Bochica was at the gate — not waiting with the impatient quality of someone who had arrived and was being made to wait, but simply there, with the quality of someone who had traveled a very long distance and had arrived at the end of the traveling and was allowing the arriving to be what it was before moving to the next thing. He was in his fifties by appearance — not old, but with the quality of someone whose age had settled into them with the completeness of a person who had arrived at what they were going to be. The traveling was present in him in the way that long journeys were present in people who had made many of them — not fatigue exactly, but the settled quality of someone for whom movement was simply how they existed and stillness was the temporary state. He had a bag — cloth, carefully packed, the quality of something that had been carried a long distance and had been carried correctly, not overpacked, not underpacked, the practical organization of someone who understood exactly what they needed and had brought exactly that.
He looked at the compound when Shane came to the gate — at the walls, at the Great Tree visible at the center, at the quality of a place that had been built with intention by someone who understood what intention produced when it was applied consistently over time. He looked at Shane. "You built the hearths," he said. Shane looked at him. "Yes," Shane said. Bochica looked at the compound. "And asked for nothing," he said. Shane looked at the gate. "The hearths were needed," he said. "People were cold." Bochica looked at him with the quality of someone who has just had a thing confirmed that they had believed was true and had come a long way to confirm. He reached into the bag and brought out the coffee — not a large quantity, but with the quality of a gift that understood itself as a gift rather than a trade, the representative portion of something larger, the carefully selected sample of the best of what this land produced. He held it out. Shane took it. He looked at the beans — at the color, the density, the particular smell of something that had been grown at elevation in the conditions the Andes produced and that produced this and nothing else quite like it. He looked at Bochica. "Come inside," Shane said. "There are people who should hear what you have to say."
The longhouse near the Great Tree had the quality of a space that had been used for significant conversations — not formal, but real, the distinction present in the way the space felt when the people in it understood that what was happening in it mattered. They gathered without ceremony. Odin at the table's head with the quality he always had in spaces where something important was being decided — not performing authority, but occupying the position that his accumulated experience of ten thousand years of decisions qualified him to occupy. Tyr beside him, the dwarven bracelet on his wrist, the missing hand concealed, the legal mind running its continuous assessment of what was being said and what it implied and what obligations it might produce. Freya across from Tyr, the contained quality she brought to rooms where something new was being established, reading everything, the foresight running its background assessment. Thor beside her — not the battle-ready quality, but the other Thor, the one who sat at tables and listened and occasionally said something that landed with the flat weight of someone who had seen enough to know when something was simple and when it was not. Sif beside Thor, watching Bochica with the attentive quality she brought to new presences — not suspicious, but assessing. Magni at the table's edge, present and paying attention and ready to speak if speaking was the correct thing to do. Freyr standing near the wall, having come in from the fields — the outdoor quality of someone who had been working the ground and had come inside for this and would go back to the ground when this was done. Idunn beside him, small and precise, the golden apples present in the way they were always present when Idunn was present, which was completely and without announcement. Hoenir at the table's corner with the patient quality of someone who processed slowly and completely and whose processing produced results that faster minds missed. Kvasir with his notebook — because Kvasir brought the notebook everywhere and the notebook would be open and notations would be made and this was simply what happened when Kvasir was in a room where information was being exchanged.
Shane was at the table. His thermos was on the table. The coffee beans were beside the thermos. Bochica sat across from Shane with the quality of a messenger who had arrived at the place the message was intended for and was now delivering it. He looked at the room — at the assembled gods of the Norse pantheon looking back at him — and did not appear to find this overwhelming. He had been a god himself since before most of these gods had been given their current names. "My name is Bochica," he said. "I am a messenger god of the Muisca people of what you know as Colombia. I taught agriculture and weaving and crafts to the people of the high plateau. I have been with those people since before the Spanish came and through the Spanish and through everything that came after." He paused. "My colleague Chibchacum holds the earth in that region — the Andes, the geology of it, the earthquakes that come when the earth needs to redistribute what it carries." He looked at Shane. "He sends his regards and says he will watch with interest."
Shane looked at him. "The hearths," Bochica said. "That you built during the Shroud. In the valleys and the plateaus near our people." He paused. "You built them correctly. You used the local materials. You understood the geography of each location and built for that geography rather than for a general idea of what a hearth should be." He looked at the table. "And you asked for nothing." Odin looked at Shane. Shane looked at the coffee beans. "The people needed warmth," Shane said again. Bochica looked at him. "Yes," he said. "And that is not the only thing that brought me here." He looked at the room. "We have been watching the north since the Shroud fell. Watching what was being built. Watching whether the thing being built was the kind of thing worth approaching." He paused. "The mutants did not reach our people. A vow was made with the spirits of the Amazon — by you and by Odin — and that vow was honored. The protection extended to our region." He looked at Shane directly. "We know this. We knew it when it happened." He paused. "A vow made and kept is not a small thing. It told us something about the people who made it." He looked at Odin briefly, then back at Shane. "It told us you were worth approaching."
He looked at the table. "Our people have coffee. They have crops that grow at altitude — the agricultural production of high-altitude Andean farming that has fed people in that region since before anyone had words for feeding people." He looked at the table. "What they do not have is the supply chain that used to move those things to where they were needed. The EMP took the infrastructure. The Shroud disrupted the rest." He paused. "They can produce. They cannot currently move what they produce to the people who need it." He looked at Shane. "I understand you have a similar problem from the other direction."
Shane looked at the coffee beans. He looked at Bochica. "Workers," Shane said. "We're thin. The network is thin. The nodes are established but the labor to run them at full capacity is not there." He paused. "The siege took people. The rapture took people. The farming operations need hands. The construction needs hands." He looked at Bochica. "Your people — are they able to send people north if they choose to." Bochica looked at him. "They are present. They are capable. Many of them are farming people who understand manual labor at the level of long tradition." He paused. "What they need is the thing that brings people somewhere — a reason and a fair exchange."
Shane looked at the table. He looked at Odin. Odin looked at the coffee beans. He looked at Bochica with the quality of someone who had been assessing the room for the duration of the conversation and had arrived at a conclusion. "What does fair exchange look like," Odin said. Bochica looked at him. "Workers come north," he said. "Their choice — entirely. No compulsion, no obligation that wasn't freely taken on." He looked at Shane. "They work the farms or the construction or whatever the network needs. They are paid in goods — the goods that the Andean plateau cannot produce itself. Tools. Salt. The preserved food stores that the network has and that the altitude farms do not." He paused. "And those goods go south with the workers when the workers return." He looked at the table. "Or the workers stay if they choose. That is also their choice." Shane looked at the table. He looked at Bochica. "The coffee," Shane said. "And the other crops. What moves north." "Coffee," Bochica said. "The high-altitude varieties that grow nowhere else on this continent. Quinoa. The Andean crops that have been feeding people at altitude for centuries and that the network's lower-elevation farming cannot produce." He paused. "And knowledge — the agricultural knowledge of people who have been farming in difficult conditions for a very long time and who understand how to feed people when the conditions are not cooperative."
Shane looked at the table. He looked at Freyr. Freyr was looking at the coffee beans. He looked at Bochica. "The soil in this network," Freyr said — with the quality of someone who had been listening and had identified the piece relevant to what he knew. "The siege disrupted the growing season. The microbial life of the soil around this compound and the nodes is recovering. I have been working it." He looked at Bochica. "I can work the soil in your region also. If your people will let me. What grows at altitude grows better when the soil understands what it is being asked to do." Bochica looked at Freyr — the quality of one agricultural deity reading another. "Chibchacum will want to be consulted," he said. "He holds the earth. He will have opinions about someone else working it." "Yes," Freyr said. "I would expect that. I would want to meet him." Bochica looked at Freyr for a moment. He looked at Shane. "A Norse god of fertility and agriculture wants to visit the Andes," he said. "Yes," Shane said. Bochica looked at the table.
He looked at Idunn. Idunn was looking at the coffee beans. She looked at Bochica. "The fruit picture in the network is incomplete," she said — simply, the flat statement of someone delivering a fact. "I can address it here and at the nodes. The conditions are recoverable — the siege disrupted the cycle, not the underlying capacity." She looked at the coffee beans. "If your people are coming north they should know what is growing when they arrive." Bochica looked at her. "The golden apples," he said. "Among other things," Idunn said.
Bochica looked at the table. He looked at Shane. "The man who built the hearths and asked for nothing," he said, "is sitting at a table with gods of multiple pantheons discussing agricultural exchange and labor agreements." Shane looked at the table. "Yes," he said. Bochica looked at the room. He looked at the coffee beans. He looked at Shane. "I think my people will find this acceptable," he said. "Let them decide," Shane said. "Tell them what the arrangement is. Tell them it is their choice. If they say yes we begin. If they say no the offer stays open." Bochica looked at him. "You keep saying that," he said. "Their choice." "Yes," Shane said. Bochica looked at the table. "In our experience," he said carefully, "when powerful things offer choices the choices are usually not entirely choices." Shane looked at him. "I know," he said. "I'm aware of how it sounds." He looked at the coffee beans. "I'm also aware that the only way to build something that holds is to build it from people who chose to be part of it." He paused. "Compelled things don't hold. They look like they hold and then they don't." He looked at Bochica. "So yes. Their choice. Entirely."
Bochica looked at the table for a long moment. He looked at Odin. Odin looked at the coffee beans. He looked at Bochica. "He means it," Odin said — simply. Bochica looked at Shane. He nodded once — the nod of someone who has confirmed what they came to confirm. "I will go back," he said. "I will tell them what the arrangement is. I will tell them it is their choice." He paused. "And I will tell them that the man who built the hearths and asked for nothing is the same man who is asking now and is still asking for nothing beyond what is freely given." He stood. He looked at the room, at the assembled gods, at the Great Tree visible through the longhouse's open door. He picked up the bag. He looked at the coffee beans on the table. He looked at Shane. "Keep those," he said. "As a beginning." He left the way he had arrived — simply, without ceremony, the quality of a messenger who had delivered his message and was moving to the next thing. The room held what it held for a moment. Then Kvasir looked at his notebook, made one final notation, and closed it.
Odin found Shane in the yard after — not by accident, because Odin did not encounter things by accident. He came to Shane with the quality he had when he had made a decision and was going to deliver it — not the performative quality of a decision being announced, but the grounded quality of someone who had finished the thinking and was now done with the thinking. He looked at the compound, at the walls, at the Great Tree, at the quality of a place that was functioning — not perfectly, but correctly, the distinction present in everything about it. He looked at Shane. "Asgard," he said. Shane looked at him. "It has been empty since Heimdall fell the first time," Odin said. He paused. "Hofund is back where it belongs. The bridge is open." He looked at the compound. "The realm needs its Allfather." Shane looked at the Great Tree. "You've been staying," Shane said. "Yes," Odin said. "In case you needed me." Shane looked at the compound — at the walls Mike had built, at the watchtowers, at the accumulated quality of a place that had been through the worst of what it was going to be through and was on the other side of it. "I have it," Shane said. Odin looked at him — not checking, but confirming. He looked at the compound. "Yes," he said. "You do."
He reached into his coat and produced something — small, with the quality of an object that had been made with intention for a purpose, a carved piece of bone, the markings on it old in the way of things made before writing had standardized itself. He held it out. Shane took it. He looked at it. "Heimdall hears everything," Odin said. "On any of the nine realms. If you hold that and speak his name he will hear you." He paused. "And if Heimdall hears you I hear you." He looked at Shane. "Distance is not the relevant variable." Shane looked at the carved bone, at the markings on it. He looked at Odin. "Frigg is going with you," Shane said. "Yes," Odin said. "And Hoenir." He looked at the Great Tree. "Asgard has been dark. It needs people who know how to make it a living place again." He paused. "Hoenir understands that kind of restoration better than anyone." Shane looked at the carved bone. He put it in his jacket pocket — beside Duke's collar. He looked at Odin. "The Loki question," Shane said.
Odin looked at the Great Tree. He was quiet for a moment — the quality of Odin's quiet, which was the quiet of someone who had been sitting with something for a long time and had not yet finished sitting with it. "I have made a decision," he said. "I have not finished understanding the decision." He looked at Shane. "I need the quality of thought that Asgard produces — the silence of it, the distance from Midgard that allows you to see Midgard correctly." He paused. "I will go and think and when the thinking is done I will tell you what I have decided." Shane looked at the Great Tree. "He helped," Shane said. "The stone. Hugo would be—" "I know," Odin said. "And the warning about AN," Shane said. "The warning about the mortals." "I know," Odin said again. He looked at the Great Tree. "I know all of it," he said. "That is not the difficulty." He paused. "The difficulty is that I have known Loki since before either of us had the names we carry now. I have seen what he is capable of when he is given room to be what he is. And I have seen what he is capable of when he is not." He looked at Shane. "Both of those things are true simultaneously and I need to decide which truth is the one that should determine what comes next." Shane looked at the Great Tree. "I told him I would put it to you honestly," Shane said. "I did." "Yes," Odin said. "You did." He looked at Shane. "And I will give it the thought it deserves." He looked at the compound. He looked at Shane. "Take care of this," he said — not gesturing at the compound specifically, but at everything. "Yes," Shane said. Odin nodded. He went to find Frigg.
Shane stepped through to the field north of the outer wall — open ground, spring air, the particular quality of outside that was simply not inside the walls. Loki was there. He had the quality he always had when he was not performing anything — the lean watchful quality of something that was simply what it was without the presentation that usually accompanied it. He was at the tree line north of the outer wall, not close, but at the distance of someone who had been maintaining a position for a while and had established it at the right remove from the thing they were maintaining it relative to. He looked at Shane when Shane came across the field with the unsurprised quality of someone who had been expecting this and had chosen this particular field for this particular waiting because he understood that Shane would find him here the way Shane found things — not by looking, but by arriving.
Shane came to stand near him. He looked at the wall — at the clean line of the outer wall visible from this position. He looked at Loki. "Odin is going to Asgard," Shane said. Loki looked at the wall. "Yes," he said — with the flat quality of someone who had expected this and was receiving the confirmation without requiring it to be more than it was. "He has made a decision about the question," Shane said. "He hasn't finished understanding it. He needs Asgard to think in." He paused. "You are not forgotten. The question is being taken seriously." He looked at Loki directly. "That's what I can tell you. That's what is true." Loki looked at the wall. He was quiet for a moment — not the absence of something, but the presence of something being held back while the assessment completed. He looked at Shane. "Odin thinks in his own time," he said. "Yes," Shane said. "And you will wait for whatever he decides," Loki said. "Yes," Shane said. "But I'll tell you what he decides when he decides it."
Loki looked at the wall. He looked at the tree line around him, at the open ground, at the spring air, at the quality of outside that was not inside the walls and was not trying to be inside the walls at this moment. He looked at Shane. "You know where to find me," he said. Shane looked at him. "Yes," Shane said. Loki looked at the wall one more time. He looked at the tree line. He looked at Shane with the expression he had when he had received something and was acknowledging the receiving without making more of it than it was. Then he walked into the tree line. Not dramatically. Simply gone.
The field was empty. Shane looked at the wall, at the compound it enclosed, at the Great Tree visible above the wall's line — the quality of something that had been there since before the wall and would be there after. He looked at the carved bone in his pocket. At Duke's collar. At the thermos. He looked at the field where Loki had been. He looked at the wall. He went back inside.