switches you had to press hard.
'Once, we spun threads,' said Urd. They were back to speaking in turn, thank God. That overlapping dialogue of theirs had been freaking me out.
'One for every mortal,' said Verdande.
'But so effortful,' said Skuld. 'So laborious.'
'A grey thread for the common man whose life is never to amount to much.'
'Occasionally a colourful thread for the freeman or the farmer, he whose lot is to provide for others and set a good example.'
'And rarely, very rarely, a golden thread, for the chieftain, the king, the hero…'
'The uncommon man.'
'The exception.'
'The great.'
'But that was then, and this is now.' Urd produced a videocassette. It gleamed brightly. It looked for all the world like an ordinary plastic-cased VHS tape that someone had spray-painted gold. I glimpsed my name scrawled on the stick-on strip on the side.
'This is yours, Gideon,' she said. 'This is you. Your past…' She handed the tape to Verdande.
'Your present,' said Verdande, passing it on to Skuld.
'And your future,' said Skuld, slotting it into the VCR.
The telly, like the fire, lacked a plug cable. Still it came on when Urd prodded the main button. Verdande manually selected a channel. Skuld pressed 'Play' on the VCR. The machine's drive motor whined and churned.
'Sit back.'
'Watch.'
'It will be instructive.'
Out of the corner of his mouth, Odin said, 'I was afraid this might happen. Those who come to the Norns seeking knowledge must pay for it somehow. In your case, the cost is submission to a demonstration of their power. If you weren't a hero, or so unintimidated by them, they wouldn't feel the need to flaunt their superiority. The greater your destiny, the stronger your character, the more they must try to belittle you.'
'With a video?' I muttered back. 'A Blu-Ray disc, a forty-inch plasma display, now that would impress me. But
'They have modernised.'
'Hardly.'
'Nonetheless, I urge you, don't watch. Or watch for as long as you can bear, but close your eyes and stop your ears when it becomes too much.'
'It's pre-digital technology,' I said. 'There aren't even remote controls. I'm not worried.'
The TV screen flickered into life. A wash of static. Then…
Twenty-five
There is a baby.
He gurgles.
He has a teddy. A woollen Rupert the Bear his nan knitted for him. It doesn't look much like the actual Rupert the Bear, but it had the yellow checked scarf and crude red jumper.
He loves that teddy. He sucks one ear so hard, it eventually comes off. Nan sews it back on, and the teddy is never quite the same from then on, but he still loves it.
There is a toddler.
He hates tinned rice pudding.
His mummy is feeding him some. He knows he is going to sick it up. He tries to tell her to stop spooning it into him because it's just going to come straight out again, all over her. He doesn't have the words. She doesn't stop. It does come out.
He never can stand rice pudding after that. Even the smell of it turns his stomach.
There is a little boy.
He has a bike.
It is a BMX, a Mongoose Supergoose with chrome frame and bright red everything else. He rides it over the pavements and through the underpasses and across the railway bridges. His father bought it for him second-hand and it's not in the best of nick, but still, it is the coolest bike ever. Then some neighbours kids steal it. He sees them riding it a few days later, popping wheelies and giving one another backsies. He goes up and challenges them. They punch him and tell him to f-word off. Then they set about smashing up the bike in front of him, in a slow, sadistically methodical manner.
He lies to his parents about his swollen lip, saying he tripped and fell over and did it on a kerb stone. Crying in bed that night, he vows to himself he will never be robbed from or bullied again.
There is a pre-teen at primary school.
He is tall for his age.
But not as tall as Mick McCulloch. Mick McCulloch is bigger than anyone, and knows it, and uses it. Mick picks on everybody in his year, and the year below, and even the year above. One day Mick makes the mistake of picking on the boy. He tries to trip him up in the school dining hall so that he'll drop his tray and people will laugh. He succeeds.
The boy stands straight up and starts whacking Mick in the face with the empty tray. And when the tray breaks, he uses his fists. And he won't stop, no matter how much Mick whimpers and begs. In the end a member of the catering staff pulls him off, and Mick is left sobbing in pain, bleeding, humiliated. But it's the boy who gets the bad reputation there after. No one dares hassle him. Everyone is a little scared of him. Even the teachers.
There is a teenager at secondary school.
He isn't doing well.
His parents are in the throes of getting divorced. It's ugly. The atmosphere at home is sour, like curdled milk. He is failing in his exams. He is having to go and see the headmistress in her office far too often and getting put on report and threatened with exclusion far too often. His teachers are at their wits' end. He is obviously not stupid. He just isn't bothering. And his behaviour is disruptive. The class comedian, he always has a smart answer ready, just not the right kind of smart.
He crashes and burns academically. Further education is not an option. Then the careers advisor suggests the armed forces.
There is a cadet.
He likes being a cadet.
He takes to basic training as though it were made for him. He doesn't mind officers yelling order at him all day long. He doesn't mind having to get out of bed at ridiculous hours, being made to go on full-kit runs for mile after slogging mile, the endless drilling, the live fire exercises, the sleep-depriving night manoeuvres, the petty breaches of conduct or dress code that earn absurdly disproportionate punishments, any of it.
He is away from home. He is being treated like an adult, like a person with value. He feels for the first time that he belongs somewhere.
There is a private.
He experiences his first taste of real combat.
He is in former Yugoslavia, peacekeeping after the NATO bombardments, helping implement the Dayton Accord. His squad comes under fire from a band of Croat guerrillas in Turanj, a suburb of Karlovac. The contact
