Danny had never been this far deep into the Ghost Zone.
With all of ghost civilization seeming to exist atop vagrant islands and behind desolate doors, there had never been a reason to try exploring anything beyond that. Not to mention, of course, the ever winding, transient nature of the infinite realms with no way to know what was lurking all around him– no, Danny didn't want to steer too far off the beaten paths.
But the longer Danny was lost, the further he went into the ghost zone with no idea of which way was up or down, the more it seemed prudent to try something new. Pick a direction and go with it. Maybe, if he got far enough into the sky, he could have a birds eye view of it all, see where he started. Maybe he would recognize something.
The further up he flew, the thinner the atmosphere seemed to get and the scarcer the islands became. Glancing at the ghost zone below him, he groaned– he could see countless landmarks scattered across the vast expanse, but he didn't recognize any of it, not even from his previous trips into the ghost zone. All of it was new territory.
When he looked up, however– he couldn't make it out, exactly, but there were some figures- nothing more than spots, really- but there were figures somewhere above him.
He'd thought he'd passed all of the islands and doors already– all that was left was up.
And yet, there was definitely something up there, and the more he flew, the more clear it became.
They were islands, much like the ones he had just flown circles around– lush with forests and icy land that melted into fields of green. Snow-capped mountains with deep valleys, chilly rivers with pristine lakes, and surrounding it all were oceans full of luminescent ecto-energy. There were even the makings of a small village, with docks into the ocean, and a few dozen structures along the coast.
Still, for as familiar as it all seemed, nothing in the ghost zone was ever normal.
Like all of the islands he'd known from the ghost zone, the land and all of the oceans around it only went so far. Around them, the lands and the seas seemed to come to an end, dropping off into the greater void around them, the ocean's waters spilling over the side in what could only be waterfalls of incredible proportions. No, this wasn't an archipelago of many islands, but a single massive one, containing both land and sea.
Danny had stumbled upon another realm, he realized, one that had all of the elements of the ghost zone, but more closely resembled the world he'd always known. There was no mistaking it– this was an Earth realm.
This was where many spirits from his world found themselves after death, and this was surely where they continued to make their homes today.
And if that was true, then Danny might be able to find someone who could direct him back to Earth.
As he drifted closer, readjusting himself so that he was peering down at the lands rather than peering up, he scanned the island for another ghost.
It was promising, he thought, seeing wisps of blob ghosts lighting up the forests and bobbing absentmindedly between the homes in the village. Upon closer inspection, however, there weren't many sentient, fully formed ghosts on the island– if any at all.
The rest of the infinite realms seemed to be highly active in ghost activity– there were plenty of blob ghosts, of course, but there were hundreds and thousands of sentient ghosts travelling between the islands and realms. But this realm? This one was quiet, with low activity and few ghosts besides the blobs swimming throughout the atmosphere.
Danny landed somewhere on one of the dirt paths in the heart of the little village, keeping his eyes peeled for anything that resembled a human face. He looked past the blobs into the windows of the ramshackle houses and wandered, directionless, between the buildings, and like a trick of the light, he finally caught sight of them.
The ghosts were all throughout the town, moving around him wordlessly, nodding their greetings at Danny as he passed.
They were men, mostly, dressed in short linen tunics and trousers, and a few of them, with chainmail armor and iron helmets atop their heads.
This was the realm of the vikings, then. He supposed that made some kind of sense– if Pandora's realm was home to the ancient Greeks and all of those in her pantheon, there was sure to be an afterlife for all of the other human civilizations too, somewhere out here in the ghost zone.
The ghosts seemed to gravitate towards the coast, either partaking in the construction of new ships or unloading barrels from the docks, so that's where Danny headed, too.
One of the ghosts– one of the sailors who had surely just returned from time at sea– looked to Danny as he approached, pressing his face into a curious frown. "Ég þekki þig ekki. Með hvaða skipi lést þú, sjómaður?"
"Er, sorry?" Danny asked. Languages weren't his forté anyway, but Old Norse wasn't exactly a language they taught in schools anymore, either.
The ghost paused and thought for a moment, finally responding. "English, then?"
Danny was surprised, saying, "Yes! You know it?"
He shrugged. "Many sailors die at sea. Some stay and teach us new things."
He was starting to piece it together, then– an island of oceans, a small village with prominent docks, ghosts who worked and died in the sea. This wasn't just a Norse realm– it was the afterlife of sailors and seafarers.
"I think I understand," Danny said, but shook his head. No, he didn't need to speculate any more on the ghost zone– he just needed directions. "Look, I'm afraid I'm lost. Do you know how to get back to Earth from here?"
"Back to Earth?" the ghost asked.
"Yes," Danny started. Although there was time to explain, he really didn't want to. It was bad enough that all of the other ghosts already knew about his half-ghost status and used that to their advantage every day. He didn't need to start announcing it to everyone he met. Surely this ghost knew there were portals back to the mortal world, right?
But the other ghost simply frowned, his lips pinched tight. He motioned to the barrels of fish around them on the docks. "No, we bring spirits here. There is no 'back'," he said.
Danny rubbed his jaw, humming. Either these ghosts didn't get out much, or there weren't any routes to Earth near here– and if that was the case, then he'd either have a long distance to travel, or he'd have to find some other way back home. But… maybe he could work with this– if there was a route from Earth to here, then couldn't there be one that went back?
"Can you show me where the spirits come from?" he finally asked.
The ghost pointed out to the sea, and in the distance, Danny could see another ship, sure to be loaded with barrels and a crew of fishermen. "Go to that knarr. Rán can show you."
Danny nodded, grateful. He bade the other ghost goodbye and propelled himself into the air, running his fingers across the water as he flew to the ship.
The waves were as rough and as chilly as he remembered them on Earth, but much more vibrant and viscous. If his parents weren't so livid about ghosts, he'd love to have them test all of the substances he'd found in the infinite realms and tell him exactly what they were, what made them tick. Or maybe he could borrow their lab equipment and all of their notes– do it himself.
That would have to be an experiment for another time, he supposed, making eye contact with the fishermen and stepping foot onto the ship.
"Halló?" one of them asked.
"Uh, hi," Danny started, running a hand through his hair, uncomfortable. "Do you know where Rán is?" he asked.
The two looked amongst themselves, whispering in what was likely their native language, translating his words. Eventually, the other fisherman pointed into the ocean waves.
"She is…" he hesitated, the word feeling heavy and foreign on his tongue, "fishing."
Danny looked down into the water, thinking of how strange and thick the water had felt. "In there?" he asked.
They nodded and carried on with their own work, pulling up buckets of ocean water and dumping them into the barrels, the ectoplasmic water sloshing out onto the deck.
Danny hummed and considered his next move.
He didn't have to breathe underwater on Earth, but he'd never tried to swim in the ghost zone before, either. Still, there was no sign of this Rán lady, so surely it was safe, right? Maybe he could jump in after her and communicate with her there.
And yet… Danny was getting the impression that she wasn't just any ghost.
He wasn't that familiar with Norse mythology, but if Greek mythology had had some truth to it, then who was he to say that the Norse were wrong? If there was a Greek realm where Pandora herself was a god, why wouldn't there be a god or goddess here, too?- even one he didn't recognize by name.
If he was going to approach this ghost, he would have to tread carefully.
With one look back at the two fishermen for assurance, seeing them gesture at the ocean water once more, he took a deep breath and jumped in.
… The water moved easily around him.
Despite its viscosity on the surface, the further he swam under the water, the easier it became. He did not even struggle to see, the luminescent ocean water providing dim light for itself– miles and miles of the world all around him visible to his eyes.
It was as he was taking it all in, admiring the ocean as it existed in the ghost zone, all of the alien vegetation and the thousands of fish swimming about, that he saw something dark in the water below.
It was enormous, with dark turquoise tendrils drifting around it, and it was swimming right towards him.
Then it turned, and he saw her face, her arms outstretched as she swam ever closer, one of her hands gripping the ends of a net closed.
Danny was losing his breath more quickly now, and scrambled backwards towards the surface, but she was faster.
As she got to the surface of the water in front of the ship, she gently grabbed Danny and pulled him along where he was able to gasp for air– or whatever it was, in the ghost zone– and he got a better look at her.
As he had thought, her hair was a dark turquoise, falling in long spools down her back and shoulders. Her skin was unearthly pale, some kind of blue, that he could only attribute to so much time underwater. He could only see down to her shoulders, the rest of her still submerged in the ocean, but from that alone, he could tell that she must have been the size of a skyscraper.
With one hand, she placed him back on the deck of the knarr, and with her other, she produced the net for the sailors, half full of fish she had caught.
"Rán, þetta var fljótt," one of the fishermen greeted her.
"Já, bara helmingur," she answered. With that, she looked back at Danny, eyeing him curiously. "Þetta er… óvenjulegt."
"Are you…" Danny caught his breath once more. "Lady Rán?"
She considered him for a moment longer before answering, "I am. And you are mortal, still."
He could practically feel her peering into his core, as if she could see the human heart that lay underneath– and maybe she could.
"Why are you here, hálfur?"
"I need to get back to Earth," he said. "Someone left me in the ghost zone– er, the Infinite Realms– and I've been lost ever since."
Rán leaned on the railing of the ship, assessing him and his story. She plucked at the net once more, now empty, the two ghosts having stored all of the fish on deck.
"There is a way," she said. She picked at the threads of the net. "Tell me, do you know who I am?"
"No," he admitted, terrified that that was the wrong answer.
But she smiled, and he relaxed.
"They call me Rán," she started. "Robber." She took her eyes off the fishing net and finally looked at Danny again. "They think I steal lives."
Around them, the fishermen slowed down their work, their faces falling– ashamed.
"But you don't," Danny realized, catching on to what she was saying.
"No," she agreed, pleased that he understood. "I bring them here."
Danny took a closer look at the creatures swimming about in one of the barrels. "These aren't fish, are they?" he asked.
"No," she said again.
Slowly, she raised one of her arms from the sea, the thick ecto-water dripping from her skin, and plucked a blob ghost from the air. With her other hand, she gently took one of the fish from the barrels and Danny watched as it desperately drank down the ectoplasmic blob, like gasping for air.
Before his eyes, the fish's scales became increasingly bright– too bright to see the creature underneath, too bright to see anything at all– and when it dimmed, there was a ghost– fully formed– laying asleep in Rán's hands.
"She was a deckhand," she said, bittersweetly admiring the ghost she had just rescued from the sea. To Danny, Rán said, "She'll be safe here."
Danny asked, "Do they ever leave?"
Rán laughed, a long, deep bellow. "All the time, hálfur. Nothing will stop seafarers from exploring the world." She placed the ghost into the fishermens' arms and let them lay her down on a bench across the deck.
Danny thought back to the village he had found himself in just an hour ago, how few ghosts he had met. No, he agreed, they didn't stick around very much at all. Hundreds of ghosts must have been brought into this realm every day, and only a few dozen had stayed. They must have been exploring the ghost zone for millenia, or even found their own ways back to Earth.
"You don't belong here, either," Rán observed.
He shook his head, confirming that he didn't.
She pulled at the threads of the net again and said, "It's not conventional, but I can bring you with me. Trust me?"
He didn't know that he did, but he didn't really see any other way. When she lowered the net into the water and motioned for him to fly inside, he did.
"Deep breath," she told him.
He did as told, sucking in as much air as he could.
When Rán was sure he was ready, she dove.
She was fast– in part because of her sheer size– the verdant waters whipping around them. Before a minute had passed, they had reached the bottom of the ocean, and Rán slowed, showing him the swirling energy of massive ghost portals scattered across the seafloor. If she was the size of a skyscraper, these were the size of entire cities.
She didn't wait for him to study the portals long, swimming through the waters once again, the chill of a portal spreading across his body.
Instead of the bright, alien surroundings of the ocean in the ghost zone, they were now swimming through the ocean that he had always known on earth, past familiar plants in dark waters that became ever brighter.
They were reaching the surface once again, this time on Earth, and not a moment too soon.
When they met air, he hacked up a few ounces of ocean water and she patted him on the back, careful of his small size.
They admired the blue sky, the white clouds overhead, and the open waters around them.
"Are you safe to fly on your own?" she asked him when he was able to breathe normally again.
He nodded and looked around. "I think so– where are we?"
"I believe you call it the Atlantic," she answered and pointed somewhere to the east. "Near Morocco. Is it far from your home?"
"Very," he admitted, letting out a weary breath, but he pulled himself out of the water, hovering in the air by the goddess. "It's no problem for me, though," he quickly added, giving her a proud grin.
"No, I doubted it would be," she laughed. "Visit us, sometime, hálfur. You've got stories worthy of Valhǫll, I'm sure."
He paled at the thought of visiting Valhalla, or being anywhere near Odin, but promised anyway.
With a final goodbye, she ducked her head under the water, fishing spirits out of the sea once more. He flew high into the air, getting a birds eye view just as he had back in the ghost zone, grateful to see blue waters under him and land in the distance.
Getting trapped in the ghost zone had not been part of his plan for the weekend, but he couldn't say he completely regretted it anymore.
They called it the Infinite Realms, and now, he was infinitely more curious. Maybe he'd take a page out of the sailors' books– maybe he'd try exploring the ghost zone more often in the future. Maybe he'd meet more gods and goddesses, and all of the relics from their myths and legends.
But whatever he did, Sam and Tucker were going to freak out when he told them.