Chapter 21: Seekers
Kitsune and Judy try to find Nick. Jude, Fenrisúlfr, and Count Saint-Germain journey westward toward Dublin while danger stalks them from above.
"Ein Kreuz steht hochoben am Berge,
wo die Patroille ihn fand,
Gott gebe dir ewigen Frieden,
du starbst für dein Vaterland."
(A cross stands tall on the mountain,
Where the patrols had found him.
May God give you eternal peace,
You died for your fatherland.)
Lyrics from German folk song, Der einsame Posten
Japan 2016
Judy stood in front of the gathered humans but they could not see her for Kitsune, always a trickster god, had cast a magical spell of invisibility upon a peculiar-looking amulet she wore around her neck. Her ears were erect while she listened to the human-looking goddess discuss something with the nurses in a language the rabbit did not understand. She glanced toward the god's mortal mate and he only gave her a wink. Finally, she followed them into a small room where an aged man lay in a bed. She could tell he was in pain and knew that he was suffering from some type of cancer. After the nurse bowed and left, Kitsune sat in a chair and took the frail mortal's hand. "He has no family and the staff is grateful that someone has come to give him company in his last hours of life, it is not good to die alone," Shane whispered as he stood in the doorway.
"They just let anyone from off the streets into his room?" Judy asked in surprise.
"My wife has certain skills in getting her way," he scoffed. "She can be somewhat manipulative with a mortal's emotions and never try to reason with her.
"Will you two please hush?" Kitsune softly admonished them both. She picked up the dying man's hand and pressed it to her lips. His eyes opened and he looked up at her and smiled before he haltingly asked a question.
"He wants to know who she is and why the pain went away," Shane translated.
There was further conversation between the bedridden mortal and the immortal as she held his hand. At one time his eyes widened in wonder at what he had been told and then he said something in a pleading tone.
"He knows that she is not a mortal and is begging her to allow him to die, he wants to cross over to where his wife and ancestors await."
After a few more moments, Kitsune released his hand and said something to her husband, who looked both directions down the hallway. He nodded to her and she began to change, revealing her true form to the wondering eyes of the dying man. The white nine-tailed vixen stood on all four paws amongst the discarded clothing. Whatever she told the mortal made him smile and chuckle while he closed his eyes and for a moment the monitor in the room began to loudly whine before the goddess walked over and placed her paw on the machine, surprisingly it returned to its normal rhythmic humming. "Now is not the time for us to be interrupted and so my wife has tricked the machine, she is pretty sly with electronics," Shane explained.
Kitsune glanced at her husband and gave a very foxy smirk before she turned back toward the now-deceased human and began to speak to someone, whom Judy did not see, in another strange language. She looked over at Shane but he just shook his head and shrugged for he too did not see to whom she was speaking to or understand the language.
After a few minutes of talking to whoever, or whatever was in the room, the goddess returned to her human form and began to get dressed again. She walked over to the monitor and closed her eyes for a moment before she reached and touched it again. The telltale beeping ceased once again, drawing the attention of the nurses who entered the room to confirm their patient had died. Kitsune spoke briefly to the mortals and then bowed to them before she left the room with her husband and the still-invisible rabbit following.
"That was enlightening," the fox godling finally said, in an aggravated manner, after they walked out onto the busy sidewalk.
"Did you talk to Death?" Judy asked.
"Yes, but she cannot help."
"Why not?"
"Death said that your granddaughter is missing."
"How could the goddess of time just go missing?" Shane asked in surprise.
The Kitsune just shook her head and shrugged.
Judy stopped and she couldn't help herself when she burst into tears.
England 1916
Judith sat in the darkened railway car as the train rumbled out of the station in London and began to chug its way toward the large maritime city of Liverpool. She had changed once again into a red-haired girl and wore a putty-colored dress made of worsted serge with a high-waist skirt and a stylish jacket-style top. In her now human-looking hands she held a black felt hat that had silk flowers festooned on its brim.
"That hat does not go with your dress," the Count Saint-Germain tusked with a forced smile. The tension between the two was palpable.
"I happen to like it and think that it is pretty," Judith defensively answered as she picked some lint off the felt. There was a growl and she reached over to stroke the head of the large dog which sat beside her. "Now, Fenny, the Count was right and you couldn't have joined us as a young man, they are supposed to be off to war and that might bring too much attention," she whispered, for although they were alone in the compartment, the remainder of the train was jammed with soldiers and supplies.
"Besides you make a better Irish wolfhound than a wolf," the Count softly added, the sarcasm in his voice caused the dog's ears to rise and he began to object.
"Quiet, you're a dog and dogs do not speak!" Judith hissed as she tenderly held his muzzle closed.
"Arf…arf…bow wow," the wolfhound sourly grumbled.
There was silence for a long time as they looked out at the passing countryside, everything looked so peaceful and far from the horrors that were taking place in the seemingly war-torn battlefields of distant France and Belgium. That silence was finally broken, once again by the Count, "You are stronger than your father ever was," he stated. "He never understood the full extent of his abilities until it was too late."
"My father did his best," Judith answered.
"I heard from some of the so-called gods, that he only jumped around time within his parent's reality. It is said that he created more problems for the timeline than he fixed."
"He wasn't trained to use his powers like I was by Death."
"Ah, Death, she ignores me!" the Count chuckled.
"I'd like to ignore you…" Fenrisúlfr began to say, but a warning hand gripped his muzzle again.
"Shhh!" Judith whispered.
"I'm one of the few mortals who were cursed to remember the Void that your father unleashed in his madness," there was a hint of fear in the Count's words. "The gods also recall and that is why they fear you almost as much as Death and her ilk," he added and then looked over at Fenrisúlfr before he added, "Your friend is also cursed never to forget the feeling of helpless despair as your body is torn to shreds, molecule by molecule, and absorbed into the nothingness that surrounds you.
The wolf god didn't answer but looked out the window into the distant darkness and tried not to shudder, for he did remember.
The night was quiet for those aboard the chugging train, but unbeknownst to them, they were being stalked from above. A German zeppelin, the L14, was being guided towards them. Earlier in the month, the airship had unsuccessfully attempted to bomb Castle Rock in Edinburgh, resulting in considerable damage to parts of the ancient city, along with numerous civilian deaths and casualties. However, the crew had failed to strike their true targets and the doughty Scots even bragged that the gun crew of the city's famous One O'Clock Gun had fired their cannon in an attempt to drive off the Germans. They claimed that the booming of the old 64-pounder cannon mounted on the ancient castle, armed with only blanks, had scared off the Huns. Now, L14 had returned to bomb London, but for reasons unknown to the crew, her captain had changed course and was seemingly following a crow as it flew westward. "New orders," he claimed when questioned by a junior officer. "Do as I command and continue on the course I have given you!"
"But the dawn is breaking, and we will be seen by the British!" one of the crew members protested.
"It does not matter, we will succeed on our new mission and if we die, then we will be welcomed into Valhalla."
One of the crewmen crossed himself when he heard the captain's comments for he was sure that he had seen the officer talking earlier with the raven.
Aboard the train, Fenrisúlfr let out a tooth yawn and rolled his eyes while he tried to ignore Count Saint-Germain as he continued to prattle on and on. It seemed to the wolf god that the immortal human loved to hear his own voice.
"She was a vampire!" the human chuckled as he grinned at Jude. "I'm standing there in the middle of Michaelerplatz in Vienna at three in the morning and my companion turns out to be a vampire! What should any man do when your date turns out to be a demon bloodsucker?"
"I'd bite her head off," the wolf in a dog's form softly muttered.
"Shhh, quiet Fenny!" Jude giggled before she scratched him under his ear.
"No, I ran." The Count laughed.
There was a distant noise, which caught Fenrisúlfr's attention. His ears rose and he glanced out the window and into the darkness, seeking the source of the sound. Saint-Germain did not hear the sound and neither did Jude in her human form. "What is..." he began to ask, but Judith just hushed him again.
After a few moments, the sound became louder and drew the attention of the humans aboard the train, several of the soldiers pointed skyward toward something huge floating toward them. The train suddenly lurched as it picked up steam, trying to outrun whatever was approaching, but it was too late for there was a series of explosions before them and the passenger car they were riding in twisted sideways as it crashed off the track and jolted to a stop in the field. The count pushed himself clear of the ruined car and twisted his arm back into position even as Judith crawled free, followed by Fenny. Before them, the engine was a flaming wreck, and all around was chaos.
Overhead, the raven frantically cawed at the zeppelin's captain. "Bring her lower and use the machine guns!" the captain commanded to the surprise of the crew. "Gun down any survivors!" The huge craft began to slowly turn and drop in altitude.
Several of the surviving soldiers began to fire their rifles impotently at the massive target while it drew closer and closer to the ground. A spray of machine gun fire answered their efforts killing several more of the valiant men and sending the others diving toward cover.
"I've had enough of this!" Fenrisúlfr growled as he shook off his disguise and transformed into his true form. Standing on his hindlegs, he willed himself to grow larger and soon towered over the wreckage of the train itself.
"So much for our disguises," Count Saint-Germain scoffed as he looked up at the wolf.
The zeppelin's gunners and the soldiers on the ground panicked at the sight they beheld, turning their guns on the wolf god. Fenrisúlfr ignored their gunfire as he gripped part of the wreckage in his paws and with a mighty heave, threw it skyward at a target he could not miss. It tore through the zeppelin's soft sides but did not bring it down while it slowly passed overhead.
"Fire! Throw something on fire!" the Count yelled and the wolf picked up part of the flaming wreckage and heaved it skyward. His effort was rewarded with a giant fireball in the sky and the flaming airship crashed into a nearby field. There was still gas in the bow section of the ship, so it continued to point upward as the stern collapsed down onto the ground before flames consumed it.
Aboard the doomed zeppelin, the German captain drew his combat knife and raised it skyward even as the blinding flames whooshed toward him. "Odin!" he cried out before his body was consumed by the fire. His agony was intense but short lived.
"Well, that was dramatic!" the Count muttered before he picked up a discarded rifle and took aim at something flying overhead. "Damn, I missed!" he added after squeezing off a few rounds.
"What were you shooting at?" Jude asked.
"Muninn or Huginn, I could never tell the difference between Odin's pet ravens," the human sighed. There were the sounds of gun bolts being drawn back as the English soldiers aimed their rifles at the giant wolf. "For God's sake, put your guns down!" the Count commanded. "He's the king's big wolf, didn't you idiots see him kill those Huns?"
Reluctantly the wide-eyed soldiers obediently lowered their rifles.
Judith saw someone or something move near one of the dead bodies and called out in a relieved tone when she saw it was Death. The angel looked around in confusion before she took the hand of the deceased soldier's soul and disappeared. "She...she didn't see or hear me?" the time goddess muttered in surprise.
The German Navel Airship L-14 was a P-class Zeppelin and was very successful, flying 42 reconnaissance missions and 17 bombing raids on Britain before being taken out of service in late 1917. She was ultimately destroyed by her crew in 1919.