Of course, when it leveled out, it got worse. A black desert full of dead trees opened out before us. Vultures circled overhead. I was pretty sure they were circling us.

“Well, at least it isn’t a cliff any more.”

The owl woman grinned. “You’ll never make a flyer out of that one,” she asided to me.

“I’m rather happy with her just the way she is.”

Loki strode slightly ahead, regarding the vultures. “I like vultures,” he noted.

One of them landed on the tree in front and squawked at him.

The owl woman grinned. “They don’t hear that very often.”

I wasn’t surprised. Really, they were vultures. Kind of ugly and ate dead things. Although they did have rather splendid wings.

And I supposed something had to eat dead things.

“Be aware, though. The cliff was my realm. Now we approach Brother Death’s.”

“That doesn’t seem like the place to find him if he’s been kidnapped.”

“Oh, he’s not there. But I can track him from there.”
With that, she spread her feathered cloak and took off. Presumably, she trusted that we would stay on the trail without her. The vulture joined her.

“I do not want wings,” Kanesha informed me.

“You wouldn’t make a valkyrie then,” Loki quipped.

From the way he said it it sounded like he thought that was possible. I made a note to ask Thruor if mortal women ever became valkyries.

“No, I guess I wouldn’t.” She stayed close to me as we walked across the desert. Waiting for the owl woman to return, but staying on the path.

I’d always thought of deserts as hot. This one was cold, so cold that I felt it in my bones.

This was a place for the dead and those that fed on them, and the living could never be comfortable here. Could the dead?

I hadn’t seen any dead people, but they were probably all hanging out with Anansi while he tried to work out how to give them bodies.

Which, of course, he couldn’t. There was only so much mass on the planet, and it was all being used. “I worked out why he got ghosts.”

“Oh?”

“Because their bodies have all been, you know, recycled.”

Kanesha considered. “Oh, good point. Physical resurrection…that would…”

“You’d have to bring in a ton of mass from somewhere, and I suppose that’s more power than he has yet.”

“Or change the rules so spirits are solid in our world.”

Freya’s warriors were, I mused. “Some of them are.”

“But I think that takes…” Kanesha frowned.

I resolved to work out what it took, right as the owl woman returned.