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He doesn’t talk about them.
No one would believe him anyway. No one had seen him when he had first come around and he had no reason to believe that anyone would see his new companions roosting on the window ledges and pulling at loose threads. Making a mess.
Isn’t that what he was best at? Making a mess? He had certainly made a mess of his own life. Each life. Every life.
Some of him might argue the fact, but, if it were not so, why this elaborate attempt at change? Why this convoluted plot to die and return something more than the villainous presence he once was?
Why, to not change at all, of course. To only project the appearance of change. The illusion of change. To still keep intact all powers, propensities, and perversions while enjoying the newfound favours of those who once called him enemy, why else?
Hadn’t he been in for a surprise?
The first appeared shortly after the battle with Mother, flitting around the edges of his perception. He thought – he thought – it would vanish with the rest of the illusions, but it remained long after the others had faded.
“You think you’re so clever,” it said as he watched Billy and Teddy and America and the rest from a safe distance.
“I don’t,” he said.
“You think you’re so smart, figuring it out.”
“I really don’t.”
“They wouldn’t have been in trouble in the first place if not for you,” it told him.
“I know,” he replied.
And so it went, with unrelenting regret, as he wondered what he could do to rectify things.
Nothing, he thought. There was no going back, only forward, and what he had to bring forward was hardly worth the price of its existence.
That was the first time he thought about killing himself. The first time in this life.
“You should do it,” the first one said, ruffling its wings and watching him with beady eyes. “It won’t work, of course. Someone will be there to take your place. Maybe someone who doesn’t like them so much. But that doesn’t matter. You will be out of your misery. Won’t that be nice?”
“No,” he said. “It won’t.
Bad enough the things he’d done to people who only ever tried to help him. How much worse to leave them in the grip of uncertainty? He wasn’t trustworthy by any means, but at least he knew he would no longer hurt them – not intentionally – and that was one vow more than he could hold to his successor.
And yet, he wasn’t trustworthy and had funded their party from a distance, keeping to the shadows, in spite of kinda sorta wanting to join in.
He kinda sorta wanted to talk to someone about it and kinda sorta didn’t. Eventually he kinda sorta mentioned it to David – ignoring his companion preening in the branches above him – and kinda sorta struck out in more ways than one. But not entirely.
Sometimes all you can do is save the world from yourself, after all.
The second appeared after he cut his deal with the All-Mother: his services for the slow erasure of the stories from his past.
The prospect brought elation – (A new face! A new start! Save the world from himself, indeed!) – treasures – (Who would have thought Odin had put aside Gram, the sword of heroes, just for him?) – and adventures that tested his intelligence and wit. Though he could avail himself of magic, he kept its use to a minimum and avoided temptation as much as possible. He was bringing himself back to the basics, after all.
“It won’t last,” the new one said.
They conferred behind his back, the two of them. He knew they did.
“You think you’re brilliant and beyond reproach,” said the first.
“But when has anything good come to you?” said the second.
“I sowed the seeds of my own destruction,” he told them. “Maybe I can sow the seeds of my own salvation, too.”
The second one primped and preened and then repositioned itself to look him in the eye.
“Do you honestly believe that?” it said.
He did.
He did then.
He did once.
It seemed so simple: balance it out. Not good, not bad, just… something in-between.
But he was a story and stories had rules.
He had forgotten the rules.
The third appeared shortly after Verity.
He liked Verity. Earnest and forthright, she projected a loneliness that—
“Could easily be exploited,” said the first.
“No,” he said.
“Made her easy prey,” said the second.
“No,” he said.
“You recognized, but from the other side,” said the third. “Too much truth had isolated her from her kind, just as too many lies turned Asgard against you.”
Yes, that, he thought, so that they wouldn’t hear.
“Using her was a matter of convenience,” the third added.
“No,” he said. And then, “Yes.”
“You’re pathetic.”
“Yes.”
But he had liked Verity, her unique combination of strength and vulnerability, her unwillingness to put up with bullshit – even though she faced it every hour of every day – without letting it drag her down. Her strange and slowly failing optimism as she walked through a world that traded lies as commodities. They made a strange pair, but he liked her – even in those few minutes, he liked her – and he was in the market for a BFF. What better match for a liar than one who could not be lied to?
He liked her and, even though her talents meant the beginning of the end for the comfortable little life he had built – not her fault, of course; never her fault – he wanted to keep her friendship. He valued it that much.
“It will only end in heartbreak,” the third one told him.
“It’s worth the risk,” he replied.
“I meant for her.”
He could say nothing to that.
The fourth showed up after Sigurd came to claim his sword.
The missing piece. The perfect opportunity. A renewed plan to break into Asgardia’s vaults.
“And how did that work out for you?” the first one said.
“Shut-up,” he replied.
It had actually gone very well until the end.
“New knowledge is a bitch,” said the second.
“Knowledge is valuable,” he told the four, huddled on the windowsill. “You can’t always know what you’re getting, but you always get what you paid for.”
“Nothing, in this case,” the third one jeered. “You’re a liar and a thief.”
“So exactly what you paid for,” the fourth one finished.
“Regrettable, but worth it,” he insisted. “What are a few sleepless nights compared to knowing what I’m dealing with?”
“You’re always dealing with you,” the fourth replied. “That’s the way of things. Now you’re dealing with you and you can’t sleep at night. How pleased you must be.”
He ignored it. As upsetting as it was, he clung to the idea that knowledge was important and new knowledge even more so.
New knowledge. New adventures (X marks the spot!). New heights of exploration.
“New depths to which you could plunge,” the fourth one mocked. “Be careful where you step. It’s a long way down.”
Long and final and hotter than any Hell born of human minds.
It burned.
But if he knew it existed, he could avoid it.
Probably.
The fifth arrived just after Thor on the day they left to find the tenth realm.
Heven, the shining, silver city. Home of the Angels. Home of their sister, Aldrif, now Angela. Sealed forever by Odin in the wake of a war.
Thor really should have left well enough alone.
“You owed him,” a new voice said. “You saw to it.”
He tried to ignore the five sets of eyes watching him from the window sill.
“Still, he didn’t have to go rushing off,” he mused out loud.
“Like you weren’t pleased to show off how well you could punch through the walls of reality,” the first one said.
“Like you weren’t eager to show how useful you could be,” said the second.
“Like you weren’t enjoying the chance to flaunt your femininity,” quipped the third.
“Like you weren’t anxious for a distraction from your own folly,” the fourth one added.
“Like you needed one more complication in your life,” finished the fifth.
He had rather liked Angela though. She was, in some ways, a lot like him. He could see the logic in an Angel’s way of thinking. Knowing the value of things, the proper balance of things… That was truly a useful trait and kept the terms of agreement sorted out quite nicely.
They were too rigid, though. Too rigid by far. Emotion also had value and, while they recognized this, they could not follow the rapid flux of its changing worth. How it could mean little in one moment and everything in the next. Who were they to offer him a new family worth a handful of coin when the old had only begun to appreciate?
And he had found one anyway, or at least a part of one, now that Angela was free to roam the stars.
“You’ll regret it,” the fifth one said. “She’ll mess your shit up good.”
He almost rather hoped she would.
The sixth came… The sixth came…
The sixth came when…
I am changed. I am absolved. And I feel no guilt.
I have no time for the small things of Midgard.
Whoever holds the hammer… if he be worthy…
The sixth came at a time he refused to acknowledge it. All golden glow and golden armour – a golden halo to buff and shine – he tried to ignore the circling pests and their chattering voices for he could not possibly be the recipient of such attentions. Surely not he, with the darkness blasted from his soul. They belonged to someone else, some other fighter on the battlefield, whose darker thoughts had overcome them. To someone else, who would hear the jeers and accusations so much better than he. Someone else, because he could not possibly be wrong as he was, could he?
He could not be wrong to lure Thor away from the battle where he might gleefully break the bones of others and come to regret it later.
Not wrong to deliver Lorelei and Sigurd to Odin – (Although it had been Amora’s idea, yes! Her idea all along…) – in spite of his misgivings.
Not wrong to put aside worldly things for the sake of being a hero…
He hadn’t realized what hell that would be.
“You thought you had it all figured out, didn’t you?” said the first.
“I did,” he said. “Although, to be fair, it made sense at the time…”
“Liar,” said the second. “Not even bright enough to follow his own instincts.”
“My instincts have never been all that good,” he replied.
“Thought you could change,” jeered the third. “Just like that! A snap of the fingers! Magic, one might say…”
“Not magic,” he said, clenching his fists.
“Change takes time,” the fourth informed him. “Even if it were possible, which it is not.”
“Everything changes,” he told it. “Change is good.”
“Not for you,” the fifth sneered.
“He changed.”
“You are not him.”
The sixth looked at him, head cocked, and if a beak could grin with malice, the sixth’s would be that beak.
“I—”
“Not even a little,” the sixth said, cutting him off before he could start. “Not even in the basest ways. Imitation is a sincere form of flattery, but stealing a skin and going through the motions is a pantomime of the grotesque.”
“Yes,” he said, defeated.
“It’s nothing to be proud of.”
“No.”
“Or to hide behind.”
“No.”
“But you will continue to do so?”
He looked them all in the eye – in the eyes – lined up as they were on the windowsill.
“Probably, yes,” he said. “For as long as I can. I can grovel and beg, but I can’t tell her that.”
He ignored the cacophony of laughter when it came.
Tricksters are the world’s devils, although it wasn’t always so.
The older the mythology, the more likely it is to have a trickster figure. These peoples, closest to the rhythms and flow of life, know that nothing is purely good or evil. The storms that terrify also bring much-needed rain. The warming sun can scorch the earth and leave it barren.
The trickster is something in-between. Not a good person, no, not someone to be emulated, but one to watch and learn from all the same. The trickster throws itself at society’s mores. If they are sound, they will hold, and the trickster will be ridiculed for their testing. If they are rotting, they will break, and the trickster will be hated for their mischief, but – and this is the essential – the trickster will survive and so will the people, having learned where their supports cannot bear them up. The lesson is unpleasant, the trickster never thanked, but at least they are accepted as a natural part of things and acknowledged for their contribution in the end, however grudgingly.
However, because the lesson is unpleasant and because they work against the perceived “good”, the trickster is reviled more and more when earth-bound beliefs shift toward the purely spiritual. The trickster fits uncomfortably into the equation of good and evil and, because they work against what is desirable, what is comfortable, they are pushed inexorably toward the latter.
And they go, they go, because being a trickster is about survival and a good villain endures. They endure, even when the trickster no longer can.
“She’ll come,” says the first.
“She’s coming,” says the second.
“Whatever will you do?” says the third.
“I’ll talk to her,” he tells them.
“Will you tell her that you’re sorry?” says the fourth.
“Yes,” he replies.
“Will you tell her you’re poison?” says the fifth.
“Yes,” he replies.
“Will you tell her you’re a child-killing bodysnatcher?” says the sixth.
He has nothing to say to that and the jeering follows him around the apartment.
He doesn’t talk about them. No one would believe him if he did. But they’re there all the same. Their sharp beaks prod and peck at him. Their cutting words fill his ears, even in his sleep. His mouth is dry with the taste of their feathers. They smell of dust and parasites.
He doesn’t talk about them, but he will talk to Verity. He will beg forgiveness and he will tell her the truth. Not for the first time, he will wonder if he should tell her the whole truth, even if she leaves him, because she might leave him anyway and better now than later when a discovered secret could do far more damage.
And yet, a secret never revealed is a secret forever…
“She’s here.”
“She’s here.”
“She’s here.”
“She’s here.”
“She’s here.”
“She’s here.”
She’s here and he straightens his clothing, makes himself as presentable as he can. He wants to keep in her good graces, but a strange wind is blowing and he doesn’t know which direction it’s heading. Concealment or exposure? Only time will tell.
“Secret or devil? It can go either way,” he hears and the voice is unfamiliar.
Seven figures sit on the windowsill, staring at him with beady eyes. He supposes he shouldn’t be surprised.
He grins – a twisted, sickly thing – and bows to the newcomer.
“Hello, Mr. Magpie,” he says.