“So what am I supposed to do?”
“You are what you are. You are where you are. And you must do what you must do.”
Vague. Too vague. Useless, really. Can’t tell her that, either.
Can’t say anything. Can’t do anything. Just have to sit and freeze in the middle of fucking nowhere. Or go back inside and try to go to sleep and hope that the dreams don’t come for me again. I preferred it when I didn't have a conscience, or when I was too busy to have one.
“Anita! ANITA!”
Thor’s voice roars through the night. He must have come back to the room and found me missing. Now he is shouting for me. He always wants to know where I am. I used to think that meant he liked me. Now I know it’s just because he’s afraid of what I’m doing.
"You should answer him,” she says. “He worries, you know.”
“How can he worry if he doesn't care?”
“I didn’t say he didn't care. I said he didn't love. There’s a difference.”
“I don’t want to answer him.”
I don’t want to be humiliated again. I don’t want to mistake his possessive streak for love. I don’t want to let my own feelings run amok. I just want this all to stop.
“You’re certain?”
“Very.”
She lifts a long finger in a direction. Could be north. Could be south. I have always been directionally challenged.
“Follow that path,” she says. “You will get what you need.”
Thor
I see a figure in the dark. I know it’s not Anita. It’s Skathi. Her silhouette is unmistakable. I run toward her, hoping she will know what is happening. There is real, cold fear inside me that Skathi may have done something to her. My mother is often ruthless with those who are not careful.
“Where is Anita?”
“I don’t know,” she says.
“You always know.”
“Then I am not telling,” she smiles.
“It is cold, and there are a thousand ways to die out here. Where is Anita?”
“You've never been able to threaten me, boy. Don’t imagine you can now. If you want her, I suggest you go and claim her so she knows she has been claimed. Don’t leave her wondering if you want her or not. You may think that being bound means she’s a certainty, but I can assure you that is not the case. You can lose what is bound to you just as easily as you can lose something you never had at all.”
That makes no sense, but she has never worried about making sense.
“She’ll freeze to death out here. Please. Tell me where she went.”
“You are connected, Thor. Use that connection. And as you are using it, reflect on what it means to you. And what you might do if you were never to feel it again.”
“Skathi!"
Shouting her name does nothing.
“I don’t know what to do with her,” I sigh. “I love her, but she is such an incorrigible little shit.”
“That sounds like your type, child. Now, the next time you see her, remember this feeling. Remember your love. I have told her you are not capable of it.”
“Why!?”
“Because until this moment, I do not believe you were. You brought her all the way here because you could not see what was before your own nose. The hammer works for her because you work for her. She took the hammer because she knew the moment she saw it, that it belonged to her. She is yours. You are hers. You do not own her alone, Thor. You own each other. Or you did.”
I look into the thick, dark night, and I know Anita is somewhere in it feeling the worst of all possible human emotions: loneliness. Not a temporary pang of feeling disconnected, but the much worse aching, deep knowledge that one belongs to nothing at all.
I have made so many mistakes. And now that it has been spelled out to me like the dullard I must be, I know I have more to atone for than I can begin to express.
“I’m going to find her,” I tell Skathi. “I’m going to get her back.”
Skathi says three words that bring everything into sudden sharp focus.
“It’s too late.”
It’s not too late.
It can’t be too late .
Anita
I am walking through the dark. Every step brings clarity. Thor doesn't love me. Nobody loves me. My friends abandoned me at the first sign of trouble. Bryn, who surrounds himself with demons, considers me a worthless slattern. Thor, who calls me his, does not actually want me. He wants a solution to me.
I could find that solution. I could be that solution. If I go away, then all of these problems go away too. Thor won’t be obligated to keep me. He won’t have to fly me to the ends of the earth and have his mother tell me he's not capable of love.
I am owned, maybe. But I am not wanted. And I am tired of not being wanted.