Trickery. Of course. Was I not, despite my recent foray into romantic inept.i.tude, still Loki? A solution-the only true solution-presented itself to me.

I picked up Brynhilda's sword (only with great effort. I managed to choose two of the strongest women I have ever come in contact with, another good reminder that I would be wise to find my way out of this double-sided predicament).

As my two potential consorts fought on, I swung her sword around twice, spinning my body to build up momentum. I then released the blade upward with all my might. The sword spun end over end into the sky, finally striking the great branch I had earlier pulled back. The sword's honed edge cleaved through the giant limb without effort. The branch, separated from the trunk, started to move and sway. Finally, the weight of it pulled it loose, and the great branch fell.

It plunged down, down, and the whistling sound of its descent was great enough to stop the two warrior-women from the battles.

"Loki-" they said in unison, but only one of the two uttered my name with any confidence.

As the branch traveled downward, so too did the sun's rays. Once again they bathed Gjalpa, and Brynhilda as well. Frankly, the two women looked utterly gorgeous inside the funnel of warm light.

Then Gjalpa's skin took on its bejeweled tone again, although it began melt-ing at the same time. The concentration of the sun's rays, with no canopy with which to slow it, accelerated its effect on her. And this time, there were tears inter-mingling with the drops of water emitting from her skin-both hers and mine.

As Gjalpa began puddling across the forest floor, she looked at me for the last time. Her legs had melted away enough that she was now my height and looking me directly in the eyes for a moment, before continuing her moist downward trajectory.

"I am undone, Loki," she gurgled, "may you forever burn in fiiiiiiiire...." She trailed off. Liquefied lips can't easily utter words, it seems.

I felt a tinge of sadness, but fought it off when I reminded myself that Loki was never meant to be simple husband to anyone. Now, on to the second part of my quickly thrown-together scheme. I spun around to look at the Valkyrie.

Brynhilda was grinning from ear to ear. She pulled loose her sword, which had also fallen back to earth and embedded itself up to its hilt, and stepped toward me.

"Loki! I knew from the moment I met you that you had sharp senses! You knew that frigid behemoth wasn't right for you, and you knew I was! Oh, Loki!"

She rushed toward me, planning to embrace me. I grasped her shoulders and held her away, at arm's length. "Aren't you forgetting something, fair Valkyrie?" I motioned to the puddle on the ground.

"Oh, I will never forget what you have done! You have chosen a life with me, my lord. We should get to work at once, making plans and sharing our lives!"

"Well, one of us should get to work anyway, only it is not wise Loki."

"What are you-" The reality of the situation began to settle in, if the look in her eyes was any indication.

"You, my Brynhilda, are a Valkyrie. While a life of acquiescing to your demands and carrying your helmet while you work might hold appeal to some, it holds absolutely none for Loki. But my lack of interest in your profession does not negate the fact that you are required to see those labors through now."

As I spoke, Gjalpa's spirit arose from the moist ground. "The giantess perished in battle, and is awaiting its final ride to Valhalla's halls. You cannot deny your responsibilities, Brynhilda. You are a Valkyrie first, as you reminded me. Gjalpa has earned her seat inside the hall. Best be off with you, then, before your maiden-sisters become aware of you shirking your duties. I do not imagine that would sit well."

She stared at me with death in her eyes. But maybe it was just a trick of the light. No, it was probably death. Pulling her sword and waving it in my direction, she screamed, "Perhaps I should take two recently departed souls with me to Valhalla, deceitful snake!"

"Ahh, Brynhilda," I sighed, picking an errant branch shard out of my teeth. "Would that the Valkyries were understanding enough for you to set aside responsibilities in order to carry out your petty grievances and keep poor, departed souls waiting. But I do not believe they are. Best be off now. Alas, our love just cannot work around such requirements. Would that it were not so."

I turned away, lest my growing smile turn into outright laughter. She knew she had no recourse. To betray the trusted duties of a Valkyrie was to renounce one's heritage and be kicked out of Valhalla for all time. I was counting on her hate for me not being quite great enough to supercede her desire to remain within those hallowed halls. I was right, but barely.

As Brynhilda saw to her labors, I looked at the two one last time. Gjalpa's shade was now in the Valkyrie's grasp and being prepared for her trip to Valhalla. If looks could kill, well, my own twilight would be upon me sooner than was written.

"Farewell, my ladies fair. Would that things could have been different. But, as the expression goes, Loki dost not need any clinging vines. Farewell."

"Loki," I heard Brynhilda say. I looked at her. Gjalpa's soul sat perched on the winged horse behind Bryn. She refused to turn her head toward me. But Brynhilda did, and her eyes blazed with red-hot anger so great that I wondered if she too was part frost giant. "The Twilight of the G.o.ds is upon the land. Your death is foretold, and is imminent. So don't think we will be separated for long. For when your corpse settles onto the ground during the coming battle, I will be there personally to see that you are taken to Valhalla, where we may spend all eternity together.

"And Loki," she paused. "Once inside the great hall, the only kisses I plan to shower you with shall be made of tempered steel."

She dug her heels into her horse, and the beast at once began flapping its great wings, until she and Gjalpa rose off into the sky and out of sight.

Again with this talk about a coming battle and Loki's imminent demise. My current dating situation resolved, it was now time I did something about that as well.

3. MATCH-MAKING.

As I exited the forest and was free of Yggdrasil's shade, I noticed that the problem with the cloudy and frozen sky had begun to resolve itself, in the form of great flames that licked across the horizon. It seems that our Twilight was upon us. The G.o.ds were destined to fall.

On the long and thankfully lonely walk out of the forest, I began thinking about the various things people had said when speaking of the coming battle. Surty and her flame-demon friends had definitely talked about things I chose not to hear because I was too taken with affairs of the heart. Which was yet another reason to remain so unenc.u.mbered. One can only properly see to one's own survival without the blinders of love.

The gist of what everyone said about the imminent end of everything is that it all began with Balder's death. Would that I had known ... well, I would not have changed a thing. That prig needed to be taken down. But this meant that if I was responsible for starting this process, I should similarly be able to stop it, at least where my own personal doom was concerned. All of Asgard could go hang for all I cared. If enabling Balder to die also helped bring about the doom of Thor, Heimdall and the others, well, that was a better chain reaction than I could have hoped. But the loss of Loki would be too great indeed, at least to me. Still, we all had a part to play, and I would play mine. At least to a point.

It was not fated that Loki would meet his end during our coming Twilight-it was written. That makes a world of difference. The Fates are rarely wrong about their castings, but the men who write things down and pa.s.s them off as fact are p.r.o.ne to mortal error.

As I returned home and found my dog at last waiting for me, I thought about the end of the G.o.ds. Many of them deserved to fade away into the twilight, or to be locked away in Valhalla's musty halls. After all, the G.o.ds as I knew them were capricious creatures, driven as much by emotion and l.u.s.t as by reason and need. But I, up until my most recent escapade, was not. I was and am fueled by a much stronger thing-the desire to make mischief and to do wrong unto others. And it was precisely those things that made me realize I needed to live beyond our foretold ending. Loki is necessary in the world to come, whereas the other G.o.ds are not.

"Here, pup! Here, boy!" My beloved pooch ran to me, licking hunger across his lips.

"Good boy! Are you hungry, pup? Well, let us be off, then, my little Fenris. It's finally time for you to sup. I spotted a full moon peeking out from behind a cloud on my walk back here. Perhaps that planetoid would make a good first morsel for you. But save a bit of room, for I've a nice dwarf-snack in mind for you, too."

As my dog, Fenris the Wolf, leapt into the heavens, prepared to devour sun, moon, and G.o.ds alike, I wondered what the fire-demoness Surty was doing right now. It occurred to me that I should call on her. Her team was leading the charge against the G.o.ds and she was positioned to know victory in the coming battle. Plus, she was cute enough. She could likely use a good consort to accompany her through.

And if that potentially star-crossed romance didn't survive the terrible battle to come, perhaps upon my return in the next world, I should try my luck dating a vampire. I heard they are rather easy to manipulate.

Frankenbilly.

By John Shirley.

Okay ... recording. I'm going to splice this with Henry's story, and make a whole presentation. I'm not sure if I can go ahead with my plans on it, though. I got a kind of warning today.

This recording is made on August 7, 1981. It's been, what now, about fifteen years since Henry came riding onto Corriganville, out in east Ventura County. What I'm going to remember for you now happened in 1966.

Now let me set the scene. It's the summer of '66, the day the rider comes, and we're shooting Billy the Kid Versus Dracula on the Corrigan Ranch. Me, I'm the soundman, hoping this is the last shot of the day. It's a d.a.m.ned hot day, even in late afternoon with the wind blowing in from the Mojave. My head throbs and my sweaty shirt rasps on my back as I adjust the boom mic over John Carradine and Harry Carey, Jr. Wishing I wasn't there at all. Getting paid barely enough money to make it worth showing up. But it's the only job I can get. h.e.l.l, the only job any of us could get.

Harry's playing a wagonmaster, Carradine is a vampire, and both are in costume, standing by a covered wagon, trying to catch some of its shade. "John," Harry says, "Why the h.e.l.l are we in this c.r.a.p picture?" Not much trying to keep his voice down.

Carradine just laughs affably, says in that voice that seems too deep for his skinny little body, "Because if we didn't we'd have to pursue honest labor, Harry."

Harry starts to answer back but then he shades his eyes with his hand and squints up at the hills over the movie ranch. "Looks like a rider up there, on top of that hill. d.a.m.n hot day to be riding out in the sticks."

Sounds like a line from a movie-a better one. I turn to look and yeah, there's a guy on a black-and-white pony up there raising some dust, moving his horse slow, watching us. I'm thinking it's one of the wranglers, probably, then get a funny feeling seeing him up there. The stranger's a long ways off. I can't make out his face, but I can feel him looking right at me.

Then the director shouts at me to get the G.o.dd.a.m.n duct tape slapped on the boom mic and get out of the way for the take.

Two and a half hours later the ordeal's over for now. No night shoot today. So I'm sitting at a card table set up by my little silver Airstream trailer, a hundred yards up-slope from the set, on the little dirt road that pa.s.ses behind the "town." It's dusk, half an hour after we stopped shooting, trying to get the d.a.m.ned Revox reel-to-reel to stop jittering. Of course, we mainly did sound-to-film recording, but I'd been collecting some wild sound and atmosphere stuff for the foley editor to use later. And I'm listening to the crickets as the sun goes down, and fumbling with the reel-to-reel's switches-s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up, because, to be honest, I'm drinking, right? More than usual, I mean. Been getting worse all year.

My wife ran off to Las Vegas with a broken-down stuntman, about a year before, took my savings with her. I'm forty-five years old and working on Poverty Row junk like this. My daughter hasn't spoken to me in almost a year, and I got fired off the last shoot for drinking.

Tequila. Maybe that's why Henry picked me. Or maybe he saw the stamp of destiny.

So I'm sitting in front of my Airstream, nursing my Cuervo, when I hear a clopping and catch this funny smell-not so funny, more like strange and sick. I look up from the recorder set up on the card table, and there's this leathery snaggletoothed rider squinting down at me from his horse. He's skinny, got jug ears and long gray hair. The sunset is in his eyes-blue eyes under heavy dark eyebrows. On his worn-out old saddle is a rifle holster, with what I a.s.sume is a prop Winchester in it.

I glance past him, see a trail of dust still hanging in the crotch between the scrubby hills. I figure this is the rider Harry spotted, the one watching us this afternoon. He's ridden down out of the eastern Santa Susana foothills around Corriganville. Old Crash Corrigan bought the ranch land back in the '30s and turned it into a low-budget movie set, mostly for Westerns and serials, but they made all kinds of pictures here, and parts of pictures. Even some Tarzan, and television, later.

But this rider, he's coming from the mountains-and on the other side of those mountains is the Mojave Desert. I figure he can't have come that far. Must be an extra fooling about with one of our rented horses, all afternoon. "If Mr. Beaudine sees you took one of our horses out for a joy ride," I advise him, "he's liable to fire your a.s.s off the shoot."

"Don't know a Mr. Beaudine," he says to me. He had a voice that went from squeaky to gravelly in a few syllables. "Anyway, this here is my own d.a.m.n horse. Pedro's his name."

"Beaudine's his name-the director of the G.o.dd.a.m.n movie," I say. I remember trying to figure out how old the rider was-couldn't guess. Might be old or just weather-beaten, premature gray. I've never seen such leathery skin. Like it was stripped off, run through a tannery, and put back on. His hodgepodge outfit doesn't look like it belongs to the standard western costuming they put the cast in. He's wearing an antique military jacket-khaki, a few bra.s.s b.u.t.tons left, yellow collar-like something one of the Rough Riders would have worn going up San Juan Hill. He has big dusty clodhopper boots on, dungarees, and a stained, dust-coated sombrero. There is a red bandana around his neck, though. That's the only bit of costumery on him that seems to go with the production.

He sits there, on one of those black-and-white Indian ponies, a grimy Pinto stallion who snorts and lowers his head to the ground, looking for something to crop up, but there's nothing but sage.

Music plays from one of the other trailers, a song by the Beatles. "Drive My Car." The rider looks toward the sound. "Now that's a queer song," he says. " 'Beep beep beep,' they say." He sticks the tip of his tongue out to catch it between crooked buck teeth, as if to keep from laughing.

"That's the Beatles," I say.

"Sounds more like birds peepin' away," he says. "Say there, bub ..." And he leans over pommel of the most worn-out old saddle I've ever seen, to look real hard at the bottle of Cuervo sitting on the table. "That ta-keeler there?"

It takes me a moment to figure out he meant tequila. "Sure. Climb down and have a slug, bro." Anything to take my mind off my life....

He steps down off the horse, doesn't bother to tie it up. The Indian pony wanders off, and the rider doesn't seem worried about it. He limps energetically toward the other camp chair, sits with a grunt, slapping the dust off his dungarees. He accepts the bottle from me. "You ain't got a gla.s.s? I'm not barrel boarder. I'll have a gla.s.s if they is one."

"Sure...." I go into the trailer, find a second gla.s.s, and when I come out I see him poking at my tape recorder.

"Now don't touch that!" I tell him, sharply. "Not cool, man!"

He draws his hand back, sits up straight, shrugging, adjusting his bandana. "You use that machine to make a movie picture?"

"Just for certain kinds of sound effects. Here ..." I pour him the tequila.

He takes the tumbler and raises it to me. "Here's how!" He knocks back half a gla.s.s like nothing. He's real quiet for a minute, his face shaded by that dirty sombrero. "That's good ta-keeler," he says, at last. "Didn't drink much till ... after. What's your name, bub?"

"Jack," I tell him. "You?"

"Gone back to my own given name. Henry. Well, it was William Henry McCarty but I liked Henry."

I sit next to him. "You changed your name at some point, huh? Police trouble?"

"You could say. Started out, I went by Antrim, after my stepfather. He was a right son of a b.i.t.c.h. Never knew my real Pap. Later, when I got in some trouble for shooting that pig-snout Cahill, I went by Bonney. William H. Bonney." He smiles ruefully. "Alias Billy the Kid."

When he says that, I'm thinking, Oh Jesus, we got a live one here. A grade-A liar or a grade-B lunatic.

It's cooling off now, and he pushes his sombrero back so it hangs off his neck by the chin string. His hair's all tangled together. He goes on, "Got a cabin in southeast California, by the border now-and about twelve mile from my cabin, they got one of those places with the movie screens up so high. Folks drive their jalopies up to them, watch 'em outside. I can't get me a jalopy because I got no ident.i.ty papers. So I take Pedro out and they let me sit on the ground by my horse and watch the pictures. They give me a little work, now and then. Pedro, I had him five years ... where's he gone to?" He looks around for the horse. "There he is. Don't wander off too far, Pedro.... What was we talking about?"

I'm guessing this is his idea of an audition. All "method" like, living the part. I pour myself a drink. "So you want to play Billy the Kid in this picture? They've cast that part already, Henry."

"Me? No, I'm too old to play ... the Kid." He grins, showing his crooked buckteeth. I'm thinking I've seen that face before, in a photo. He goes on, "But I expect I can be a help. Heard that Wyatt Earp got paid for talking about things." He spits in the dirt. "He advised on some Tom Mix movie picture. If that head-busting Kansas cow-f.u.c.ker could get the do-re-mi, why not me? I need some money for Doc Vic. Got to have some chemistry supplies."

"You want to be a consultant, you mean? Oh that's right ... you used to be William Bonney, alias Billy the Kid." I smirk and pour him another. Then it occurs to me that even though he left the Winchester on his horse, I ought to glance at him to see if he has a gun or knife or something, seeing as he's either half or whole cracked. I don't see a weapon, but one could be tucked under that old military coat. "Were you in the military?"

"No, I took this coat off a fella. He didn't need it no more. I just like the b.u.t.tons."

He takes the refill in as dirty a hand as I've ever been around. And while I'm noticing this, I see a pale zigzag of scars all around his right wrist. Sewing marks, sutures, all laced up. There's something else odd about his hands but it takes me a bit to work it out. Then I get it: his right hand is larger and a bit darker than his left. His left is small as a boy's of maybe fourteen.

"You are looking at my sewin' scars," he says, frowning at me.

"Um-car accident?"

"Nope. Now, I heard that this here movie picture-" He pointed toward the production set, just visible between the old-timey false-front buildings of Main Street. "-is about Frankenstein and Jesse James. Now I didn't know Jessie but I know all about that German doctor. Much as a man can know about that one-he was not a man who showed his insides ... oh, here's how." He drains the rest of the tequila in his gla.s.s, boom, just like that.

"Wrong show," I tell him. "We'll be shooting Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter pretty soon, but this is Billy the Kid Versus Dracula."

"It's what? Guess I heard wrong then. I come too soon. This here's Corrigan Ranch?"

"This is it. And the picture we're doing now is you ... versus Dracula."

"Dracula, you say. I saw an old movie about him, back before pictures could talk. But he ain't real. Frankenstein, now, he was real-only that doctor's name's not Frankenstein. Howsomeever, I read that Miss Sh.e.l.ley's book. There's people say I cain't read. It ain't-it's not true. My Ma taught me, before the consumption took her. I read that Ivanhoe once. Most of it, anyway."

Henry seemed to be talking more to the setting sun than to me. He was staring unblinking right into it, over the top of the fake saloons on the dusty street Corrigan Ranch used for its cheap oaters.

"So Frankenstein was real, huh?" I said, sipping tequila, wanting to hear more of this fantasy. "That's far out." It'd make a great story to tell around the set, anyhow.

"That name Frankenstein was a lie Miss Sh.e.l.ley made up. A book alias, you might say. His name was Doctor Victor Von Gluckheim. Doc Vic, that's how I think of him-he knew that Miss Sh.e.l.ley and her friends, had 'em out to his castle in Austria. She was young, real young, then, no more'n eighteen. He showed her some things he was working on. Made a dead frog and a rabbit come alive, right in front of her. Showed her a dead man he bought, fella died in a lunatic house. Working on sewing that onto another fella, trying to revive 'em. He was in a struggle with death, don't you see. Was Doctor Vic told me this. Now, Doctor Vic was pretty old when I met him. 1881-more'n ninety years old. But he looked maybe sixty. He come over to this country back in 1816, running from trouble back home. Graverobbing charges, as you might expect. So he come out to hide in the territory where he could do his work in peace. I met him two days before Pat Garrett shot me."

I'm listening to him and sometimes I'm trying not to laugh and other times I stare at those mismatched hands and I wonder. My nephew George, in those days, worked for Confidential magazine. It occurs to me then that maybe there's some way I can get a story to sell him for Confidential. Something like, "'Billy the Krazed' Raids Movie Set." I'm testing the recorder anyway, so why not? "Billy the Kid-In His Own Words." h.e.l.l, I'd read it.

"Tell you what," I say. "You tell me how you met Frankenstein, or whatever he called himself, and I'll try to get you the consulting job. If you do get it, it won't pay much. Maybe we can do something with your story, anyhow. I could record it on this machine...."

d.a.m.n if his story couldn't be a movie itself. I think so now and I thought so even then.

Henry thinks about it and then he says real slow, "Maybe you're the one I saw in the dream."

"Which dream is that?"

"I had a dream that a fella would tell my story, my true story, but I had to ride the mountains to find him. Since my time with the doctor I've learned to take advice from dreams." He looks at me and says, real slow, "My story's been percolatin' in me many a year and it could be the time has come. I'll do 'er. One thing though-you got anything to eat, maybe some pork and beans? I like those canned pork and beans...."

"Got some canned chili. I'll get you some, but don't touch that machine."

So he eats some chili out of the can with a spoon, cold, really relishing it, his yellow teeth chewing with his mouth open. He seems to have some trouble swallowing, and drinks a lot of my jugged water to get it down. When he's done he asks, "You got a truck I see to tote this here modern trailer. I expect there's a battery in that truck? One of those big car batteries?"

"Sure. Why?" Is he thinking of stealing my truck battery? Maybe he's got a broken-down truck in the hills somewhere.

"I'll show you, by and by. Got a smoke, there, bub?"

Does he mean gra.s.s? "Lucky Strikes, if that's what you mean...."