Tricking the Fox Spirit

Dalnim the Moon Goddess sipped her tea as she gazed over the rim of the delicate porcelain cup at rough-bearded Odin. When the fragrant tea was finished, she said, “Your suggestion is working beautifully. The starry vault has not been so peaceful since the day the Fox Spirit came yelping into existence.” She smiled at the Norse god seated cross-legged on the other side of the ornately carved wooden table.

“You give me too much credit.” Odin swigged his mead, then lowered the pewter tankard. Sticky mead dribbled down the tails of his mustache. With his coordination spoiled by his single eye, the flagon slipped too early from his grasp and thudded onto the table.

Dalnim winced and flicked long white fingers to conjure a bamboo mat under the flagon. “Nevertheless,” she persisted, “I would never have thought of putting Loki and the Fox Spirit together.”

Shaking his shaggy head, Odin said, “Wait and see what comes of it. You may well be cursing me before long. Loki inevitably outdoes himself when crossed.”

The Moon Goddess nodded. “As does the Fox Spirit. Their encounter should be amusing, if nothing else. Did you say you have a way to watch them?”

“My ravens. Though I am not sure how you will . . .” His voice trailed off as an oblong gold-framed mirror appeared in the air between them, hovering over the table. Its surface was the black of a midnight sea on a moonless night until a frosty glow began in the center and spread outward, in its wake a shifting image with the colors, sounds, and smells of the human world. “That’s the scene my ravens are sending me!”

“Yes. They are quite wonderful birds, are they not?”

“Wonderful, indeed. But evidently not as loyal as I thought.” Odin took another deep draught of mead. He eyed the mirror, tilting his head like one of his ravens to focus his one eye on the scene.

* * *

From the depths of a crowd surrounding a scrawny teenage guitarist on the bustling city street corner, Loki feels the attention of a redhaired woman, and her interest tugs at him like a magnet. He knows he looks good—practically godlike, actually. He’s wearing one of his favorite appearances, that of a muscular youth dressed in skin-tight faded jeans and a plain white T-shirt. Pale hair cascades over his thick shoulders. He’s used to the admiration of human females, less accustomed to feeling drawn by them, and the unfamiliar sensation fires his curiosity.

He eases nearer the woman. His fingers itch to bury themselves in her short coppery curls, blazing with color. Upon his approach, she turns her head and pierces him with her gaze. Her eyes are too large for her face and a rich brown rather than the green or blue he expected to find.

Her mouth lifts slightly at one corner. Regal as a queen, she inclines her head at him, accepting his admiration, then returns to observing the street musician, whose curvy guitar is more generously shaped than she is. The redhead seems a little older than Loki, though he always has trouble calculating the age of humans, whose entire existence takes up less than a century.

The song comes to a morbid close. The guitarist thanks the applauding audience and points out the sign with a large QR code linked to his online contribution page. His open case contains a handful of bills as the crowd begins to drift away.

Seed money he put in himself, Loki would bed. Bet, he corrects himself, startled by the direction his thoughts turned. He looks for Red, who has left without trying to introduce herself. Loki hurries after her. Again she fixes him with her big brown eyes.

“Hello,” he says to her as he amps up his charm.

“Hello.”

Silence falls between them, not awkward or watchful. Loki has the feeling she’s receptive to his approach but won’t make the first move. “Want to go somewhere quiet to get some coffee?”

“Coffee.” She seems to roll the word on her tongue, tasting it.

Her accent intrigues Loki, who tries to place her ethnicity. The redheads he’s met before have mostly been Irish or from the American South, and her lilt doesn’t remind him of either. Where else could she have come from? He wonders whether she isn’t a native English speaker and is about to try French when she says,

“Yes.”

From behind, the guitarist wails, “Who took my money?”

Red’s gaze flickers from Loki to the street musician crouched over his empty case, then back to Loki. “Coffee,” she says and casts him a devastating smile that makes his cold trickster’s heart lurch.

Wow, he thinks.

The nearest coffee shop is busy and noisy, so Loki orders two specialty iced coffees to go, buying Red the one she points at. They sip the creamy brew through straws and stroll along the broad sidewalk, past glass-fronted shops and gray stone or brick walls. “My name’s Larry,” he says. “You?”

She shakes her head.

“You don’t want to tell me, or you don’t know what I’m saying?”

She slips her free hand between his elbow and his side, brushing against the T-shirt before closing her fingers over his arm. His pulse begins to race.

“Gracia,” she says, pronouncing the word as a Spaniard would.

“Your name is Gracia?”

“Yes, Larry.” She smiles again.

Loki has never before felt such human emotions when wearing an earthbound body. The confusion in his mind almost makes him sorry toward the women he’s seduced in the past—so this is what it feels like to be helpless, in thrall to lust, he realizes. He wonders if Gracia understands what she’s doing to him.

But she seems so . . . sincere. So genuine and warm.

Loki finds himself at the front desk of a hole-in-the-wall hotel, paying for a room with Gracia still attached to his arm. He stumbles up the stairs, fumbles a key into the lock, pushes the door open, and falls upon the bed, happier with the pretense of humanity than he can ever remember.

She stares into his eyes, immobilizing him. She moves down his body, and her face elongates strangely, mouth pushing out into a tooth-filled muzzle, sharp ears rising from her coppery curls. She tears into his belly with white flashing teeth—and stops, confused when no blood erupts from the space where a human liver would be.

“You stole the guitarist’s money?” he asks, feeling no pain as the ripped flesh heals. He still cannot move, but neither can she hurt him. He could shift back into his divine form in an instant.

She blinks and straightens, looking down at him. “What are you?”

The words come out in a nasal American accent, and Loki figures she’s heard the words a few times before. Whatever this shapeshifter might be, she isn’t human. “What are you?” he throws back at her.

She shimmers and vanishes like a popped soap bubble.

“How disappointing,” he breathes. Gracia is the most interesting companion he’s encountered in the human realm for a thousand years.

* * *

“That did not last long,” Odin said. He lifted the pewter tankard and tipped it toward his mouth without any mead coming out. His mouth twisted unhappily as he added, “Your Fox Spirit looked frustrated.”

Dalnim the Moon Goddess cocked her head to one side. “As did Loki when she disappeared. Perhaps we can throw them together for another playtime.” She waved her pale, long-fingered hand to banish the mirror that still hung, its surface black, between herself and the Norse god. “Though I shall have to find my own bird spies to keep track of the Fox Spirit in the future. Your ravens proved themselves quite useful.”

Odin cleared his throat and suggested, “Or you could ask me to cross your rainbow arch and drink together again. We could watch Loki and your Fox Spirit through that fancy mirror.”

“Perhaps, perhaps. For now, I find myself tired and in need of a rest,” she said, urging Odin from her chamber.

As the door closed behind him and he was setting foot on the rainbow that would lead him to Asgard, the croak of a raven sounded from inside Dalnim’s chamber. He opened his blind eye, but no raven visions appeared—she had proven herself as able a thief as the Fox Spirit.

Odin groaned. He would either have to train up new ravens or get Loki to steal his from Dalnim. It was a shame. Her mead had been the best he had ever tasted.