The god of thunder used to come stay overnight in our house on his way to and from winter campaigns. Every autumn and every spring he’d arrive with nothing but his armor, his shield, and his hammer on his belt. With a great roaring laugh, he’d open his arms and call to my mother. Wherever she was, she dropped everything to greet him. My earliest memory is of her hitching me onto her back and running up to this gold and red giant of a man.

His eyes were as gray as storm-clouds, and lightning cracked inside them. Thick red braids hung down the sides of his neck, and he said, “Come here, boy, and if you can hang on, I will teach you to fight.”

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Sean Hardy is a dragon slayer.

It was a small dragon, only about the size of a barn, but still. He killed it. They mounted its head on a flatbed truck and drove it around the country. Annie and I paid five bucks each to slip into a dark tent smelling of mold and musty seashells – it had been a saltwater dragon – for three minutes. They flashed the lights on and off, and shot trails of fog at your ankles like they needed to make it scarier. The head just sat there, maw half open and greenish teeth filed down so nobody accidentally cut themselves and sued the carnival. Annie cowered back, hands clutching at her purse strap, but I reached out and touched its nose, just over the left nostril. The scales were rubbery there, and surprisingly soft. It reminded me of my dog’s belly.

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They say the world will end when a wolf swallows the sun.

***

I see him on the sidewalk, blue shirt tucked into pressed jeans, jacket unbuttoned, and tie knotted perfectly. Shoes polished. Yellow hair smooth. Everything about him elegant and untouched. And his hand-of-gold bends gracefully against his stomach.

I remember what his flesh tasted like when I chewed it off.

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BALDUR: I fall in love every year.

It happens in the summer, when all across the States heat strips clothes away from skin so the bright sun soaks inside, staining darker and darker, burning pink, and pulling out freckles. You know they call those Baldur kisses.

After me.

I fall for the beautiful girls, and I don’t particularly care what’s on the inside. Our affairs are destined to be so brief I hardy have time to discover any real depth, if it happens to exists. Which I suspect is rare, because any woman with depth is going to know who I am and exactly how it will end.

You were different.

SUSAN: “Baldur the Beautiful,” I said, thunking a sweating glass of iced tea in front of him. “What brings you here? The forecast calls for clouds all week.” I slid my hands into my apron pockets, fingering my notepad. Does a god eat? I didn’t want him to take up my table and then not order enough for a decent tip. Even those pretty eyes wouldn’t feed me tonight.

He flashed a smile hotter than the sun. “I believe I came here for you, beautiful.”

I laughed despite myself. “Does that line ever work?”

“I usually don’t need a line.” He winked. “What’s best to eat?”

“Crow.”

Baldur’s eyes mirrored the sky, roiling and gray today from all the clouds. When he widened them it was like seeing two spinning cyclones. I did not want to fall inside.

So many died that day, and the Valkyrie missed my ghost. I returned home to my wife not knowing I was dead.

That is the only secret; the only fantastic thing.

***

Tom Pivens: Erik – do you mind if I call you Erik?

Me: Go ahead.

Tom Pivens: Tell us what it’s like being one of the Valfadr’s einherjar.

Me: … perpetual.

Tom Pivens (laughing): But not without humor! I guess you’d have to be, up there in the fields with guys like Loki and the Thunderer knocking about.

Me: It helps.

Tom Pivens: So, you get up every day and practice battle for the dark days of Ragnarok. How do you prepare?

Me: I’m earning a degree in Engineering Physics.

Tom Pivens: Sounds tough – and not exactly what we think of here in NYC when we think about the ever-living warriors. You used to live up in Asgard, didn’t you? Tell us what it’s like.

Me: Like here. But colder.

***

Everyone wants to know what its like. What the Gods are like. But I’ll say this: we all have secrets. Loki isn’t funny, he’s malicious and enjoys pain. He doesn’t get to tease Thor because the Thunderer is stupid. It’s because he’s too honorable to be anything other than himself. If you want funny, spend time listening to Freyr and Odin shoot the shit. Freyr has no sense of propriety and Odin isn’t afraid of anything, especially looking like a fool. Their jokes last for centuries.

And the most powerful, of course, is Frigg, Because she knows the worst suffering doesn’t come from death or sorrow or eternity. It comes from love.

He sent for me by his golden boar.  

Gullinbursti was the pig’s name, and he was as tall as me where his back arched with glowing bristles. I knelt and looked into his fire-ball eyes. “I do not love your master,” I told him.

The pig stamped his hoof into the mud at my knee and replied, “He bade me return only with you.”

“Then you must remain, for I shall not go.” I turned and the boar stood still in my garden, among the sunflowers and blooming roses.

***

I grew used to his bristles gleaming at night. The shine diffused through the pale curtains at my window and lent my bedroom a heavenly atmosphere, which I suspected was his master’s point. What I’m sure his master did not expect was that instead of reminding me of him, it made me fonder of his pig.

***

Gullinbursti was rooting about in the early autumn detritus that blanketed the woods behind my house. It was the third week of his residence, and I carried a tray of tea and cookies out to him. I knew he was uninterested in mint tea, but thought the scent might please him and that the cookies would be a treat.

I knelt on a mound of damp leaves, uncaring as their wetness soaked into the hem of my skirt. Where my bootheels kicked through them, rich, rotting smells rose up and I smiled. Autum is my favorite time, when everything is dying and calming down, when the rioting colors of summer and their wicked passions begin to cool.

When the summer gods forget you.