Wide open and unguarded stand our gates,And through them passes a wild motley throng.Men from Volga and Tartar steppes.Featureless figures from the Hoang-ho,Malayan, Scythian, Teuton, Kelt and Slav,Flying the Old World’s poverty and scorn;These bringing with them
unknown gods and rites,Those tiger passions here to stretch their claws,In street and alley what strange tongues are these,Accents of menace in our ear,Voices that once the Tower of Babel knew.—THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH, “UNGUARDED GATES,” 1882
One moment Shadow was riding the World’s Largest Carousel, holding on to his eagle-headed tiger, and then the red and white lights of the Carousel stretched and shivered and went out, and he was falling through an ocean of stars, while the mechanical waltz was replaced by a pounding rhythmic roll and crash, as of cymbals or the breakers on the shores of a far ocean.
The only light was starlight, but it illuminated everything with a cold clarity. Beneath him his mount stretched, and padded, its warm fur under his left hand, its feathers beneath his right.
“It’s a good ride, isn’t it?” The voice came from behind him, in its ears and in his mind.
Shadow turned, slowly, streaming images of himself as he moved, frozen moments, each him captured in a fraction of a second, every tiny movement lasting for an infinite period. The images that reached his mind made no sense: it was like seeing the world through the
multifaceted jeweled eyes of a dragonfly, but each facet saw something completely different, and he was unable to combine the things he was seeing, or thought he was seeing, into a whole that made any sense.
He was looking at Mr. Nancy, an old black man with a pencil moustache, in his check sports jacket and his lemon-yellow gloves, riding a carousel lion as it rose and lowered, high in the air;
and, at the same time, in the same place, he saw a jeweled spider as high as a horse, its eyes an emerald nebula, strutting, staring down at him; and simultaneously he was looking at an
extraordinarily tall man with teak-colored skin and three sets of arms, wearing a flowing ostrich-feather headdress, his face painted with red stripes, riding an irritated golden lion, two of his six hands holding on tightly to the beast’s mane; and he was also seeing a young black boy, dressed in rags, his left foot all swollen and crawling with black flies; and last of all, and behind all these things, Shadow was looking at a tiny brown spider, hiding under a withered ochre leaf.
Shadow saw all these things, and he knew they were the same thing.
“If you don’t close your mouth,” said the many things that were Mr. Nancy, “somethin’s goin’
to fly in there.”
Shadow closed his mouth and swallowed, hard.
There was a wooden hall on a hill, a mile or so from them. They were trotting toward the hall, their mounts’ hooves and feet padding noiselessly on the dry sand at the sea’s edge.
Czernobog trotted up on his centaur. He tapped the human arm of his mount. “None of this is truly happening,” he said to Shadow. He sounded miserable. “Is all in your head. Best not to think of it.”
Shadow saw a gray-haired old east-European immigrant, with a shabby raincoat and one iron-colored tooth, true. But he also saw a squat black thing, darker than the darkness that surrounded them, its eyes two burning coals; and he saw a prince, with long flowing black hair, and long black moustaches, blood on his hands and his face, riding, naked but for a bearskin over his shoulder, on a creature half-man, half-beast, its face and torso blue-tattooed with swirls and spirals.
“Who are you?” asked Shadow. “What are you?”
Their mounts padded along the shore. Waves broke and crashed implacably on the night beach.
Wednesday guided his wolf—now a huge and charcoal-gray beast with green eyes—over to Shadow. Shadow’s mount caracoled away from it, and Shadow stroked its neck and told it not to be afraid. Its tiger tail swished, aggressively. It occurred to Shadow that there was another wolf, a twin to the one that Wednesday was riding, keeping pace with them in the sand dunes, just a moment out of sight.
“Do you know me, Shadow?” said Wednesday. He rode his wolf with his head high. His right eye glittered and flashed, his left eye was dull. He wore a cloak, with a deep, monk-like cowl, and his face stared out at them from the shadows. “I told you I would tell you my names. This is what they call me. I am called Glad-of-War, Grim, Raider, and Third. I am One-eyed. I am called Highest, and True-Guesser. I am Grimnir, and I am the Hooded One. I am All-Father, and I am Gondlir Wand-bearer. I have as many names as there are winds, as many titles as there are ways to die. My ravens are Huginn and Muninn: Thought and Memory; my wolves are Freki and Geri; my horse is the gallows.” Two ghostly-gray ravens, like transparent skins of birds, landed on Wednesday’s shoulders, pushed their beaks into the side of Wednesday’s head as if tasting his mind, and flapped out into the world once more.
What should I believe? thought Shadow, and the voice came back to him from somewhere deep beneath the world, in a bass rumble: Believe everything.
“Odin?” said Shadow, and the wind whipped the word from his lips.
“Odin,” whispered Wednesday, and the crash of the breakers on the beach of skulls was not loud enough to drown that whisper. “Odin,” said Wednesday, tasting the sound of the words in his mouth. “Odin,” said Wednesday, his voice a triumphant shout that echoed from horizon to horizon. His name swelled and grew and filled the world like the pounding of blood in Shadow’s ears.
And then, as in a dream, they were no longer riding toward a distant hall. They were already there, and their mounts were tied in the shelter beside the hall.
The hall was huge but primitive. The roof was thatched, the walls were wooden. There was a fire burning in the center of the hall, and the smoke stung Shadow’s eyes.
“We should have done this in my mind, not in his,” muttered Mr. Nancy to Shadow. “It would have been warmer there.”
“We’re in his mind?”
“More or less. This is Valaskjalf. It’s his old hall.”
Shadow was relieved to see that Nancy was now once more an old man wearing yellow gloves,
although his shadow shook and shivered and changed in the flames of the fire, and what it changed into was not always entirely human.
There were wooden benches against the walls, and, sitting on them or standing beside them, perhaps ten people. They kept their distance from each other: a mixed lot, who included a dark-skinned, matronly woman in a red sari, several shabby-looking businessmen, and others, too close to the fire for Shadow to be able to make them out.
“Where are they?” whispered Wednesday fiercely, to Nancy. “Well? Where are they? There should be scores of us here. Dozens!”
“You did all the inviting,” said Nancy. “I think it’s a wonder you got as many here as you did. You think I should tell a story, to start things off?”
Wednesday shook his head. “Out of the question.”
“They don’t look very friendly,” said Nancy. “A story’s a good way of gettin’ someone on your side. And you don’t have a bard to sing to them.”
“No stories,” said Wednesday. “Not now. Later, there will be time for stories. Not now.”
“No stories. Right. I’ll just be the warm-up man.” And Mr. Nancy strode out into the firelight with an easy smile.
“I know what you are all thinking,” he said. “You are thinking, what is Compé Anansi doing, coming out to talk to you all, when the All-Father called you all here, just like he called me here? Well, you know, sometimes people need reminding of things. I look around when I come in, and I thought, Where’s the rest of us? But then I thought, just because we are few and they are many, we are weak, and they are powerful, it does not mean that we are lost.
“You know, one time I saw Tiger down at the waterhole: he had the biggest testicles of any animal, and the sharpest claws, and two front teeth as long as knives and as sharp as blades.
And I said to him, ‘Brother Tiger, you go for a swim, I’ll look after your balls for you.’ He was so proud of his balls. So he got into the waterhole for a swim, and I put his balls on, and left him my own little spider-balls. And then, you know what I did? I ran away, fast as my legs would take me.
“I didn’t stop till I got to the next town. And I saw Old Monkey there. ‘You lookin’ mighty fine, Anansi,’ said Old Monkey. I said to him, ‘You know what they all singin’ in the town over there?’
‘What are they singin’?’ he asks me. ‘They singin’ the funniest song,’ I told him. Then I did a dance, and I sings,
Tiger’s balls, yeah,I ate Tiger’s ballsNow ain’t nobody gonna stop me ever at allNobody put me up against the big black wallCos I ate that Tiger’s testimonialsI ate Tiger’s balls.
“Old Monkey he laughs fit to bust, holding his side and shakin’, and stampin’, then he starts singin’, ‘Tiger’s Balls, I ate tiger’s balls,’ snappin’ his fingers, spinnin’ around on his two feet.
‘That’s a fine song,’ he says, ‘I’m going to sing it to all my friends.’ ‘You do that,’ I tell him, and I head back to the watering hole.
“There’s Tiger, down by the watering hole, walking up and down, with his tail switchin’ and swishin’ and his ears and the fur on his neck up as far as they can go, and he’s snappin’ at every insect comes by with his huge old saber-teeth, and his eyes flashin’ orange fire. He looks mean
and scary and big, but danglin’ between his legs, there’s the littlest balls in the littlest blackest most wrinkledy ball-sack you ever did see.
“‘Hey, Anansi,’ he says, when he sees me. ‘You were supposed to be guarding my balls while I went swimming. But when I got out of the swimming hole, there was nothing on the side of the bank but these little black shriveled-up good-for-nothing spider balls I’m wearing.’
“‘I done my best,’ I tells him, ‘but it was those monkeys, they come by and eat your balls all up, and when I tell them off, then they pulled off my own little balls. And I was so ashamed I ran away.’
“‘You a liar, Anansi,’ says Tiger. ‘I’m going to eat your liver.’ But then he hears the monkeys coming from their town to the watering hole. A dozen happy monkeys, boppin’ down the path, clickin’ their fingers and singin’ as loud as they could sing,
Tiger’s balls, yeah,I ate Tiger’s ballsNow ain’t nobody gonna stop me ever at allNobody put me up against the big black wallCos I ate that Tiger’s testimonialsI ate Tiger’s balls.
“And Tiger, he growls, and he roars and he’s off into the forest after them, and the monkeys screech and head for the highest trees. And I scratch my nice new big balls, and damn they felt good hangin’ between my skinny legs, and I walk on home. And even today, Tiger keeps chasin’
monkeys. So you all remember: just because you’re small, doesn’t mean you got no power.”
Mr. Nancy smiled, and bowed his head, and spread his hands, accepting the applause and laughter like a pro, and then he turned and walked back to where Shadow and Czernobog were standing.
“I thought I said no stories,” said Wednesday.
“You call that a story?” said Nancy. “I barely cleared my throat. Just warmed them up for you.
Go knock them dead.”
Wednesday walked out into the firelight, a big old man with a glass eye in a brown suit and an old Armani coat. He stood there, looking at the people on the wooden benches, saying nothing for longer than Shadow could believe someone could comfortably say nothing. And, finally, he spoke.
“You know me,” he said. “You all know me. Some of you have no cause to love me, and I’m not sure I can blame you for that, but love me or not, you know me.”
There was a rustling, a stir among the people on the benches.
“I’ve been here longer than most of you. Like the rest of you, I figured we could get by on what we got. Not enough to make us happy, but enough to keep going.
“That may not be the case any more. There’s a storm coming, and it’s not a storm of our making.”
He paused. Now he stepped forward, and folded his arms across his chest.
“When the people came to America they brought us with them. They brought me, and Loki and Thor, Anansi and the Lion-God, Leprechauns and Cluracans and Banshees, Kubera and Frau Holle and Ashtaroth, and they brought you. We rode here in their minds, and we took root. We traveled with the settlers to the new lands across the ocean.
“The land is vast. Soon enough, our people abandoned us, remembered us only as creatures of the old land, as things that had not come with them to the new. Our true believers passed on, or stopped believing, and we were left, lost and scared and dispossessed, to get by on what little smidgens of worship or belief we could find. And to get by as best we could.
“So that’s what we’ve done, gotten by, out on the edges of things, where no one was watching us too closely.
“We have, let us face it and admit it, little influence. We prey on them, and we take from them, and we get by; we strip and we whore and we drink too much; we pump gas and we steal and we cheat and we exist in the cracks at the edges of society. Old gods, here in this new land without gods.”
Wednesday paused. He looked from one to another of his listeners, grave and statesmanlike.
They stared back at him impassively, their faces masklike and unreadable. Wednesday cleared his throat, and he spat, hard, into the fire. It flared and flamed, illuminating the inside of the hall.
“Now, as all of you will have had reason aplenty to discover for yourselves, there are new gods growing in America, clinging to growing knots of belief: gods of credit-card and freeway, of internet and telephone, of radio and hospital and television, gods of plastic and of beeper and of neon. Proud gods, fat and foolish creatures, puffed up with their own newness and
importance.
“They are aware of us, and they fear us, and they hate us,” said Odin. “You are fooling yourselves if you believe otherwise. They will destroy us, if they can. It is time for us to band together. It is time for us to act.”
The old woman in the red sari stepped into the firelight. On her forehead was a small dark blue jewel. She said, “You called us here for this nonsense?” And then she snorted, a snort of
mingled amusement and irritation.
Wednesday’s brows lowered. “I called you here, yes. But this is sense, Mama-ji, not nonsense.
Even a child could see that.”
“So I am a child, am I?” She wagged a finger at him. “I was old in Kalighat before you were dreamed of, you foolish man. I am a child? Then I am a child, for there is nothing in your foolish talk to see.”
Again, a moment of double-vision: Shadow saw the old woman, her dark face pinched with age and disapproval, but behind her he saw something huge, a naked woman with skin as black as a new leather jacket, and lips and tongue the bright red of arterial blood. Around her neck were skulls, and her many hands held knives, and swords, and severed heads.
“I did not call you a child, Mama-ji,” said Wednesday, peaceably. “But it seems self-evident—”
“The only thing that seems self-evident,” said the old woman, pointing (as behind her, through her, above her, a black finger, sharp-taloned, pointed in echo), “is your own desire for glory.
We’ve lived in peace in this country for a long time. Some of us do better than others, I agree. I do well. Back in India, there is an incarnation of me who does much better, but so be it. I am not envious. I’ve watched the new ones rise, and I’ve watched them fall again.” Her hand fell to her side. Shadow saw that the others were looking at her, a mixture of expressions—respect, amusement, embarrassment—in their eyes. “They worshiped the railroads here, only a blink of
an eye ago. And now the iron gods are as forgotten as the emerald hunters…”
“Make your point, Mama-ji,” said Wednesday.
“My point?” Her nostrils flared. The corners of her mouth turned down. “I—and I am obviously only a child—say that we wait. We do nothing. We don’t know that they mean us harm.”
“And will you still counsel waiting when they come in the night and they kill you, or they take you away?”
Her expression was disdainful and amused: it was all in the lips and the eyebrows and the set of the nose. “If they try such a thing,” she said, “they will find me hard to catch, and harder still to kill.”
A squat young man sitting on the bench behind her harrumphed for attention, then said, with a booming voice, “All-Father, my people are comfortable. We make the best of what we have. If this war of yours goes against us, we could lose everything.”
Wednesday said, “You have already lost everything. I am offering you the chance to take something back.”
The fire blazed high as he spoke, illuminating the faces of the audience.
I don’t really believe, Shadow thought. I don’t believe any of this. Maybe I’m still fifteen. Mom’s still alive and I haven’t even met Laura yet. Everything that’s happened so far has been some kind of especially vivid dream. And yet he could not believe that either. All we have to believe
I don’t really believe, Shadow thought. I don’t believe any of this. Maybe I’m still fifteen. Mom’s still alive and I haven’t even met Laura yet. Everything that’s happened so far has been some kind of especially vivid dream. And yet he could not believe that either. All we have to believe