Two Ravens and One Crow - 4.5 Read Online Free PDF

I felt like the little boy, except I’d failed to greet Aunt Ethel properly and received a royal chewing out as a result. I blushed and muttered a quick apology in Old Norse to Frigg for my manners. “Call me Atticus, please.”
    “Thank you for coming,” she said, then waved a hand at the chairs across from her. “Please, sit.”
    I pulled out the Morrigan’s chair for her, and after she was seated I took the spot nearest the window. The sommelier showed up to welcome us to Statholdergaarden and discuss wine before we could say anything. Frigg ordered a bottle of Australian Shiraz, surprising me somewhat. It must have shown on my face, because she explained the order afterward.
    “One gets so tired of mead from the teats of a magic goat every night. Not that I’m complaining about the quality—I dare anyone to find a better brew flowing from the udders of a she-goat—but one does need a bit of variety now and then. The food and drink here will be a welcome change.”
    I was completely unprepared to answer her. Not only had I not drunk the same thing every night for centuries, I had never made small talk about goat teats before. I realized that my mouth had dropped open after the Morrigan reached over and pushed up on my chin. My teeth clacked together audibly, and then Frigg’s face turned crimson, realizing she’d introduced an awkward topic of conversation. The Morrigan seemed determined to embarrass everyone tonight.
    Unsure of what to say, I kept silent and waited. I couldn’t think of a safe topic of conversation—not even the weather, because that might be interpreted as a reference to Thor. I didn’t want to embarrass myself or anyone else, and I didn’t want to earn another rebuke from the Morrigan for saying the wrong thing—like, for example, inquiring after the missing occupant of the chair next to Frigg’s. There was a place setting there, and Frigg had asked the sommelier for four glasses, but there was no other sign of thelast member of our party. Unless you counted the two ravens on the roof.
    I suppose there was a statistical non-zero probability that this could be a coincidence—two normal ravens just happened to be perching on the roof of a restaurant in Oslo where I was about to meet unnamed Norse gods—but I felt it was fairly improbable. It was far more probable that I was about to have an extremely uncomfortable formal dinner with two deities who had a long list of reasons to kill me.
    Granuaile asked me once how it could be possible for all the world’s gods to be walking around without anybody noticing. The answer was (and is) simple: cosplay. Most gods cosplay as humans when they visit earth and do their best to stay in character. If they perform miracles here and there, they’re always small things that no one outside the local area will notice. But, more than anything else, they don’t show themselves because humanity doesn’t truly believe they ever will. We imagine them chilling out in their heavens or nirvanas or planes of punishment, and they’re generally expected to stay there. And if they’re going to work their divine magic on earth or pull a deus ex machina, then they act through surrogates or from afar. In a sense, deities are incapable of showing themselves because most people don’t believe they’ll meet their gods before they die. I am a notable exception to the rule. The ancient Greeks and Romans believed they could run into the Olympians, though, so that allowed Zeus and company to start all kinds of shit in the old days.
    The silence lengthened. I couldn’t believe Frigg’s entire repertoire had been exhausted on goat teats and mead, but for the nonce, at least, her speech was on hiatus. Taking a deep breath, I employed the architectural-history gambit: “Why is this called the Cleopatra Room?” I asked.
    The Morrigan pointed up. “The ceiling,” she said. Craning my head back, I saw an elaborate stucco on the ceiling. Back in Arizona, they just