American Gods

She lifted the window and clambered, barefoot, out onto the fire escape. A freezing wind blew through the window. Something was bothering Shadow, but he did not know what it was; he hesitated, then pulled on his sweater, socks, and shoes and followed her out onto the rusting fire escape. She was waiting for him. His breath steamed in the chilly air. He watched her bare feet pad up the icy metal steps, and followed her up to the roof.

The wind gusted cold, flattening her nightgown against her body, and Shadow became uncomfortably aware that Zorya Polunochnaya was wearing nothing at all underneath.

“You don’t mind the cold?” he said, as they reached the top of the fire escape, and the wind whipped his words away.

“Sorry?”

She bent her face close to his. Her breath was sweet.

“I said, doesn’t the cold bother you?”

In reply, she held up a finger: wait. She stepped, lightly, over the side of the building and onto the flat roof. Shadow stepped over a little more clumsily, and followed her across the roof, to the shadow of the water tower. There was a wooden bench waiting for them there, and she sat down on it, and he sat down beside her. The water tower acted as a windbreak, for which Shadow was grateful.

“No,” she said. “The cold does not bother me. This time is my time: I could no more feel uncomfortable in the night than a fish could feel uncomfortable in the deep water.”

“You must like the night,” said Shadow, wishing that he had said something wiser, more profound.

“My sisters are of their times. Zorya Utrennyaya is of the dawn. In the old country she would wake to open the gates, and let our father drive his—uhm, I forget the word, like a car but with horses?”

“Chariot?”

“His chariot. Our father would ride it out. And Zorya Vechernyaya, she would open the gates for him at dusk, when he returned to us.”

“And you?”

She paused. Her lips were full, but very pale. “I never saw our father. I was asleep.”

“Is it a medical condition?”

She did not answer. The shrug, if she shrugged, was imperceptible. “So. You wanted to know what I was looking at.”

“The Big Dipper.”

She raised an arm to point to it, and the wind flattened her nightgown against her body. Her nipples, every goose-bump on the areolae, were visible momentarily, dark against the white cotton. Shadow shivered.

“Odin’s Wain, they call it. And the Great Bear. Where we come from, we believe that is a, a thing, a, not a god, but like a god, a bad thing, chained up in those stars. If it escapes, it will eat the whole of everything. And there are three sisters who must watch the sky, all the day, all the night. If he escapes, the thing in the stars, the world is over. Pf!, like that.”

“And people believe that?”

“They did. A long time ago.”

“And you were looking to see if you could see the monster in the stars?”

“Something like that. Yes.”

He smiled. If it were not for the cold, he decided, he would have thought he was dreaming. Everything felt so much like a dream.

“Can I ask how old you are? Your sisters seem so much older.”

She nodded her head. “I am the youngest. Zorya Utrennyaya was born in the morning, and Zorya Vechernyaya was born in the evening, and I was born at midnight. I am the midnight sister: Zorya Polunochnaya. Are you married?”

“My wife is dead. She died last week in a car accident. It was her funeral yesterday.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“She came to see me last night.” It was not hard to say, in the darkness and the moonlight; it was not as unthinkable as it was by daylight.

“Did you ask her what she wanted?”

“No. Not really.”

“Perhaps you should. It is the wisest thing to ask the dead. Sometimes they will tell you. Zorya Vechernyaya tells me that you played checkers with Czernobog.”

“Yes. He won the right to knock in my skull with a sledge.”

“In the old days, they would take people up to the top of the mountains. To the high places. They would smash the back of their skulls with a rock. For Czernobog.”

Shadow glanced about. No, they were alone on the roof.

Zorya Polunochnaya laughed. “Silly, he is not here. And you won a game also. He may not strike his blow until this is all over. He said he would not. And you will know. Like the cows he killed. They always know, first. Otherwise, what is the point?”

“I feel,” Shadow told her, “like I’m in a world with its own sense of logic. Its own rules. Like when you’re in a dream, and you know there are rules you mustn’t break. Even if you don’t know what they mean. I’m just going along with it, you know?”

“I know,” she said. She held his hand, with a hand that was icy cold. “You were given protection once. You were given the sun itself. But you lost it already. You gave it away. All I can give you is much weaker protection. The daughter, not the father. But all helps. Yes?” Her white hair blew about her face in the chilly wind.

“Do I have to fight you? Or play checkers?” he asked.

“You do not even have to kiss me,” she told him. “Just take the moon from me.”

“How?”

“Take the moon.”

“I don’t understand.”