at some point or other. And America was so damn big that with so many people there was always bound to be somebody.
And then he realized that he had zoned out just as Wednesday had been telling him who the man in the dark suit they had followed in the taxi had been, and he had missed it.
“So he’s in,” said Wednesday. “It’ll cost me a bottle of Soma, though.”
“What’s Soma?”
“It’s a drink.” They walked onto the charter plane, empty but for them and a trio of corporate big spenders who needed to be back in Chicago by the start of the next business day.
Wednesday got comfortable, ordered himself a Jack Daniel’s. “My kind of people see your kind of people…” He hesitated. “It’s like bees and honey. Each bee makes only a tiny, tiny drop of honey. It takes thousands of them, millions perhaps, all working together to make the pot of honey you have on your breakfast table. Now imagine that you could eat nothing but honey. That’s what it’s like for my kind of people…we feed on belief, on prayers, on love. It takes a lot of people believing just the tiniest bit to sustain us. That’s what we need, instead of food. Belief.”
“And Soma is…”
“To take the analogy further, it’s honey wine. Mead.” He chuckled. “It’s a drink. Concentrated prayer and belief, distilled into a potent liqueur.”
They were somewhere over Nebraska eating an unimpressive in-flight breakfast when Shadow said, “My wife.”
“The dead one.”
“Laura. She doesn’t want to be dead. She told me. After she got me away from the guys on the train.”
“The action of a fine wife. Freeing you from durance vile and murdering those who would have harmed you. You should treasure her, Nephew Ainsel.”
“She wants to be really alive. Not one of the walking dead, or whatever she is. She wants to live again. Can we do that? Is that possible?”
Wednesday said nothing for long enough that Shadow started to wonder if he had heard the question, or if he had, possibly, fallen asleep with his eyes open. Then he said, staring ahead of him as he talked, “I know a charm that can cure pain and sickness, and lift the grief from the heart of the grieving.
“I know a charm that will heal with a touch.
“I know a charm that will turn aside the weapons of an enemy.
“I know another charm to free myself from all bonds and locks.
“A fifth charm: I can catch a bullet in flight and take no harm from it.”
His words were quiet, urgent. Gone was the hectoring tone, gone was the grin. Wednesday spoke as if he were reciting the words of a religious ritual, as if he were speaking something dark and painful.
“A sixth: spells sent to hurt me will hurt only the sender.
“A seventh charm I know: I can quench a fire simply by looking at it.
“An eighth: if any man hates me, I can win his friendship.
“A ninth: I can sing the wind to sleep and calm a storm for long enough to bring a ship to shore.
“Those were the first nine charms I learned. Nine nights I hung on the bare tree, my side pierced with a spear’s point. I swayed and blew in the cold winds and the hot winds, without food, without water, a sacrifice of myself to myself, and the worlds opened to me.
“For a tenth charm, I learned to dispel witches, to spin them around in the skies so that they will never find their way back to their own doors again.
“An eleventh: if I sing it when a battle rages it can take warriors through the tumult unscathed and unhurt, and bring them safely back to their hearth and their home.
“A twelfth charm I know: if I see a hanged man I can bring him down from the gallows to whisper to us all he remembers.
“A thirteenth: if I sprinkle water on a child’s head, that child will not fall in battle.
“A fourteenth: I know the names of all the gods. Every damned one of them.
“A fifteenth: I have a dream of power, of glory, and of wisdom, and I can make people believe my dreams.”
His voice was so low now that Shadow had to strain to hear it over the plane’s engine noise.
“A sixteenth charm I know: if I need love I can turn the mind and heart of any woman.
“A seventeenth, that no woman I want will ever want another.