little bit?” The tone was pacifying and raised my suspicions even further.
I felt Emily shift again as she nodded above me, and then the tightness around me increased. I heard Emily’s father kiss her head and whisper in her ear, but the words were too soft for me to discern. Without warning, my body whipped away from where it had been stuck and I hung in the air, dangling from Emily’s hand. “Take Mr. Bear, Daddy. He’ll make you feel better.” Emily’s voice was soft, filled with concern for her father. She knew there was something wrong but couldn’t identify what.
Her father took my arm in his hand and looked down at me. Those few seconds are the longest he had held me since tucking me into a box as he moved from his parents’ house. There was something behind his eyes that he was fighting to keep hidden, something he was trying to bury that was eating him from the inside. What had happened to the boy I’d protected for so many years? What had happened to my friend?
He kissed the top of his daughter’s head again and then kissed Emily’s mother. As she moved toward the door that led to their bedroom, I saw her lay a leather-bound book on the coffee table. The faded gold lettering on the cover showed it to be a Bible. She looked back at her husband for just a moment, a glance that carried the same concern and worry that had hung in Emily’s voice, before carrying Emily into their bedroom and shutting the door gently.
III.
I hung suspended, my arm secure in Jason’s grip. The hand holding me was rougher than I remember. I could feel his fingers, calloused and worn, tensing as if they would be more comfortable holding a sword than a ragged, stuffed teddy bear. I began to swing in his grip as he walked toward the couch, but that’s not what caught my eye. Below the dark green shorts he was wearing, his thigh had been tattooed; a thin wire, maybe chain, encircled his leg with six oblong shapes suspended from it. I couldn’t make out what was written on them; they appeared to be words with numbers beneath them. Names and dates, perhaps? It finally dawned on me: Jason had shown Emily the dog tags that he wore around his neck, and explained that they were identification tags. The shapes on his leg were dog tags, but why six? Jason only had the two hanging from the chain around his neck.
Without warning, I was flying through the air, my body twisting as it defied gravity. The momentary weightlessness disappeared, and I could feel the earth reassert its control on my body and pull me down. So different from the dreamscape where the rules change, and laws, like gravity, are mutable. I landed soundlessly on the couch and fell backward into the cushioned corner. Jason sat back down, resuming his hunched-forward position, and retrieved his glass. He stared into the amber liquid and I sensed that while his body remained near me, his mind was far away. “Till Valhalla,” he muttered, almost too quiet for me to hear, as he raised the glass in front of him, as if in salute. Then the glass was carried to his lips and the liquid disappeared down his throat.
My thoughts were racing, trying to put the pieces of this puzzle together. When he was a child Jason read almost constantly; he loved the mythology stories the most. I remembered his dreams of Valhalla, where Viking warriors who died in battle would feast during the night and battle during the day, all in preparation for Ragnar?k, the final battle. It was the Norse version of heaven and considered an honor to achieve. Jason had been raised as a follower of the Christian faith, and he still attended church with his wife and daughter; why the Viking reference? Then it struck me all at once. Jason had spent over a decade as a soldier; the wounds afflicting him had meant he was unable to continue, and he had retired. The scars on his shoulder and back, the tattoo, the words; he was toasting fallen friends. Were those his nightmares? Was that what haunted him?
I watched in silent agony as drink after drink filled the glass and was thrown down Jason’s throat. The