“Anyway, it was all sunshine and Towers of Babel,” Rikky said helpfully to move the story along.
“But other than the giant worm stirring up trouble, I haven’t got a clue about what caused the rift between Alfheim and earth, but for some reason the álfar decided they no longer wanted to keep the Lost Bridge open,” Pan said.
“They didn’t call it the Lost Bridge back then, though,” Rikky said. “They hadn’t lost it yet, so it was called Bifröst.”
“And it became ‘lost’ when the álfar tried to destroy it, but it couldn’t be destroyed,” Pan went on. “The best they could hope for was hiding it away. That’s where the Älvolk came in. They were the álfar who stayed behind to guard the bridge and keep anyone from crossing it.”
“Okay,” I said. “But you said this was all because of Frey, and so far he hasn’t come up.”
“Oh, we’re getting to that now.” Rikky sat up straighter. “He was an álfar, and he decided to stay on earth after the bridge closed. His followers say he stayed because he was fond of everyone on earth and he wanted to help us get back where we belong. His detractors argue he stayed because his trollian abilities like telekinesis and persuasion made him like a god among the humans.”
“You studied Norse, right?” Pan looked to me. “How much do you know about Frey?”
I shook my head. “I haven’t studied the myths that much. Just the language. All I really know about Frey is that he’s the god of love … or fertility? I think?”
“More like the god of sex,” Pan said.
Rikky lifted her glass and winked. “And wine.”
“A regular party god, then?” I said, and she snickered.
“As you can imagine, a secret group of monk-like guardians had a difficult time keeping up their numbers,” Rikky said. “A bunch of old dudes living a life of sacrifice and solitude protecting something that nobody really knows about didn’t attract a lot of members.
“Then, suddenly, old writings of Frey’s surfaced, where he details his life of debauchery.” Rikky did jazz hands to show her faux-surprise. “And now these texts instructing ‘ritual orgies’ as a means of getting to paradise are no longer viewed as crude stories but instead as literal instructions on how to open the bridge and get to Alfheim.”
“That’s how the Freyarian Älvolk began,” Pan said. “When the Älvolk tilted away from a simple life of service to a really twisted, zealous doctrine. But this was way back in the late 1800s. The Freyarian cult rose and fell through the years, until a particularly resilient sect took hold in a Trylle community in Northern California in the 1970s. This latest wave differentiated itself from the past iterations by having an overt mission to convert trolls and prepare for the discovery and reopening of the bridge.
“This is also the group that took the calls for blood and flesh to the most literal and most disturbing degree,” he continued and grimaced.
“The records we were reading, a lot of them were partially censored.” Rikky shivered involuntarily. “They were deemed too graphic for public consumption.”
“So, if the Lost Bridge even really exists—if it is a tangible place that we can get to and not an allusion to the northern lights—it’s currently being guarded by a group of psychotic monk warriors?” I asked.
“Yep. And that’s the good news,” Pan said.
Rikky scoffed. “How is that the good news?”
“Because at least we were able to find out more about the Älvolk. We learned something new,” he reasoned. “The bad news is that we don’t even know where the First City is. The location of that has been hidden for centuries, and the bridge has been lost for much longer than that. And we still don’t know if the bridge is even real or just a myth about the northern lights.”
“Yeah, that is bad news,” I agreed and gulped down my sangria.
5
Sangria
It was later, although I didn’t know the time. The sun had gone down, and the bugs had come up. The three of us had gone out to the dock after our discussion, when Pan declared that he was hungry. Rikky had suggested cooking on her charcoal grill, so we all sat out in rusty lawn chairs. After we ate, we tossed the excess vegetables at Drake the alligator snapping turtle—all while sipping on Omte sangria.
We stayed out there, talking and laughing and drinking, until the air was alive with mosquitoes, then we escaped back into the house, into “my” room, where the screens kept the bugs out but let the evening breeze in. Rikky moved around some of her half-finished projects—a torn-apart box fan, a sanded old nightstand, a stack of driftwood meticulously arranged so it was starting to take shape as reptilian sculpture.
I offered to help, but Rikky waved me off, so I lounged back on the daybed. Pan moved aside a pillow, then lifted my legs so he could sit under them. Rikky talked to herself as she rearranged, muttering her plans for this or that.
In fact, Rikky had done most of the talking all night, mostly regaling me with tales of life growing up Omte. It involved an awful lot of brawls, cookouts, and various adventures in foraging—each story usually featured at least two of those elements. The Omte community seemed a lot more involved with each other and more neighborly than I was used to—albeit more assertive. I couldn’t say if that was because of the warmer climate vs. the subarctic one, or if it was something else.
Rikky straightened up and let out a pained groan. “Oh, my.” She put her hand to her forehead. “That sangria must’ve been stronger than I thought it was, and now with that little bit of work, I am winded.” A small laugh escaped through her strained smile. “I hope neither of you would mind too much if I went to bed early.”
“No, no, of course not,” Pan assured her.
“All right, thank you.” She smiled at him, still strained and uneasy, and when she walked past us, she roughly tousled his hair. “I’m leaving the stereo on because I don’t want to deal with it, but feel free to turn it off.”
“Nah, it’s cool. Everybody loves ABBA,” Pan said with a big goofy grin, then looked over at me. “Right?”
“Yeah, it’s great,” I agreed, but Rikky was already in the main room, the storm door swinging shut behind her.
The walls and door were thin enough that the music easily drifted through—although admittedly the disco pop was playing very loudly inside the living room. Still, when I spoke, I made sure to keep my voice low so as not to bother Rikky.
“How are you feeling?” I asked.
“Good, good.” He laughed and rested his hand on my calf. “But I don’t think I even finished one glass of that, and I think Rikky had, like, three.”
I laughed dubiously. “Did she really?”
That only made him laugh harder, putting one hand on his chest and nodding vigorously. The whole daybed was shaking, but I didn’t really mind, because I slid closer to him, so my thighs now rested on his.
“I can’t believe she stayed up as long as she did,” he agreed once his laughter subsided. “I said she should slow down, but she does what she wants.”