Rent-Seeking--Ragnarokk

We called it 'heart-shaped,' and I suppose it would be, if you ripped out two hearts and placed them side by side. The locket was amidst a rat's nest of costume jewelry, and bore the inscription, "Love Always, Your Champion." Clearly, it was gold--declarations of love always bore that promise--but the sentiments had proved their worth, and now it was for melting.

I was pawing through a pile of junk, looking for good flips. Everything was arrayed on an old, dirty blanket, in front of an empty storefront--as was the way these days, most everyone had been turned out, in one way or another. The proprietor was sitting on the blanket, most likely these wares were everything he owned: a life reduced to little more than chipped plates and cans of soup and cat food.

I looked to the old man, Odjinn, he was called. Despite having possessions, he more resembled one of those wandering kings of the forest who appeared from time to time. He bore a retinue of conflicting odors--pencil shavings, dirt, and long-fermented sweat. His gaze was fixed across the street, and something told me he was in a poetic frame of mind, as his sort often was.

"'Twas a war between wolves and giants that clove that monolith in twain," he began, in typical old-fashioned style, as he gestured to the vacant mill. One giant had erected the structure, another had ripped most of it off, out of pure spite. Its viscera was left draped and hanging open to the world--steel girders, wooden flooring, bloated layers of pink and yellow insulation, crumbling concrete. Wrenched and twisted at violent and unlikely angles they hung, threatening to overtake us at any unwary moment. Yet still it all dangled, year after year. Left to rot in its suffering as a reminder to us all.

I sighed. Everyone knew about the giants, everyone knew about the wolves. Never seen, always felt and heard. "Working against each other for once, instead of us," I remarked, trying to curb what I sensed might be a lengthy tale, and one that I knew all too well. I didn't know why he was going on about such old news anyway. Buildings were collapsing all over the place, day to day now. "Nothing holds anymore," I reminded him, as I'd had to remind myself long ago, when this all began for me.

"Time was," he continued in his arched, archaic speech, "the bonds of the world were made of the same gold as our hearts."

"And so the world crumbles." I nearly shouted the words, but managed to squeeze them into a casual manner. People were always so righteous, like they'd done nothing to bring this to pass. Hearts of gold!!!??? It made me so angry I spat.

"Better to live the honor of heartlessness, you think? No matter. Your word is tainted currency, peddled among the giants as it is. You scurry about with your foolish trades, ripping the marrow from all you touch, and trading back the rattling bones. You make us smaller day by day."

I shrugged, immune to his disgust. He sat in the place of ethical men. And 'ethics,' I reminded myself time and again, 'were for food.' The giants always wanted more--and the streets were littered with the lives of those who could no longer pay. They were huddled everywhere, feeding the giants' hunger with their own flesh.

I continued to scan the old man's merchandise, and noticed an old brass clock. It was surprisingly heavy for its size. Opening the door in its back, I discovered the workings were expertly hand-made, a rarity in itself. But they were nothing compared to what else I saw: stacked bundles of gold coins, carefully fitted into the clock's casing. My eyes couldn't help lighting up --the coins seemed to pulse with life, and I could see a new future, flowing forth on that current of gold.

Quickly, I calmed my face, and snapped the box shut. "How much for this?" I asked, with my best act of nonchalance.

"Bah-- what would you want with that?" he asked, full of the drama of a forest bard. "We all know what time it is, yet it spares us nothing! Light and dark have left the sky, and we shiver in the gray, knowing day nor night!" I thought he was just getting going, but he paused abruptly from his haunted musings, looking at me with a smile. "I'd recommend the cat food, if it's plunder you're after. It could soon make you a rich man."

That was typically weird, these days--people were raving everywhere, unsure when their threads would be pulled free from the fabric of the world, and worse, what would happen when they did. I couldn't tell if this man had finally cracked, or was just having fun. But there was no way I'd grow a conscience and treat him lightly. The floor had been falling from my world for ages, now; this gold was my chance to finally feel solid ground.

"I'll take my chance with the timepiece all the same," I told him. "How much?"

"How much for a piece of my life..." he looked off, rapturous and aggrieved. For his sake, I hoped he was mocking me, but like I said, people were raving everywhere. Either way, I wasn't taken in.

Then the old man spoke softly, with an eerie intensity: "What is the treasure that you truly seek, and what is it worth to you?" He looked up at me, moving a clump of hair that had covered one eye--revealing the horror of an empty socket.

I pride myself on not being shaken, yet that eye raised a shudder in me like few things ever had. It was like the abyss itself peered through where his eye had been, glaring at me with all the gravity one would expect from an infinite chasm. Forces unknown and terrifying swam within, and I realized--not for the first time in my life--that 'nothingness' just might be the most terrifying thing in the universe.

After a moment, I caught myself. Despite my best efforts, I had a poetic spirit. I'd fallen for this drama, for a second. It was, admittedly, a good ruse on his part, but I was here to win. I would cross the abyss itself to find the comfort those coins promised, surely I could beat this silly old man in a game of haggling.

What he said next, though, utterly surprised me: "Young man, I'll give you the riches, but you must take this book as well, and use it. It is a treasure beyond measure."

The corny rhyme, the dramatic reverence--it was that poetic spirit again, the bane of us all. Evidently, it had compelled him to this unexpected generosity, so I couldn't exactly dismiss it. Nevertheless, I wasn't looking for him to capitulate so readily. And generally, I didn't deal in religiosities (stingy clientele), and I had no interest in using them myself. But I focused on the gold. I would use the book (clearly some devout prison of a tome) a time or two perhaps, to honor the deal--a thought that made me wince.

I'd drag my way along by way of nosy curiosity if all else failed, grimacing over the honor of it all the while. His type was always going on about honor, but not much of it had changed the world for the better. So it was a nauseating feeling to consider being in his debt, and I had a sneaking suspicion that that might be how such business tended to begin.

He handed me the clock, the locket, and the book, and I--weirdly--just dumbly cooperated. No banter, no quick thinking about how to avoid being in his debt, none of the things that I usually calculated as I closed a deal. Truth was, I didn't close it. He did, according to whatever scheme he had in mind. And I even thanked him, as I shoved the goods into my pack. But the grayness of the sky seemed brighter now. I turned, toward the giants' ruin, walking to a path hidden in the tangled vines that covered one side. Underneath, it was unearthly quiet, a place suspended in some other dimension.

I emerged at the banks of the river, and sound erupted all at once: water rushing over the rocks, a strong wind rattling what brown leaves remained on the trees. It was a shunned and lonesome spot, full of familiar feelings.

With ten quick steps, I reached my stash-spot in the trees: racing up a fallen log, bounding from branch to branch, and one final leap that let me put aside the flat pan that served as a trap door, and hoist myself inside in one fluid motion.

The place was pretty much a nest--fallen branches and sticks, nifty pieces from crumbling houses I'd found here and there. It looked like a lumpy, misshapen egg, dappled with a camouflage of fallen leaves. Ugly, indeed, but not a bond held it in place--it remained of its own accord.

Sitting down, the ground began to shake, rocking the nest within its cradle of branches. I could hear the sounds of buildings ripping and crumbling, a thundering noise that went through me like it had claws--raking my nerves instantaneously raw, in spite of my efforts not to care. I couldn't tell if it was the sound of giants, or the sound of a cascade of broken words, pulling apart the fabric of the world. The nest's branches and poles shifted as they always did in these moments, and gaps began to widen. Through the gaps, I shoved shims between the base branches and the nest, until the egg stayed in place, and added more branches to the floor. I had enough loose branches on hand to rebuild half the nest--this stuff happened all the time, and I'd learned it was better to live ready to roll.

With that settled, I returned to my latest acquisitions. The heart-shaped locket, for all my macabre cynicism about hearts, had potent meaning. It symbolized two souls, joined in creation, and commemorated vows to bring joy and light to the world through their union. Each one was unique, a depiction of two natures combined. This one was beautiful, as these marks of hopeful beginnings usually were. A sudden shudder overcame me, and I tossed the latest in a bag with all the rest. For some reason, I'd avoided melting them down, but their presence was unsettling--creepy like a bag of fingernails, and despairing like a bag of broken dreams. Other, more haunting meanings pursued me, but I pushed them from my mind quickly, lest they grow in power. It seemed with every new locket, the feeling was heavier, and harder to ignore.

With great effort, I pulled my attention to the remaining mystery. The book was small, bound in worn black leather. There was a pattern worked into it, its intricate scrollwork only vaguely visible.

Before my eyes, the design emerged, from some strange and secret realm. The tracery began to pulse with flickers of light--green and gold, like the beginnings of a chemical reaction, but without heat or bite. After a moment of seemingly meandering movements, it was there: a yew tree, gnarled, thick-trunked, and ancient as the memory of our long-forgotten gods. I snorted, recalling its meaning, 'bridge between life and death.' For certain, my life was paved in its wood.