The Lost Gods Read online

  The Lost Gods

  by the same author

  The Sleeping Army

  THE HORRID HENRY SERIES

  Helping Hercules

  Don’t Cook Cinderella

  The Parent Swap Shop

  Spider School

  The Topsy-Turvies

  Moo Baa Baa Quack

  Miaow Miaow Bow Wow

  Café At the Edge of the Moon

  What’s That Noise?

  Papa Forgot

  But What Does the Hippopotamus Say?

  Do You Speak English, Moon?

  FRANCESCA SIMON

  The Lost Gods

  For Martin

  First published in 2013

  by Faber and Faber Limited

  Bloomsbury House,

  74–77 Great Russell Street,

  London WC1B 3DA

  and

  Profile Books Ltd

  3A Exmouth House

  Pine Street

  London EC1R 0JH

  Typeset by Faber and Faber

  Printed in England by Clays, Bungay, Suffolk

  All rights reserved

  © Francesca Simon, 2013

  Illustrations © Adam Stower, 2013

  The right of Francesca Simon to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  A CIP record for this book

  is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978–1–846–68565–1

  2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

  Being famous has taken the place of going

  to heaven in modern society. That’s the

  place where your dreams will come true.

  Jarvis Cocker

  NOTE

  The Lost Gods is set in modern Britain but in a world where Christianity never existed, so people still worship the old Viking and Anglo-Saxon Gods. Time dates from the birth of Woden 5,000 years ago.

  Contents

  Part 1 The Gods Descend

  Behold Your Gods, Mortals!

  Meanwhile

  What Would Woden Say?

  Eager for Fame

  What Bad Fate Was Hers?

  Next Time You Create a World, Do It Better

  It’s Wodenic to Welcome Strangers

  Pizza

  The God of the Bitten Apple

  Your Gods Need You!

  Meanwhile

  A Display for Heroes

  Something Awful

  Part 2 The Fame-Maker

  Dr Frankenstein

  The Only Way Is Asgard

  Meanwhile

  Let’s Party

  Bring Me an Ox

  Where Did You Find This Guy?

  Beautiful Beyond the Dreams of Mortals

  Oh, to Be Famous

  Two Minutes to Change Your Life

  Meanwhile

  Part 3 Celebrity Gods

  Die for Me

  Meanwhile

  Bright Fame

  Defame

  Meanwhile

  Gods Can Do What They Like

  Meanwhile

  The Gods’ Delusion

  Meanwhile

  Part 4 The Frost Giants

  The Sleeping Army

  Meanwhile

  Earthquake

  Our Gods

  Hurricane

  Battle-Bright Warriors

  A Radiant Bride

  The Horse Might Talk

  The Wolf Way

  Four Walk-In Wardrobes

  Do the Gods Exist?

  Three Months Later

  Acknowledgements

  PART 1

  THE GODS DESCEND

  The bright, unbearable reality

  when gods appear on earth

  not in disguise but as themselves.

  Homer

  Behold Your Gods, Mortals!

  Two men and a woman stood in the middle of the Millennium Bridge in the Thorsday morning rush hour, forcing the hordes of rushing London commuters to dodge round them. One wore a long blue cloak, and hid his grim face beneath a broad-brimmed hat, pulled low over his missing eye. Anyone glancing up would have noticed two magnificent ravens circling above him with easy, dipping swirls.

  The other man, tall, red-bearded and muscular, dwarfed him, while the woman stood a bit apart, tossing her golden curls and scowling at the crowds pushing past her. Her nostrils quivered, as if she’d sniffed an offensive smell. The exquisite gold necklace draping her delicate neck caught the sunlight, writhing and weaving in shimmering patterns over her face.

  A teenage girl in stripy apple-green tights, a woollen scarf and Doc Marten boots jostled her with her backpack. The woman recoiled as if she’d been electrocuted.

  ‘It is time to reveal ourselves,’ said the one-eyed man. His rich, deep voice vibrated with emotion. ‘We have waited an eternity for this moment.’

  ‘Behold your Gods, mortals!’ thundered red beard.

  ‘Bow down and worship!’ commanded the golden-haired woman.

  ‘Move, you nutters,’ muttered a workman hurrying past.

  ‘We have returned!’ boomed the man in the blue hat. ‘It is I, Woden, the Father of Battles, God of Inspiration, Giver of Victory, Waker of the Dead. Tremble in awe, mortals, and worship us! ON YOUR KNEES!’

  ‘Oh Gods, the hippie brigade on a Thorsday morning, I can’t face it,’ groaned a smartly dressed woman clutching two mobiles.

  ‘BOW! WE ARE YOUR GODS!’ roared Thor. ‘We command you to bow!’

  Two girls jogging by began to giggle.

  ‘Move, you’re blocking the bridge,’ scowled a man, shoving through them.

  ‘Weirdos,’ snapped another.

  ‘Gods, I hate street theatre.’

  ‘Go home.’

  ‘Bloody foreigners.’

  The three Gods looked at one another. Thor’s mouth gaped open.

  ‘You are talking to Thor, the Thunder God, you worthless pieces of driftwood!’ he bellowed. ‘Hold your tongues, or my hammer will shut your mouths!’

  Everyone hurried by a little faster, in case the madness was contagious.

  ‘What’s going on?’ asked Thor. He looked suddenly shrunken. ‘Why aren’t they obeying? Why are they … ignoring us?’

  ‘Why don’t you look where you’re going, you fat cow,’ snarled a girl as she collided with the gawking, golden-haired woman.

  Freyja jerked her beautiful head.

  ‘Fat cow?’ she gasped. ‘Fat cow? I am Freyja, the immortal Goddess of Love and the Battle-Dead.’ Her body shook with rage. ‘How dare you,’ she hissed. ‘I’ll teach you to call me fat cow, you ugly hag. I’ll turn you into a pig.’ She began to mutter under her breath. ‘You’ll smell worse than Ulf the Unwashed.’

  ‘I’ll split open their ungrateful heads!’ bellowed Thor. ‘I can bring down this bridge with one blow of my axe.’

  ‘If only,’ muttered Freyja.

  ‘Patience,’ said Woden.

  ‘Then you do something!’ screeched Freyja. ‘Show them who’s boss.’

  Woden drew himself up to his full majestic height. His face was cold with fury and his single eye burned. Should he smite them all? Cause the River Thames to jump its banks and sweep away this ungrateful city? Whip up the northern winds and blow down these huge halls that mortals had built to challenge the Gods during their long absence? Who did these thralls think they were, anyway? They needed to be taught a lesson.

  ‘Pestilence and panic overtake you all!’ roared Woden. ‘May this bridge crumble to rubble. May you run crazed like ants escaping boiling water. May frogs fall from the sky. May you all hurl yourselves into the river and drown!’

  He closed his eye and intoned a charm.

  For a moment, the teeming crowds froze. Then a f
rog dropped from the sky and plopped onto Freyja’s head.

  She squealed and flailed and hurled the frog smack into the face of a passer-by, who reeled and knocked her down. She clutched Woden’s tunic as she fell, tripping him and sending him crashing into Thor, as oblivious commuters, jabbering into their phones, stumbled over them.

  The Gods lay prone. Freyja lifted her dishevelled head, her golden curls matted, her robes torn, her necklace glinting in broken pieces around her. She screamed and scrambled about collecting the scattered jewels. Beside her Thor groaned. Slowly Woden picked up his crumpled blue hat and placed it back on his bruised head. He was breathing hard, as if he had just run a marathon.

  ‘That went well,’ said Freyja.

  ‘You want to marry a troll?’ rasped Woden. ‘Then keep talking.’

  ‘I told you it wouldn’t work,’ said Freyja. ‘But did you listen to me, Lord High and Mighty? Oh no, you said—’

  ‘If you don’t have anything good to say, then don’t say anything,’ bellowed Woden. ‘It’s the ill fortune of the unwise that they cannot keep SILENT.’

  ‘What just happened?’ asked Thor.

  Woden shook his head.

  ‘QUIET!’ he roared. ‘I must think.’

  The circling ravens swooped down, perched on Woden’s aching shoulders, and whispered in his ears.

  Meanwhile

  In icy lands heavy with frost there was a steady drip drip drip. Cracks zig-zagged across vast sheets of jagged ice. A giant glacier shuddered, split, and a huge chunk broke off and crashed with an ogre-ish scream. The surging sea exploded, lashing the frozen cliffs as more and more ice poured into the water. The cracks widened across the glistening plains.

  What Would Woden Say?

  ‘Freya! Wake up.’

  She’d been having the falling nightmare into Hel again.

  Freya sat up, shaking. She was at home, twisted up in the blue and white duvet, looking into the sad face of the knitted snowman she’d slept with since babyhood.

  Her mum squeezed her arm.

  ‘It’s over, honey. Time to get up.’

  ‘Was I screaming?’ asked Freya.

  Clare raised her eyebrows. ‘No louder than usual.’

  Half an hour later, Freya sat at the table and ate her cornflakes. Her mum bustled round with her phone under her chin, making Freya’s lunchtime herring sandwiches while trying to sort out the Fane cleaning rota and the food for Woden’s forthcoming festival. Freya watched as Clare added lettuce to the sandwich. Once Freya would have objected, and sulked if she thought she’d get away with it, but her food fussiness had vanished since her ‘return’.

  That’s how her nine-day disappearance last spring was referred to. She’d been ‘gone’; then, thank the Gods, she’d come back. ‘Concussed,’ the doctor at Baldr’s hospital had said, as if that explained everything.

  Did it? Sometimes Freya wondered. It was a convenient excuse, which explained nothing about what had happened to her. Sometimes, when it all seemed most dream-like, she’d go to the Clark’s shoebox she kept hidden at the back of her wardrobe and pull out a thick stack of yellowing newspaper clippings. For a few days she’d been headline news:

  EVENING STANDARD

  FREYA IS ALIVE!

  MUSEUM MYSTERY DEEPENS

  Missing schoolgirl Freya Raven-Gislason was found earlier today wandering in a confused state by Woden’s Temple, near the spot she was reportedly seen nine days ago with two teens in fancy dress. She was bruised, dehydrated and suffering from exhaustion, but otherwise in good health.

  Police are continuing their search for the four stolen chess pieces from the priceless Lewis hoard, which vanished from the British Museum last week. A King, a Queen, a Berserk, and a Knight’s horse are still missing. Police would only confirm that Ms Raven-Gislason was helping them with their enquiries.

  Sunil, the policewoman who first found her on the Millennium Bridge had been kind but insistent. Had she seen who’d stolen the chess pieces? Had she stolen the chessmen? No, Freya had said. They stole me, more like, she’d thought.

  Had she run away from home or been kidnapped? And what of the two oddly dressed teenagers she’d been seen with on the bridge? Did she know them?

  No, she’d said. That wasn’t entirely a lie: how could she claim to know Alfi and Roskva, mysterious beings from another time and place?

  Sunil had persisted: ‘Around the time you were seen on the bridge, there was another incident involving a man wearing a bear skin attacking several cars on Upper Thames Street with a sword. A number of people were injured, some seriously. Did you see this man?’

  ‘No,’ lied Freya. Silently she’d wished the policewoman good luck trying to arrest Snot. They’d pressed her and pressed her to say where she’d been. When she told them she’d been to Asgard and Jotunheim and Hel, and met the Gods, her mum had intervened and insisted they take her to hospital and get a lawyer if Sunil was going to accuse her daughter of theft. Freya was frightened she’d be arrested, but after the initial questioning, she was never summoned to the police station again. Everyone just treated her like a runaway, and that was that.

  Beneath the cuttings, Freya kept a handful of business cards, from all the journalists who’d jostled for exclusive interviews, and the publicists who’d begged to represent her and sell her story. Clare was adamant that Hel would warm up before Freya sold a story to the newspapers, or even spoke to journalists, and Freya had been so bewildered and in shock after her return she hadn’t known what to do, so she did nothing.

  Eventually, interest died down. People still occasionally pointed at her in school, and whispered about her behind their hands, but that she could live with.

  What was hard was that there was no one, absolutely no one, she could tell her story to. Who’d believe her anyway – that she’d been to Asgard, rescued the Goddess Idunn from Hel and restored the Gods to youth? She wouldn’t believe anyone who said that, so why should anyone believe her?

  Safer to say nothing.

  Buried at the very bottom of the shoebox were Freya’s greatest and most hidden treasures. An arm bracelet, heavy with gold. Thor’s gift to her, when she left Asgard. Alfi’s metal brooch, intricately carved and twisted. Freya held them, her hands trembling.

  And a single falcon feather, tucked inside an old leather glove.

  Freya picked up the falcon feather and shook it. The feather shimmered and became a translucent falcon skin cloak. Freya touched the silky feathers and shook it again. The way it shrank back immediately to a single one always awed her. The tail feathers were still singed from the fire which had almost engulfed her when she’d spun into the citadel of the Gods, hunted by the eagle giant Thjazi.

  Whenever Freya thought she must have dreamt the whole thing, she’d take the feather and shake it out into the glowing falcon skin. Once she’d been tempted to put on the cloak of feathers and take flight, but fear held her back. That, and the nightmares.

  The falling nightmares were the worst – where she tumbled into Hel again, down down down into the freezing blackness where Loki waited to trap her and Thjazi, with his rushing wings and outstretched talons, ached to rip her to shreds. She’d be walking down the street, or queuing at the post office, and without warning she’d feel herself swept into a whirling vortex again and feel so dizzy she’d have to run out and get some air, and reassure herself that she was back in Midgard, and safe. She was still worried that, somehow, Loki would find her and take his revenge. But six months had passed, and he had not appeared. Sometimes Freya felt a prickling certainty that she was being followed, but whenever she spun round, no one was there.

  ‘You really should be making your own lunches now, you know,’ said Clare.

  Freya snapped out of her reverie.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said you’re old enough to be making your own sandwiches,’ repeated Clare.

  ‘I did offer,’ said Freya.

  Actually, she liked having her mum make her lunches. It mad
e her feel taken care of. Clare used to run her baths for her, squeezing in just the right amount of bubble bath, but she hadn’t done that for a while, not since the divorce. Freya had done it for Clare once, when she was little, but Clare screeched that she’d put in far too much bubble bath and the suds had overflowed the tub, so Freya hadn’t done it again.

  ‘What would Woden say?’

  Oh Gods, not a sermon. Who’d have a priestess for a mother?

  ‘He’d say, “It is good to rely on yourself.” Don’t cast Woden’s words to the winds.’

  ‘Yes, Mum,’ said Freya. It was always best just to agree with Clare and get it over with. Thank Gods, thought Freya, today’s sermon was brief. Sometimes Clare would get carried away and lecture her for ages.

  Now was as good a time as any to raise the subject of Hel’s shrine. How did you make a shrine to one of the Gods? Pile up a few rocks in a sacred place somewhere? Did she need a priest to bless them? What charms should she recite? She’d promised Hel, and had done nothing. A shrine to the Goddess of Death. Freya shuddered. But a vow was a vow.

  Freya opened her mouth to speak, and the conversation she was about to have with her mum passed silently through her mind.

  ‘Mum, I want to build a shrine.’

  ‘Darling, that’s wonderful. I knew you’d start taking an interest. Right, I can suggest several places where Thor needs—’

  ‘It’s not to Thor.’

  ‘But He’s your protector God. Your first shrine should always be to your protector.’

  ‘This shrine is to Hel.’

  Then Clare would fix Freya with the look, as if to say, I saw your lips move and heard your voice say something, but I absolutely cannot believe the words that just came out of your mouth so I won’t.

  ‘Did your father put you up to this, Freya?’ Clare would say. ‘Because it’s not funny. That is slander against the Gods.’

  ‘It’s nothing to do with Dad,’ she’d reply.

  ‘Freya, you’ve been behaving strangely. I think you should see a doctor …’