American Gods

Time rushed over her and into her, swirling like a dust-devil. A thousand memories began to play at once: she was wet and stinking on the floor of the farmhouse; and she was lost in a department store the week before Christmas and her father was nowhere to be seen; and now she was sitting in the bar at Chi-Chi’s, ordering a strawberry daiquiri and checking out her blind date, the big, grave man-child, and wondering how he kissed; and she was in the car as, sickeningly, it rolled and jolted, and Robbie was screaming at her until the metal post finally stopped the car, but not its contents, from moving…

The water of time, which comes from the spring of fate, Urd’s Well, is not the water of life. Not quite. It feeds the roots of the world tree, though. And there is no other water like it.

When Laura woke in the empty farmhouse room, she was shivering, and her breath actually steamed in the morning air. There was a scrape on the back of her hand, and a wet smear on the scrape, the red-orange of fresh blood.

And she knew where she had to go. She had drunk from the water of time, which comes from the spring of fate. She could see the mountain in her mind. She licked the blood from the back of her hand, marveling at the film of saliva, and she began to walk.

It was a wet March day, and it was unseasonably cold, and the storms of the previous few days had lashed their way across the southern states, which meant that there were very few real tourists at Rock City on Lookout Mountain. The Christmas lights had been taken down, the summer visitors were yet to start arriving.

Still, there were a number of people there. There was even a tour bus that drew up that morning, releasing a dozen men and women with perfect tans and gleaming, reassuring smiles. They looked like news anchors, and one could almost imagine there was a phosphor-dot quality to them: they seemed to blur gently as they moved. A black Humvee was parked in the front lot of Rock City, near to Rocky the animatronic gnome.

The TV people walked intently through Rock City, stationing themselves near the balancing rock, where they talked to each other in pleasant, reasonable voices.

They were not the only visitors. If you had walked the paths of Rock City that day, you might have noticed people who looked like movie stars, and people who looked like aliens and a number of people who looked most of all like the idea of a person and nothing like the reality. You might have seen them, but most likely you would never have noticed them at all.

They came to Rock City in long limousines and in small sports cars and in oversized SUVs. Many of them wore the sunglasses of those who habitually wear sunglasses indoors and out, and do not willingly or comfortably remove them. There were suntans and suits and shades and smiles and scowls. They came in all sizes and shapes, all ages and styles.

All they had in common was a look, a very specific look. It said, You know me; or perhaps, You ought to know me. An instant familiarity that was also a distance, a look, or an attitude—the confidence that the world existed for them, and that it welcomed them, and that they were adored.

The fat kid moved among them with the shuffling walk of one who, despite having no social skills, has still become successful beyond his dreams. His black coat flapped in the wind.

Something that stood beside the soft drink stand in Mother Goose Court coughed to attract his attention. It was massive, and scalpel-blades jutted from its face and its fingers. Its face was cancerous. “It will be a mighty battle,” it told him, in a glutinous voice.

“It’s not going to be a battle,” said the fat kid. “All we’re facing here is a fucking paradigm shift. It’s a shakedown. Modalities like battle are so fucking Lao Tzu.”

The cancerous thing blinked at him. “Waiting,” is all it said in reply.

“Whatever,” said the fat kid. Then, “I’m looking for Mister World. You seen him?”

The thing scratched itself with a scalpel-blade, a tumorous lower lip pushed out in concentration. Then it nodded. “Over there,” it said.

The fat kid walked away, without a thank-you, in the direction indicated. The cancerous thing waited, saying nothing, until the kid was out of sight.

“It will be a battle,” said the cancerous thing to a woman whose face was smudged with phosphor-dots.

She nodded, and leaned closer to it. “So how does that make you feel?” she asked, in a sympathetic voice.

It blinked, and then it began to tell her.