FIC COMMENTARY: Every Ending is a New Beginning
10. For a tenth charm, I learned to dispel witches, to spin them around in the skies so that they will never find their way back to their own doors again.

Like I said, I'd promised girlsigh I would leave her Voodoo Queens alone. So of course, by first idea for this section was about Marie Leveau.

It was cold, and it looked like rain. A chill wind whipped through the Stop N' Go parking lot, and the tall, fluorescent lights fought to wash out the stars. Wednesday waited next to his brown-and-primer Charger with his overcoat wrapped closely around him.

A Ford Explorer pulled in, jolting as one of the rear tires took the curb. It was very sleek and very black, and the windows were nearly as dark as the paint. It was so new Wednesday could smell the leather from where he stood, and he suspected it was stolen.

The Explorer pulled into the space next to Wednesday's piece-of-shit, and Wednesday frowned. The bad guys always drove new, black cars with charcoal windows. It was a cliche that dated back to the day bad guys learned to drive, and Wednesday was tired of it.

He was tired of her, because she lived the cliches as much as she spread them.

In AG, Shadow mentioned the new Gods fondness for cliches several times. Also, the bad guys really do drive shiny, black stolen cars.

Media wore a tailored black suit with a knee-lengthed, pencil skirt. Her tightly knotted bun made her look prim, and her low, sensible business heels clicked on the uneven pavement. She favored Wednesday with a tight, fake smile, and when she stepped close, she smelled of new cars and filed down VIN numbers.

"Have you finally decided to join us?" She asked. Her smooth tone was as fake as her smile.

He paused thoughtfully, pretending to consider, but he already knew his answer. Times were hard, and he was growing weaker by the day, but he knew he had nothing to gain by joining them. They would give him dominion over some meaningless notion with just enough followers to keep him alive, and it was nothing compared to what he could have if he waited.

Wednesday had a plan, but he could not set it in motion until Loki was out of prison. He would just have to be patient.

There's no clear indication in AG of when Loki started working for the other side, but I figure he started right after he got out of prison. And I originally wrote that as *until Loki got out of prision*, but I had to change it after I wrote section four.

"No," he said simply.

"We will not offer again," Media said, her tone now icy. "We've given you too many chances already."

"I'm sorry, my dear," Wednesday said calmly. "I'm not interested."

"You should be," she replied. "One of these days, we will wipe what is left of your kind off the map."

"I would not be as easy as you think."

"Is that really a risk you are willing to take?"

"I'm a God of War," Wednesday replied. "I don't care who dies."

I like that line. A lot. And I don't know why.

Media sighed, and shook her head. "Even if it is you?"

"It won't be."

Just as Media disappeared inside her shiny, black cliche, it started to rain.

Wednesday cleared his throat, and headed for the Stop N' Go for a cup of coffee. The store was clean and bright, and the clerk was an elderly woman with bluish hair. When Wednesday approached the counter, she stopped hitting the top of a small, black box to ring him up. It was a portable television, and the screen had turned to snow.

"Damn thing," she muttered. "Reception always goes out when it rains."

When I first wrote this section, I just had Wedensday sitting in the car, waiting for the car to warm up while Media wrapped herself around a telephone poll. I added in the bit about the television after, because I thought it cleared up why Wednesday was waiting around.

Wednesday smiled, and paid for his coffee with loose change.

He turned left out of the driveway and headed towards the interstate. Two miles down the road, on the corner of Main and Madison, a shiny black Explorer was wrapped around a telephone poll. A slick of oil oozed slowly into the gutter. Skid-marks glistened on the wet pavement, and the air smelled strongly of burnt rubber.

Again, I had to adjust the situation to fit the times. The charm is about *spinning witches around in the sky*, but that just wasn't going to happen, unless I made this section a Potter cross-over. :P

Someone so widely worshipped and revered would not be that easy to kill. Wednesday doubted she was dead, but it would get her out of his hair until he could get Loki out of prison.

11. An eleventh: if I sing it when a battle rages it can take warriors through the tumult unscathed and unhurt, and bring them safely back to their hearths and their homes.

The neon sign over the door named the place Bob's Bar and Grill in flashing green and pink lights. It was nominally a restaurant, but Wednesday thought it more correctly filled the niche between truck-stop and greasy spoon. The building was shaped like a barn, and the air in the parking lot was heavy with the smells of overcooked food and copious amounts of frying oil.

The view through the smudged windows showed Bob's was empty, and a girl with a red beehive was filing her nails behind the counter, but the flip-sign in the window said there were two more business hours to go. He nodded to Czernobog and Mr. Nancy, who pulled open the door and went inside.

I love Czernobog and Mr. Nancy. My biggest regret with this fic was that I wasn't able to give Mr. Nancy his own section.

Wednesday did not like the look of this place, but he did not have any other options. The House of the Rock was not exactly in the middle of a business district. The tourist brochure he picked up at the ticket window proclaimed there was another restaurant six miles down the road. It had the likely name of Mom's, but Wednesday was not going to press his luck. Bob's was closer to civilization, and he suspected 'Mom' was retired trucker with a bum knee and a suspicious cough.

Yeah. I worked with this guy at a Denny's i n Arizona. He cooked the graveyard shift four nights a week.

He glanced inside the restaurant. Czernobog had settled into a booth along the wall that faced the highway. Mr. Nancy was speaking to the waitress with an apologetic smile on his face. His yellow-gloved hands gestured animatedly as he told her she would shortly be graced with a large party who had not called ahead.

A truck turned into the parking lot with a grating squeal of tires. It was sleek black with dark windows, and it pulled into a space a short walk from the door. The engine was shut off and the headlights were dimmed, but no one stepped out.

Wednesday ducked into the shadow of the doorway, waiting. He was expecting a visit from Loki's people tonight, but these new Gods were as self-centered and self-preserving as the old ones, and Wednesday didn't trust them. Their lackeys were brainless fools intent on impressing someone, and he trusted them even less.

Once Wednesday in AG that he was playing for both teams, I figured he's known about the ambush at the restaurant all along. I also figured there was a reason why Shadow didn't get away, when everyone else did.

Shadow drove up, stopping in front of the door. Wednesday smiled as the passengers stepped out, bowing to Mama-Ji and clapping Alviss on the back. Just as Shadow pulled away to park, four men in black suits climbed out of the black truck and started walking towards the restaurant.

Shadow's car also included the Forgotten God, and I debated a long time on whether or not to include him, here. He's always forgotten, but the fourteenth charm says he knows the names of all the Gods. I eventually left him out, because the paragraph was less clumsy without him.

Wednesday knew Loki and Shadow had been cellmates in prison, and he knew they had formed a kind of attachment. He didn't know the details of their relationship, nor did he want to, but he knew enough to know Loki would not let his men hurt Shadow too badly.

When she read this section, girlsigh accused me fo shipping. I have no comment on that matter.

Wednesday started to hum, his breath clouding in the cold air. The approaching men paused, and Wednesday hummed louder, almost singing. The men turned slowly, woodenly, and walked the other way. Towards their truck, towards Shadow.

The son, not the father, but a sacrifice of himself to himself.

"I dedicate this battle to Odin," Wednesday whispered.

He walked inside the restaurant, ready to fight with the Gods.

12. A twelfth charm I know: if I see a hanged man I can bring him down from the gallows to whisper to us all he remembers.

I wrote this scene much the same way I wrote the one about Stateville Prison. I had four windows on Slavic Mythology open when I was done, and didn't use half the information I bookmarked.

When Zorya Utrennyaya opened the door, her face was as white as her nightgown. Fresh tears were rolling down her cheeks, and her lips were pressed into a thin line. She ushered Wednesday in silently. It was colder in the small apartment than it had been in the hallway.

He followed her towards the back of the apartment. A gray cat wound around her legs as she walked, meowing, but she ignored it. They passed Czernobog's room; the light was off and the door was open. Wednesday suspected he'd gone to the bar after quitting time at the slaughterhouse again.

Yeah. I'll freely admit this was a *get Peter out of the room so the James, Sirius and Remus can shag* ruse. But Zorya would not have contacted Wednesday if Czernobog had been home.

Zorya stopped in front of the bathroom. She touched Wednesday's arm with a hand like ice, and gestured towards the door. When Wednesday opened it she started to cry. She slid down the wall to sit on the floor, her hands over her face, and the gray cat crawled in her lap.

The bathroom was colder than the rest of the apartment, and it was lit with a single, naked light bulb. Zorya Utrennyaya's father was hanging in the standup shower.

The rope around Dazhdbog's neck had been tied to the iron bars on the shower's high window. There was an overturned stool next to his right foot. His eyes were bulging and his face was bluish, and there were black marks on the shower's mauve tiles from the rubber soles of his shoes.

Zorya Utrenyaya told Shadow about her father, but never mentioned him by name, so I looked it up. It was spelled differently in a couple of places, but *Dazhdbog* was the most common.

Wednesday stepped inside the shower. He whispered a rhythmic chain of words, and ran a finger over Dazhdbog's purplish lips.

"Why, Dazhdbog?" Wednesday asked quietly.

"I am not needed," Dazhdbog said. His voice was harsh, like table legs scraping across the floor. He did not blink, and his lips did not move. "The sun here does not need me to rise and set."

"I go home now," Dazhdbog continued. "This is a bad land for Gods."

Wednesday could only agree.

When Wednesday left the bathroom, the smell of brewing coffee had filled the apartment, and Zorya was no longer in the hallway.

Czernobog was smoking a cigarette on the living room couch, unaware of the ashes falling onto the gray carpet. His face was pale, and he had the slightly muzzy look of a very drunk person who was trying to sober up quickly.

The gray cat was sitting next to him, kneading its claws on Dazhdbog's peaked chauffeur's hat.

I gave Dazhdbog a job as a chauffeur, because the myths said he drove a chariot across the sky.

13. A thirteenth: if I sprinkle water on a child's head, that child will never fall in battle.

I tried to give a specific location for every section, where one was not indicated in the books, except for section seven, because I liked the *somewhere in America* feel.

I didn't in this one, either, because it's not in America. According to the Monarch of the Glen, the short story Neil wrote for Legends II, Shadow was born in Olso, Norway.

The hospital had the kind of empty, ghost-town look that said visiting hours were over. It was brightly lit, with large fluorescent lights like colorless suns, and the walls and floor were vicious in their pristine whiteness.

Loki hummed quietly as he walked, but Wednesday was silent, thoughtful. Hallways twisted in front of Wednesday like a white maze, but he knew where he needed to go. He did not slow, nor did he glance at the plastic arrow-shaped signs on the walls.

They passed a reception desk, and the young nurse behind it frowned, her face as crisp and pressed as her uniform. Wednesday ignored her. Loki leered a bit, mischief dancing in his eyes, but he kept Wednesday's pace. Wednesday grunted at him as the turned a corner, and Loki started to hum again.

I couldn't help lecherous!Loki, here. In Lokasenna, Loki boasts about sleeping with nearly every Goddess in Asgard.

Wednesday opened the door to the nursery quietly, and peered around before he walked inside. A nurse with bottle-blonde hair napped in a chair in the corner of the room, snoring softly. Her white, polyester uniform strained to contain her hefty build, and she wore one of those nursing hats that reminded Wednesday vaguely of a wimple.

The boy was a bit paler than his mother, but he had a soft tuft of his mother's thick, dark hair on the top of his head. He woke with a small infant-noise when Wednesday touched one of his pinkish cheeks, and he gazed up at Wednesday with the unfocused, slate-blue eyes of a newborn.

Again, Wednesday I just don't picture Wednesday as a humanitarian. The only person I could see him doing this charm for was Shadow.

Wednesday considered the boy silently, and for a moment he was tempted to take him. He knew he could do it; between Loki's tricks and his charms they could walk out the front door with the boy on display and no one would notice. But he knew he shouldn't. The boy was only half, not whole, and he needed to be able to make his way in his mother's world before he could learn to make his way in Wednesday's.

Considering how easily Wedensday found Shadow and followed him when he got out of jail, I figured he could have found Shadow anytime he wanted to. I also figured there had to be a reason why he had not come after him sooner.

Loki offered Wednesday a cup; the disposable kind from the hospital cafeteria. A blocky yellow and red rendition of the horizon curled around its waxy surface. The water inside was from the drinking fountain in the hallway, and Wednesday murmured quietly as he dipped his fingers inside. The water hit the boy's head in slow, fat drops, and he made another infant-noise, different from the last, but just as indecipherable.

Loki's hand snaked out, and a long, thin finger brushed the boy's forehead. The boy made another noise, distinctly fretful, and Wednesday favored Loki with a sharp frown.

In the myths, causes Balder's death, by tricking his brother into throwing a mistletoe dart at him.

"What?" Loki asked, his smile full of false innocence.

"Don't," Wednesday snarled.

The nurse in the corner stirred at his voice. Wednesday grabbed Loki by the arm, exiting the nursery before their timing failed and their luck ran out.

"What's his name?" Loki asked, at the airport and hour later.

"I didn't catch it," Wednesday replied.

"You don't need it?" Loki asked.

"No," Wednesday said. "I could find him anywhere."

14. A fourteenth: I know the names of all the Gods. Every damned one of them.

I wondered how I was going to do this section for the longest time. Several of the myths deal with the Gods proving their wisdom by listing all the things they know, so I went with that.

Accommodations were the same all across America, whether it was Motel 6 or Super 8 or The Motorway Lodge. The rooms all had the same dark-patterned carpet that matched the curtains and bedspread, the same peeling ecru wallpaper, the same pastel cactus still-life over the bed.

They all had the same wobbly desk, next to the dresser and under the wall-mirror, with a maroon Gideon Bible in the bottom drawer and a personalized notepad and pen in the top. The chair always looked like it belonged in a coffee-shop dining room, straight-backed and thin-cushioned and about as comfortable as a brick ledge.

The notepad was too small, only a few inches long and less than that wide, and the motel name took up a good chunk of the space. Wednesday kept his writing small to compensate, his words crammed so tightly together they were barely legible. When the space ran out he tore off the top sheet, laid it neatly on the stack at the edge of the desk, and started again.

Wednesday listed the ones he'd already spoken with, and what they had said. He listed the ones he had not spoken with, with notes on where they were, where they were believed to be, or where they had last been seen. They were spread all across the country now, working shit jobs because offerings had stopped, dwindling because belief had faltered.

He also had another list, not on paper, but in his head. It was a list of the dead, many Wednesday's own kin, some his own children.

Thor, who'd swallowed the business end of a revolver one evening after a long day at the steel mill. Frigg, shot when the psychic bookshop she she'd owned was held up in a robbery she'd failed to predict. Tyr, mauled by a wolf at the zoo he'd worked at. Heimdall, stabbed seven times outside the club he'd bounced at.

Again, I tried to give the Gods jobs that matched their mythologies, like I did with Thor and his hammer. Frigg can see the future, Tyr sacrificed his hand so Fenris the Wolf could be bound, and Heimdall guards the Rainbow Bridge to Asgard.

The list went on: Freyja, Freyr, and Njord. Bragi, Idunn and Saga. They had all been brought here thousands of years ago, they had all been forgotten, and now they were dead.

I tried to pick who had died based on the situation Neil had created. Freyja and Freyr are concerned with fertility, which is outdated, because there are drugs to prevent it and promote it. Njord was a God of the Sea, which probably fell by the wayside when airplanes came along. Bragi is the patron of poets and Skalds, and Saga is a Goddess of history and lore, and reading and writing has, in some ways, lost out to television and the internet. Idunn guards the Golden Apples that kept the Gods from aging and dying, but in America, the Gods are dying.

Twenty-five years ago, he'd heard Freyja was still alive, but he'd never looked for her. Freyja had been the Queen of the Valkyries and the fairest Goddess in Asgard. He had not wanted to believe she was working the register at a lingerie shop in Hollywood.

Like Loki, the some of the myths about Freyja are contradictory. In Lokasenna, Loki insinuates that she sleeps around, but other myths say she was a symbol of virtue, and remaind faithful to her husband Od when he disappeared. But, they all agree that she is the most beautiful Goddess in Asgard, and she is often connected with love, sex and attraction.

Balder was alive, but Balder had been lucky. He'd never been brought here only to be forgotten. He'd been dead before the Leif the Lucky, son of Eirik the Red, had ever set sail for the Americas. He'd been nothing more a myth by the time the Vikings arrived, a memory prophesied to come back before the end of the world.

I was afraid this paragraph was confusing; saying first that Balder was alive, then saying he had died, but the I thought the distinction was important to make. Wednesday wouldn't have had to father Shadow if Balder had been in America to begin with.

Shadow had arrived just in time.

15. A fifteenth: I have a dream of power, of glory and of wisdom, and I can make people believe my dreams.

I picked Mama-Ji for this, because she had argued with Wednesday the most at the House on the Rock.

Mama-Ji had a tiny house on the outskirts of a small Virginia town. She rented it from an elderly widow who rarely went outside and appreciated that Mama-Ji brought in both sets of garbage cans. The house was one room and horribly drafty, and Wednesday suspected it has once been the elderly woman's garage.

The room smelled of tea and exotic spices, and the only window was curtained with a black bed-sheet. Fat, red candles littered every flat surface; the only light in the room. A large collection of preserved heads watched Wednesday with empty eye sockets from a bookcase along one wall, and an oblong stone rested upright on a small table by the door.

The Hindu myths I read indicated that Kali is the consort of Shiva. Shiva doesn't have a steady form, and is represented by a lingham stone.

A kettle whistled shrilly from where it sat on a hot-plate. She fixed herself a cup of tea, pouring it into what looked like a coffee mug that had once belong to a restaurant. She did not offer Wednesday any. She did not invite him to sit, and she did not speak until she was halfway through her tea.

"I do not know why you have come here," she said finally. She motioned vaguely in his direction, and her bracelet of hands and heads tinkled like bells.

"Yes, you do," Wednesday replied evenly.

"You are wasting your time," she said. "I want no part of your war."

"You should not have to live this way, Mama-Ji," he said, with a wide gesture. "None of us should."

"I do well enough," she snapped. She set her mug down on a small, badly varnished table with a thump.

"Not as well as you could," Wednesday ventured. "Not as well as you do in India."

"I've never done as well as here as I did in India," she said. "I should not have been brought here." She paused, toying with her necklace of silver skulls. "But I was. I do what I must, and I get by."

Wednesday knew what she was not saying. He knew she worked for a funeral home, dressing the dead for their services. He also knew the preserved heads in her bookcase had not been given as offerings. She had taken them from corpses of men and women scheduled for closed-casket funerals.

"How long can you get by, on the stolen heads of people three days dead?"

She bristled and that, and her eyes flashed, as wild and untamed as her salt-and-pepper hair.

"You go too far," she hissed, her tone dangerously quiet.

"I only speak the truth, Mama-Ji."

She frowned, but dropped his gaze. She rose, retrieved her mug, and walked back over to the hot-plate and switched it on.

Wednesday tipped one of the fat candles over, dripping red wax onto the table. He let it cool for a moment, then shaped the warm lump with the tip of a finger.

Mama-Ji returned. She frowned at him for a long time, then sighed.

"Sit," she said, pointing him to a chair. It was large and lumpy, and the stuffing was spilling out of one arm. "Would you like a cup of tea?"

16. A sixteenth charm I know: if I need love I can turn the heart and mind of any woman.

This section is the other section where Wednesday's main interaction is not wity another God. Again, I waffled a bit about mythology to make up for it.

Odin was believed to be the Father of the Gods, but it was Heimdall who had created the classes of men. He had traveled the land when Midgard was new, and he had visited three men, staying in their homes for three days and three nights. During those days and nights, he had eaten their food, and slept in their beds. He had fathered children on their wives, children who grew to father the three classes of men: first, the thralls, second, the peasants, and third, the warriors and kings.

This was taken from a myth called the List of Rig or the Song of Rig. In it, Heimdall fathers the three classes of men.

Heimdall had also told these men of their land, of the creation of Midgard and the history of the Gods. He had told them of Odin, the All-Father, the son of Bor and Bestla who had shaped the world from Ymir's body and fathered all the Gods. As Heimdall's tale spread far and wide, the people of Midgard created a vision of Odin in their heads. They pictured an older man, a fatherly man his late fifties who had gray in his hair and red in his beard.

The people of Midgard had passed these stories to their children, and their children's children and to every generation after that. When his people sailed to the Americas they had brought their Gods with them, and Wednesday had been formed in the image the Norsemen had held of Odin in their minds.

Wednesday had been a fatherly man in his late fifties with gray in his hair and red in his beard for over a thousand years. Physically, he had not aged a day since the first Viking set foot on the Northumberland shore.

Again, Neil didn't give a date for when the Wednesday was brought to America, so I went with the date in The Vinland Sagas, 986.

Inside, he was dying.

Gods were vulerable; they needed other people to survive. They needed prayers and offerings as much as they needed food, and faith and belief was the fuel that got them out of bed in the morning. When the Christians came, Wednesday's kind was relegated to myth, but myths were still read and discussed and sometimes believed, and it had almost been enough.

These new Gods had changed everything, stealing people's attention from stories and books in a swirl of binary numbers and flashing lights. Too few knew Wednesday's name now, and fewer still believed. None offered sacrifice, not even as little as the first sip of their beer or a portion of their meal.

It was uncomfortably warm inside the convenience store. The Isley Brothers sang "Twist and Shout" into the thick, overheated air. The young man in line in front of Wednesday held a selection of snack foods and condiments that suggested he was incredibly stoned.

The girl behind the counter had bright pink false fingernails and a liquid southern drawl. She was chewing her gum like a cow, but she had long chestnut curls and a heart-shaped face. She could not have been more sixteen. Wednesday was willing to wager she was a virgin, and that was exactly what he needed.

Virginity itself was not so much. It was just a bit of membrane and a bit of blood, perhaps a little pain. But the idea of virginity had power. People had given it power through centuries of fussing over a girl's virtue. People had given it strength by pinning a family's honor on whether or not a daughter was pure and untouched when she went to her marriage bed.

I took this from the conversation Shadow and Wednesday have in the restaurant, where Shadow harps on how young the waitress is, and Wednesday talks about virgins.

People had turned virginity into something special. When a girl had sex for the first time, social standards and ideals said she was giving away a piece of herself. It was a relinquishment. A sacrifice.

She smiled when Wednesday approached the counter, the forced, plastic smile of someone who worked with the public. It was not sexual. It was not even friendly. Her wide hazel eyes said she saw Wednesday as just another customer, a kindly man bringing some snacks home for his wife and kids.

"Anything else?" She drawled, her garish fingernails clicking loudly on the register keys.

"No, thank you," he replied, handing her a twenty.

He jostled his cup when he took his change, and a healthy amount of coffee sloshed onto the counter. Her hazel eyes narrowed briefly, before she remembered her smile and reached for a paper towel. When she turned, Wednesday made a hasty sketch in the puddle with the tip of his finger.

She handed him the towel and this time her smile was wide, genuine.

"What time are you off, my dear?" He asked softly.

"Midnight," she replied.

Wednesday checked his watch. It was fifteen 'til.

"I'll just wait for you in the car."

17. A seventeenth, that no woman I want will ever want another.

When I first read this charm, I decided it should be about Shadow's mum.

She tasted of margaritas, and salt clung to her lower lip. She was soft and pliant as Wednesday kissed her, her mouth falling open easily, her arms winding around his neck. Wednesday hadn't caught her name, but it didn't matter.

She laughed, a clear sound like a bell. Wednesday spun her around, the mirror-ball showering fractured light over the path they cut across the dance floor. He pulled her close and kissed her again, and tequila and lime was heavy on her tongue.

She was not the prettiest woman in the room, but that didn't matter to Wednesday anymore than her name. Wednesday slid his fingers up the soft skin of her arm, and his blood sang in his veins. He hadn't felt this alive in some two hundred years, since Frigg walked away from him because she 'couldn't live this way anymore'.

The first time I read AG, I wondered about Odin's wife. She was a Goddess of home and motherhood. The account of Leif Ericson's voyage in The Vinland Sagas mentions that there were women in the early Newfoundland colony, and they would have brought Frigg with them.

There was something different about her, something that had drawn him to her as soon as he'd walked in the room. Perhaps she was one of his kind. Perhaps one of her parents had been brought here thousands of years ago, and had used hearth and home to fill the emptiness that came when belief and honor had failed.

Her hair was dark and full, and her face was slightly olive. She could have had Roman blood in her, or Greek. She could have had Slavic blood in her. Wednesday smiled at that thought. His people had been close with the Slavs and Rus once they had carved their dragon boats and learned to sail.

When Shadow was harping on Wednesday about the waitress and talks about pregnancy, Wednesday said it didn't happen very often. I figured there had to be a reason why it did with Shadow's mum.

But Wednesday knew that didn't matter, either. What mattered was the light in her eyes, and the way her skin almost sparked under his touch. Perhaps she could give him what he wanted, the one thing he needed but had been unable to get from any other woman.

She swayed as she headed towards the bar, the tequila leaving her unsteady on her feet. He watched her a moment before following, appreciating the smooth line of her legs and the curve of her hips. She leaned on the bar as she ordered, and she spoke slowly, as if trying not to slur her words.

There was a man at her elbow before Wednesday reached the bar. He was tall and dark and a good fifteen years younger than Wednesday, and he smiled like a wolf as he offered to pay for her drink.

"I'm sorry," she said carefully. "I'm here with someone."

She turned, her margarita sloshing over the side of the glass, and reached for Wednesday's hand.

18. And I know an eighteenth charm, and that charm is the greatest of all, and that charm I can tell no man, for a secret that no one knows but you is the most powerful secret there can ever be.

This section was the last one I wrote, and it had me apoplectic. I had originally intended for it to be Wednesday, but that was difficult. Neil watered all the charms down for AG, but this one is not expanded on in Havamal.

I mentioned to girlsigh about doing this one as the real Odin knowing the future, because Shadow meets the real Odin at the end of the book. She liked it, so I went with it.

Odin was the All-Father. He was the first and the greatest, the Lord of Asgard and the King of the Aesir. He was the creator of all things, and the father of the Gods.

He shaped the Nine Worlds from Ymir's body. He formed the earth from Ymir's flesh and the mountains from his bones. He made Ymir's skull the into sky, and let his blood flow into the ocean and seas.

His children were the greatest of the Aesir. Thor the Thunderer and Heimdall the Watcher. Vali and Vidar the Avengers. Tyr One-Handed and Bragi the Bard. His only daughter was called Saga. He hid her in a waterfall and tasked her with writing the history of the Nine Worlds.

I took the account of the creation of the Nine Worlds from Volupsa.

His favorite son was Balder. He was the God of Light, and the Aesir's shinging star.

Asgard was the most beautiful of the Nine Worlds, and Odin set it aside for the Aesir to make their homes and hearths. Halls were built for each and every one, halls of gold and silver and water and light. On Idavoll, the Shining Plain, he built halls for the Aesir to meet, Vingolf for the Goddesses and Gladheim for the Gods.

The grandest halls his own. He built Valhalla for the warriors slain in battle, with five hundred and forty doors and a roof made of shields. Valaskjalf he built for himself, for him and his wife to call home.

This section was originally much shorter. It jumped from the second paragraph to this next one. But it felt to short when I read it over, compared to the others, so I added in the paragraphs about the creation and the halls of the Gods.

From his high seat in Valaskjalf, Odin had a view of the Nine Worlds. He watched both Gods and Men, and he saw what had passed and what was to come.

He saw, and he knew.

He knew the name of every God, and he knew the heart of every man. He knew the outcome of every battle, and he knew the names of those who would die.

Odin knew Loki, his foster-brother, would fight against him in Ragnarok. He knew that Balder, who had been slain by Loki's treachery, would come back from the Land of the Dead before the end of the world.

He knew that in America, there was a man called Wednesday. Odin was not Wednesday, but Wednesday was him, and he knew that Wednesday was starting a war in his name.

One of my favorite lines in the book was when Odin tells Shadow that Wednesday was him, but he was not Wednesday.

There was one more thing he knew, something he had never shared, and never would. Not even with Frigg, his best beloved, or with Balder, his most favorite son.

From his high seat in Valaskjalf, he watched the Nine Worlds. He saw, and he knew how all things would end.

And that's all she wrote. Happy Birthday, Kitkat.

J