strip the twigs. He pulled lightning through his hand and burned the bark free, leaving the wood slightly charred but smooth.
“Oh!”
She was watching the smoke rise through his fingers, her eyes wide. He smiled again and crouched down in front of her, handing her the wood. “If I’d left the bark, it would have worn rough against his leg. This will be better.”
She took the wood without looking at it. “But how did you do that?”
He opened his hands, showing her his palms, then brushed the soot from them. “I just can.”
“Didn’t it hurt?”
He shook his head. “Not at all.”
Her forehead creased and she dropped her gaze to the kid in her lap, taking the branches and the cloth and splinting them against the leg. He could hear her mind, buzzing over what she’d seen, trying to understand. But she was young enough, he hoped, that she would believe.
“What else can you do?” she asked, after she had finished tying the splint, and set the kid back to its feet by the mother.
Thor helped her up from the ground, and glanced at the sky. It was sunny and bright, clear and cloudless. “See that tree, there?”
He pointed toward a medium sized oak, its boughs heavy with green leaves, and she nodded. Torching the hill would not make him a very welcome guest, and while he could have chosen one already dead, it would be more likely to catch fire.
“Don’t blink,” he said. “And don’t be frightened.”
Thor closed his eyes, and called to the static in the air, drawing it together and focusing it into the sky around the tree. He could feel the moisture following, like a sweat breaking out on a hot day, and didn’t stop the cloud from forming, though he could have. He opened his eyes and traced the path from the cloud to the tree in his mind.
There was a flash of white where the lightning followed, crawling over the tree and into the earth, singeing leaves and branches on its way. The thunderclap was immediate, startling the goats and causing the dog to start barking. But Thor paid no attention to the animals, his gaze on the girl.
Her face was white as bone and she did not turn to look at him. “You did that?”
Smoke rose from the tree, and he rang the moisture from the cloud that had formed, focusing the rain into a deluge over the area that had been struck and leaving the animals and the two of them in sunlight.
“Yes.”
“And the rain, too?” she asked.
He smiled. “The rain, too.”
She turned to look at him, almost shyly, as if she wasn’t sure if she should. “Are you an angel?”
Thor grunted. It bothered him to be mistaken for one a second time, but he didn’t let it show on his face. These people could hardly be expected to know him for what he was, and the Aesir were too new to the world to be known at all this far south, but for the word he had spread himself.
“Do angels summon lightning and rain?” he asked.
She bit her lip and brushed her hair out of her eyes. “Not exactly. Grandmother Eve told us that the Archangel Michael can call lightning and fire through his sword though.” She frowned and glanced at his side. “Do you have a sword?”
“No.” Grandmother Eve. Then he had found them, the House of Lions. It did not seem possible that two Eves could exist with particular knowledge of the angels. “But in the city where I live, I have goats.”
The girl smiled, and it lit her face and eyes. Yes. These were Eve’s people. And this girl was of Eve’s blood. He could see the resemblance in that smile, the closeness of the line to the goddess they called grandmother. “What are you then, if not an angel?”
He met the girl’s eyes and let his own glow white. “My name is Thor,” he said. “God of thunder.”
Her name was Evelia. For weeks he met with her, helping her to tend the goats, and bringing rain and sun to the village to ensure a bountiful harvest. Freyr might have done better, making the grapes grow larger and plumper, and the wheat taller and sweeter, but Freyr was by now in Asgard, building his home with the other gods who followed Odin, and Thor did what he could do. It wasn’t inconsiderable.
When the time came to harvest the wheat and the other grains, he asked Evelia to take him to the village. Visitors were always more welcome in times of plenty, hospitality less begrudged, and he would be able to help in the fields while he gave them good sun.
“Mama and Papa will be happy to meet with you, when I tell them what you have done.” Evelia said, prodding one of the goats with her staff to keep it moving. The young kid he had rescued had long since grown out of his splint, and charged about the hillside over the slippery stone as if he had never fallen. “Papa won’t believe that you’re a god, of course. You’ll have to show them. Like you did with me.”
“I’ll give them any proof they require. As I have already.” Thor nodded to the wheat field outside the village, more valuable than gold for farmers. “Eve’s people, of any, should know the truth. And I can protect her, if the need arises.”
Evelia frowned. “From the man with the stone eyes. Adam. That’s why we’re supposed to be wary of strangers. No man with gray eyes is permitted on our lands. It’s one of the laws.”
“Is that how you know him?”
“That’s how Grandmother Eve told us we should. She said we would feel him, too, like fire on our skin, but if he got that close to us, it was probably too late.”
“Too late for what?” he asked, keeping his eyes on the goats.
He nudged a nanny that had stopped to graze on a bush. How she could eat anything more with her bag so heavy with milk, he wasn’t sure. They were nearly to the village now, though, and he could hear the sounds of the people within it. Laughing and shouting, barking dogs and bleating animals. The goats heard it too, and for the most part, they sped up, anxious to be milked and stabled.
“Too late to stop him from hurting us,” she said, as if there was no other answer.
Thor grunted. Evelia’s knowledge was vague in regard to Eve and her brother, but valuable all the same. He imagined her parents must know more. He hoped they did, or else this trip to the village would be wasted effort. The golden wheat reminded him too much of Sif, and he wanted to return to Asgard.
“When Eve came here last, what was her name?” he asked.
Evelia looked up at him and smiled. “Mama says she was called Helen, and her hair was the color of sunshine. She was glorious, Grandpapa says. Like an angel from God. But even Mama and Papa were not born yet when she lived here.”
He returned her smile. Helen. Then she would have come out of desperation and fear. Yes. These people would know. He would stay as long as necessary to earn their trust, as a god and as a man. And then he would return to Odin, and be very grateful for the loving embrace of his wife.
Chapter Seven: Present
Eve frowned and rubbed her face. It had been weeks since Adam’s intrusion, but she could not shake the feeling that he still hovered around her, somewhere just outside her immediate perception. It left her unsettled and worried she’d wake up in the night to see Michael and his sword standing over her bed, ready to put an end to the threat she was to the world. An old nightmare she could not stand revisiting. Worse even than the nightmares from her last life, of the mental ward, and the blood.
She set aside the invitations she’d been addressing and leaned back in her chair, letting her eyes lose focus while she concentrated on the distinct presence of her brother. There was a steady buzz of thought surrounding her. The town, which had sprung up near the DeLeon estate when she had been married to Ryam, had not grown too terribly large. But it was distracting and difficult to sift through, peppered with so much of her bloodline. A
