ales, I tried to reason. They must be making him infuriating. Or it was the prospect that soon he would be (at least in his mind) happily cavorting on Earth with three functional simultaneous visas.

  “Yes,” I answered. “I do miss it.” I didn't bother to elaborate. I hardly thought that Thor, of all gods, would be able to appreciate how comforting it was to be able to walk into a room where all you'd done were normal things. I didn’t associate any sea-monster attacks or kidnappings or seeing oaks in the middle of the street with my office. Every memory I had of this place (that didn't involve Thor/Zeus/Jupiter) tended to be relatively pleasant. Far more pleasant than my last couple of days.

  Not for the first time, I wondered whether sitting down at my desk and getting on with my job would make all my problems disappear.

  Thor walked over to my chair and flopped down on it. He then raised his giant feet and plonked them onto my desk.

  The wood underneath him groaned with the weight.

  My lips slowly parted.

  Thor rested his head in his arms and grinned back at me. “Whip out a couple of those visas, and lets have those sacred contracts signed. Things to do, after all.”

  “Get out of my chair, and get your feet off my desk,” I snapped at him and tried to push his feet down. It was a tireless, fruitless, and unwinnable task.

  Thor watched me with interest. Somewhat like a human might watch an ambitious ant who picks up too much weight to carry. “Are you done yet?”

  I sighed heavily and gave up. “I’m not going to approve three visas for you, Thor,” I said. “You are dreaming if you think—“

  “Details, what do you think will happen to you if...” Thor shifted his jaw to the side, expression hardening, “Those who are after you manage to find you again?”

  He couldn't say Loki – he couldn't mention his name. Though I was in a Thor-hating mode, I still had a measure of sense left in me. If Thor was going to play the game of referring to Loki as “a god who was after me,” then I'd have to play along too.

  I didn't answer his question. I picked at some non-existent fluff on my shirt cuffs. “I'm not going to approve your—“

  Thor twisted in the chair to stare at me more directly – but he didn't remove his feet from my desk. “It will be unpleasant, Details.”

  “More unpleasant than being with you?” I asked with a raised eyebrow as I still picked at my cuffs.

  A grin spread across his lips. “Details,” he said carefully, “Must I point out that you have never been with me?” He looked thoughtful. “That I remember. I have to say, I do lose track of these things.”

  These things? Were all the numerous mortals and goddesses he (or mostly Zeus) had courted over the years just things to him? Wow, what a super dignified way of referring to living souls. Well done, Mr Universal Jerk.

  I shook my head over and over again. I wanted to point out that a) it wasn’t what I'd meant, and he knew it, and that b) I was starting to wonder if Loki and his gang wouldn't be a better option than spending my time with Thor the godly ass. Before I could speak, Thor removed his feet from my desk, and the wood seemed to spring back with a relief-filled groan.

  “Yes, Details,” he appeared to look serious, “Being with me is a far, far better option. You play, you jest, but the reality would haunt you. Their intentions – whatever they are – are of the malicious variety.”

  His words and his serious tone seemed to hang in the air.

  He was doing it again. He was controlling the entire conversation by switching between being uncaring and startlingly sincere.

  “Thor, no – I’m not going to sign those—“

  “Details, be reasonable. We – together – must do everything we can to track this problem down. We must – together – do everything we can to bring those gods to justice. We must – together – do everything we can to keep you, and this planet, safe. Do you not understand how important this is, Details?” his voice echoed with a seemingly undeniable genuineness.

  Together? By together did he mean that he would leave me at home while he got to business smashing skulls? Or that I could sit by his elbow as he looked for clues in the way his ale splashed in the bottom of his mug?

  I patted my bun and tried not to boil to death under the pressure of my own frustration and anger. “You say this, but then you are going to go to the Ambrosia, have a fight as Thor, then one as Jupiter, and one as Zeus. I know you, Thor—“

  He shook his head sharply. “You do not. You do not know yourself. How can you know another?”

  That's it, I was going to have to resort to hitting him over the head with something heavy. It was the only option left open to me.

  “Details,” he sighed heavily, directing his head down as he stared at his hands. He did something unexpected – he pulled Mjollnir from his belt and rested it on the desk. He didn't bust it down with a resounding thump – physically winning the argument through strength rather than reason.

  He just rested it there. He pointed to it. “Try to pick it up,” he motioned towards the hilt.

  I took an obvious blink. He was wasting our time again. Everyone knew that no one but Thor could pick up his hammer. It was bonded to him. “Thor, don't be—“

  “Try to pick it up, Details,” he said with greater insistence.

  He tapped the hilt.

  Mjollnir wasn't a hammer; it was a magical hammer. It could hit anything that Thor wanted it to. It could strike with as much force as Thor wanted it to. It would always make its way back to his grip no matter how far he threw it.

  I couldn't pick it up.

  “Pick it up,” he said, voice vibrating on that frightful edge it had when he'd made time virtually stop.

  Sighing, rolling my eyes, and trying to show him how stupid I thought this was, I placed my hand on the hilt. I attempted to lift it. I couldn’t.

  I gave it another go – trying to prove to him that, yes, I was trying here. The hammer was immovable. It felt like I was trying to move the whole universe with the strength of my pinkie.

  “Are you happy now?” I let the hilt of the hammer go and put my hands on my hips.

  “No,” he said, genuinely. He stood up and towered over me. He looked serious, divinely serious. “Do you know why you can't pick it up, Details?”

  I didn't want to let his tone and the endless look in his eyes railroad me. I didn't want to fall for another twist in the Thor-mood wheel that would see him getting away with acting like an ass for 99% of the time only to pull it back with the occasional wise one-liner. “It is your bloody hammer, Thor. It's magical and it is bound to you.”

  He shook his head slowly, hair shifting visibly over his shoulders. “These reasons to do not account for the truth.” He looked at me pointedly, waiting for me to try again.

  What was this, god school? Was he going to stand here and question me until I got the right answer?

  I threw my hands up. “I don't know then. I'm a weak goddess—“

  “It's because you don't want to pick it up,” he cut in. His tone was... endless again. He was speaking the truth. He was speaking with the authority and knowledge of the divine (which wasn't as common as you would expect when you dealt with gods all day).

  I don't want to pick it up. Great,
this was going to degenerate into another Thor chest-pumping lesson in victory. If I wanted to be motivated, I'd go get some self-help CDs from the library.

  “Do you know why you do not want to pick it up?” he asked, tone stretching, elongating, becoming everlasting.

  “I don't want to pull a muscle?” I answered facetiously. Anymore Socratic-method mid-crisis teachings from Thor and I'd turn into a rebellious school child.

  “You don't want the responsibility.” Thor grabbed Mjollnir and looped it back into his belt. He stared at me. “I have this hammer so that I may use it to defend the gods at Ragnarok. I have this hammer so that I may protect all of creation at the last battle of the gods. There, Details, I will die.”

  The last word hit a note, and boy did it ring. Mjollnir picked up the same note and it... shifted through everything.

  I blinked. He wasn't lying, I knew that. I knew the legend.

  I felt cold and unashamedly gave a shiver.

  “You cannot pick up Mjollnir, because you cannot give your life at Ragnarok. That is my destiny alone.”

  I blinked several more times and found myself looking at everything but Thor.

  That sad, haunting note died away, and Mjollnir grew silent. It was an empty silence.

  I knew about Ragnarok. All Earth gods did. It was far off – it was the end of gods, it was hardly going to happen next Tuesday.... that I knew of.

  “We do not know when it will happen, Officina,” he used my real name, if it was my real name, “We must be vigilant. For this, for this I ask you to grant me three concurrent working visas.”

  The last statement was at odds with the dramatic end-of-the-gods talk that had preceded it, and Thor's tone had lifted. Yet the whole sentiment behind it remained. I fancied Mjollnir was still managing to sing a silent, mournful note into the room.

  I slowly looked up at Thor. Technically, the threat of Ragnarok would be the kind of reason that would allow me to grant three simultaneous working visas to Thor, and to wipe away the records of all past transgressions. Due to the complicated interconnected way that the pantheons worked, the threat of Ragnarok was not just a threat for the Nordic Gods. Not this time. In the past, before the Integration Office had established the clear connections between the pantheons to enable a smooth and efficient immigration process, Ragnarok would have just involved Odin and his kin. Not anymore.

  The gods were connected, which meant their myths intertwined.

  Ragnorak, if allowed to happen, could kill not just Nordic gods, but all gods....

  Thor looked over me, stopping time with his gaze.

  I couldn't deny that he was serious and that the situation was serious to boot.

  He kept holding my gaze, and it was clear from his demeanor that he was in victory mode. There was no way he was going to accept no as an answer. I could tell from the endless expanse behind those eyes that he would shift stars to get his way.

  ... I caved.

  I took an enormous sigh and rolled my eyes – hoping he could see how much of a burden this was.

  He cracked a grin, snapping from serious, I'm-going-to-die-at-Ragnarok mode in an instant. Except it wasn’t true, because there was a reserve of tension underneath his eyes that made them fall into shadows.

  “You do me a service, Details.” He clapped his hands together with such a great big whoop that several unsecured papers fluttered off my desk.

  He didn't follow up his admission with something nice like “I'll buy you whatever you want,” or “I'll protect you rather than ditching you for more booze and broads.” Nope, he clapped once – somewhat like he was catching a fly between his giant palms (and that fly was me).

  He then reached for the drawer where he knew – from experience – I kept the blank contracts that a god had to sign once their application was accepted.

  I watched him like you might a full-speed train as it headed towards your broken-down car on the tracks – with a total inability to stop the crash I knew was about to happen. With Thor/Zeus/Jupiter bounding around Earth all at once, things were bound to get loud and destructive.

  He flicked me a glance as he grabbed the pen in my inkwell and signed his name to the contract. “Cheer up, Details,” he said as he finished signing the contracts and dumped my still inky pen back on my desk, “This is the first step in something—“

  “Divinely terrifying,” I finished for him.

  The end. Thank you for reading Modern Goddess: Trapped by Thor (Book One). The conclusion to this story – Modern Goddess: Trapped by Thor (Book Two) – is currently available.

  There are also two more instalments in the Modern Goddess series – Trapped by Atlas and Trapped by Apollo. You can buy Trapped by Thor Book Two and the other books in this series separately, or you can buy all three for a considerable discount in Modern Goddess: The Complete Series.

  Odette C. Bell has written over 60 books from sci-fi adventure to magical realism. Her full catalogue is available here.