Facing the Twilight by Rachel Parsons	Table of Contents Chapter 1 Chapter 2, part 1 appear in this issue.
Chapter 2 part 2 of 2

It is rather catchy, do you not think? And it is such a nice celebration of your victory over the offworlders.”

Freya really knew how to tear the wings off my flies. I gave her a dirty look. She dimpled.

“Now, please, as a fellow queen you must know how busy I am. What is the boon I may grant my valiant and noble — not to mention naked and wet — vassal?”

Glare. “I need to talk to the Valkyrie who came for the offworlder Henry Weston.”

She frowned. “He died during the war with the offworlders?”

“Yes. At an encampment, but not in battle.”

“Nevertheless, that would probably be Brunhilde. The offworlders liked being carried off by her for some reason. I will have her come to you directly. Now, stand by a fire and drink something hot and nourishing. You make me nervous standing there dripping and shivering.”

She summoned a barge that floated through the ceiling. Stepping aboard it, she began yodeling and was gone.

“She can't carry a tune, can she?” Rosalyn remarked, taking me by the arm. She is a worshipper of the Man-God and not a believer in goddesses, but she was going to see that Freya's last words to me were to be obeyed. She planted me by the fireplace in my chambers. Henry was still there, cradling his head in his lap, but his mother was gone.

“Where did Emissary Weston go?” I asked.

“To powder her nose,” her son replied. At my astonished look, he amended, “she left to collect herself. Was mumbling something like ‘ghosties and ghoulies and long leggedy beasties’. Sometimes she doesn't make much sense, but the Secretary-General likes her. They even sing songs about her in Canada.”

“Uh, huh.”

I was too busy taking in the blessed heat from the fire Rosalyn had just stoked to pay much attention to him. I just stood in front of it and held my hands out. I was able to turn my whole front toward the flames. I guess the spellminder does not count the dead as a true audience. Maybe it is because, try as we may, we cannot hide from death so it does not matter how we face the dead. Henry lumbered over and put his head on my shoulder; looked up at me like a plaintive little puppy wanting a treat, as Rosalyn gave me more laced coffee.

“Well, thou twoest look cozy.”

I turned at Brunhilde's entrance. She differed from Queen Freya not in the slightest — all Valkyries I have ever met were tall, blue-eyed and blonde, with bosoms that could feed an army of infants, and were almost impossible to tell apart. They were all eyes from the same lobe, as the saying goes. But her attitude was markedly different. Before coming forth to where Henry and I was, she stopped before the full length mirror that rests on a stand on the north wall at a forty-five degree angle from the fireplace.

“I am getting fat. I just know it. No, thou needst not deny it. I am getting fat.”

“She said that to me also when I met her.”

“Your memory is returning, Henry?” I had turned my backside to the fire at Brunhilde's entrance, and my butt was feeling nice and toasty, making me mellow.

“I do remember her. I recall thinking ‘yo, look at those mammas’.”

“Mammas?” Brunhilde stopped her search for fat deposits and stared at the offworlder.

“It is offworlder slang for bosoms,” I said. “I got it, too, right before I skewered their warriors. Their last words, as I twisted my sword through their guts, were often ‘look at those mammas’.”

“Oh, I remember that. I had thought at the time they were crying for their mothers. I tried explaining to them that their mothers would not be at Valhalla. But they kept repeating over, and over, ‘look at those mammas’. I thought them to be such babies, not worthy of being on the Barge, but orders were orders and I took them.”

“Methinks you would have understood, if they had tried to nurse on you, as, when dying, they tried to do on me,” I responded.

“No doubt; you know, your bosoms, Rhiannon, could feed an army of infants; but my armor would have gotten in their way. You, on the other hand, were lacking any such obstruction.” She rolled her lips and went back to the mirror. She hiked her girdle up and began squeezing her midriff. “There is more than an inch to be pinched here,” she lamented. “I have to cut back on Idunna’s apples, that is all there is to it.”

“Brunhilde, how many times do I have to tell you that you are not fat? You can still eat all the apples you want, if you ask me. Besides I hear they make you young, not fat.”

“Do I look young to you?” She was staring at her teeth, as if that was what determined the difference between youth and old age.

She looked eighteen. Her actual age was somewhere between six thousand and thirteen and a half billion years; I never could get a straight answer from her. “Yes,” I said.

“Not fat?” Worry lines appeared on her forehead and under her eyes.

“Brunhilde, I really need your help here.”

She pulled her girdle back down. Straightened her armor around her stomach. “How mayest I help thee?”

“You could start by stopping with the silly ‘thee’s and thou’s.”

“Sorry. Offworlders seem to expect them. Don't you, honey?”

Henry looked glaucous; more so, I mean.

“And stop talking like a tart.”

“All right, Rhiannon. You were never much fun; but especially since you have lost your clothing. I am glad it is Freya Herself that is assigned to you when you die.” She sat down on the couch facing me, and crossed her legs, making her armor tinkle. “Now, what can I do for you?”

“We need a witness to Henry's death. He was probably murdered.”

Rosalyn offered Brunhilde a pastry from the plate she had seemingly produced out of nowhere. Her disbelief in goddesses did not extend to being rude when they were my guests.

In spite of her obsession with a chubbiness only she could see, the Valkyrie took it and began picking at it daintily. If anything about a six foot seven big-boned woman could be called dainty. She could be my sheriff's sister. I did have a suspicion he was part Aesir. No mere man, mortal or immortal, has as much nocturnal stamina as he sports, and he does have relatives among the western barbarians.

“Oh, I would say it was murder, all right.” She bit a moon-sized cruller, focused in on chewing, and then swallowed with a gulp that could be heard in New Gwynedd. She moaned in delight, and pointing to the remainder, mumbled, “Rosalyn, you must give me the recipe.”

Rosalyn started to say something, but my glance silenced her.

“So you did witness something?” I asked of the goddess.

“Sorry, Rhiannon. Got there too late to see who had done it, only that this one's head and body were at opposite ends of a tent. Clear indication of foul play. And when he saw me, his body grabbed its head and he ran out. Freya, that was a fumble. Well, you know how it is. It is against our protocols to go running after the valiant dead. They are supposed to come to you, or be lying comatose at your approach. So I spent the rest of the afternoon in the spa that the Terrans had provided for themselves. Ever smelled eucalyptus, Rhiannon? Really clears out the sinuses.”

“So the murder took place outside of their spa?” I remembered the Terrans love of earthly luxury when I was at Ferrell's court in New Dyvedd.

“Well, it was hardly what you are thinking. No marble floors, no lead pipes, no hot water running from cauldrons on roofs; no magnifying glass to increase and direct the sun’s heat. Just a wooden tub heated by a coal fire. And no, the murder was across the encampment; I just went to the spa. He was butchered about five miles south of Arbeth Dactyl, actually.”

“Well, that may be why he is haunting Caer Rhiannon, his being killed so close to our port town.” I turned away, as she stuck her fingers in a jelly filling and then began sucking them.

“But that makes no sense,” Henry said. “I was not in the army. At least I don't think I was. What is wrong with my memory?” He rubbed his temples with his index and fore fingers.

“Spirits often lose much of their memories of their former lives,” I explained.

“But what was I doing in soldier’s fatigues in an encampment?” He placed his hands on his crown in an agitated fashion. I was afraid he might start tossing his head again.

“I really could not say,” Brunhilde sniffed, as if the subject had suddenly become distasteful. She picked up another, cream filled, donut. “I know I am going to pay for this. Will probably have to work it off carrying portly generals off two at a time. You want to help me out here, Rhiannon, and send some corpulent men to the frontier to attack barbarians?”

I watched in awe as she inhaled one pastry after another. She then smacked her hands together.

“That is not very ladylike, Brunhilde.”

She looked me over disdainfully. “You should talk, Rhiannon the Nude. It is not exactly ladylike to run about naked all the time.”

“You know I have to or-”

“Yes, yes, or everyone you love will die. You know, everyone dies. Even we gods are going to get it at Ragnarok, when the universe undergoes its heat death. So why do you not don a funeral dress for the occasion? I saw the darlingest one in New Prydain, when I was called to carry off one of their Senators. I thought it was you, darling. Absolutely you. You would only get to wear it once, as everyone would perish when you put it on, but if you worked it right, once would be enough.” She wagged her right hand at me as she said this.

“Brunhilde, your taunting of my nakedness is not kindly.”

“Since when does a goddess of death have to be kindly?” She wiped her mouth with a napkin Rosalyn handed her. “Well, if that will be all? There is a beadle who died trying to rescue a cat I am supposed to pick up — oh, golly, look at the time.” She had just glanced at the grandfather clock opposite the fireplace. “Oh, speaking of your unquiet spirits. If I do not bustle, he will be roaming Daearu moaning and clanking chains. Now, we cannot have that, can we?”

She stood up, raised her right arm. The barge materialized and floated down from the ceiling. She climbed aboard. “Sorry I was not of more help.” And with that, she was gone.

To be continued...

Copyright © 2006 by Rachel Parsons