I Bring the Fire Parts I, II, & III & In the Balance by C. Gockel

Author:C. Gockel [Gockel, C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: C. Gockel

“Beak and feet like a duck, body like a beaver, and it lays eggs? It’s a magical creature.” Inside the car, Loki turns his head to her and gives her a triumphant grin, but his forehead is still tight and pinched. Outside the cars on interstate 90/94 are whizzing by in a blur.

Heart in her throat, Amy cries, “Look at the road!”

Shrugging, he faces forward very slowly, as though deliberately trying to tick her off. Which he probably is.

“I don’t think the duckbilled platypus is magical,” Amy says.

“I think it is,” says Loki.

“You didn’t even know what one was until I explained it to you!” says Amy.

“I still think it is magical.”

“Maybe in the sense that all creatures are magical,” says Amy, trying to get to her point.

Loki snorts.

She scowls. “The point is...unlike marsupials and placental mammals, it doesn’t have true REM sleep. Therefore we know that REM sleep is a more recent adaptation.”

“Maybe it doesn’t need REM sleep because it is magical. Maybe that is its magical power!” says Loki.

Amy stares at him and then rolls her eyes. “Fine. Maybe it is a magical creature.”

“Ah - ha!” says Loki.

Rolling her eyes again, she looks out the side window.

But thinking of magical creatures has set her mind off in worrisome directions. “Do you think Mr. Squeakers will be okay?” When they’d stopped at her house to let Fenrir out, the spider mouse had jumped from her shoulder and dashed under one of her cabinets.

She turns her head back to Loki...and screams. The car right in front of them has just slammed on its brakes. She braces her hands on the dash for the impact...but it never comes. There is a skid of tires and a crash as the car right behind them barrels into the car that was right in front of them, but Loki has already swerved into the outer lane between two SUVs, with barely more room than he’d had when he parallel parked.

Hearing another crash, Amy looks back and sees a three-car pile up where they just were. She looks in front of them...traffic is slowing down everywhere.

Loki eases onto the brakes and then turns to her as though nothing has happened—and as though he isn’t driving a car and supposed to be watching where he is going. “I’m sure Mr. Squeakers is fine. He probably just spied a cockroach—they’re his favorite food. Hoenir can’t kill so he created the spider mice to deal with his cockroach problems.”

His face is so wide open and earnest. And then his brow tightens again and he looks back to the road. “Couldn’t kill. Had exotic animals.”

The air pressure in the car seems to drop. Outside traffic slows to almost a standstill. Neither of them says anything for a moment. Amy thinks of Beatrice and Hoenir...sighing, she turns on the radio and starts flipping stations.

“None of your modern music,” says Loki. “It’s too vulgar.”

Amy pauses. “Vulgar? You, Mr. I Like Big Boobs, is calling our music vulgar?”

Huffing, he says, “I have never called your divine bosoms anything so vulgar as boobs.

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