Gift of Odin

Chapter 1 One Good Reason I know it's stupid to think that everything changed on a certain day at a certain time. It seemed harmless then, like seeing a fluffy white cloud and not knowing it was the first sign of a hurricane that would flatten houses -- our house at least. Okay, so Odin was rooting in my mother's garden. Eating her favorite flowers -- her nasturtium. That's a Latin word pronounced "nass-ter-shee-YUM." They were giant this year, in bright reds and yellows. And Odin clearly knew all about the "yum" part. I'd been putting petals into his food dish at suppertime, just to add a little flavor to his boring pellets. Odin seemed to appreciate it -- I could tell without him saying anything. Well, not in plain English. He grunts a lot, in different tones -- he's the whole symphony, from flute to bassoon. Happy is usually low notes. But when he's worried -- and Odin worries a lot: about tall men, full moons, police sirens, the sound of the blender when I'm making fruit smoothies -- he makes a high-pitched, shrieking noise in the roof of his mouth. Odin is a Vietnamese pot-bellied pig. Except in Vietnam they don't grow to a hundred pounds plus -- they get eaten when they get too big. My dad's told me that people there don't always have a local supermarket to pick up a few things for dinner. And sooner or later the family pig has to "bring home the bacon." He was only teasing, or so I thought -- until Odin waddled into the flowerbed. His super -- saggy belly squished everything in his path that he hadn't already munched. So my mother threw a tantrum -- that's what it looked like to me, anyway. She shouted out into the backyard, "Give me ONE GOOD REASON to keep that pig!" Then she slammed the door, really hard, like I'm never supposed to do. Even by accident. I didn't take it seriously at the time, but Odin started whistling through his teeth nervously. Sometimes he's smarter than I am. -- Maybe my sister, Sonja, did it on purpose. Got me and Odin into trouble. She's the one who told me that certain blossoms -- especially nasturtium -- are served in salads in ritzy restaurants. And if I thought Odin was so special... Sonja's five years older than I am. Seventeen, and snooty. She mostly pretends I don't even exist. So it's hard to know when I'm going to bug her or not. Like the other day, when my friend Pegga was over. We were putting nail polish on Odin's pointed little hooves -- calling him Brad Pigg. We got the idea from one of Sonja's glamor magazines. Brad Pitt was on the cover looking oh so celebrity. We found a greeny-gold color in Sonja's stash of make-up, and thought it suited Odin. Khaki-with-gold-flecks was his new hot-to-trot look. He didn't like the smell much, but he liked the company, the two of us huddled down with him, giggling our heads off. When I heard Sonja come home -- which is easy, because she's always complaining -- I had to put the nail goo back in her room in a hurry. So I guess I left the top half-unscrewed. She bumped it on her dresser, and it spilled on her new neon-pink sweater. Now it has these green globs down the front. Sonja was furious, of course. Right in front of Pegga she screamed at me: "Why are you even alive?" "I think you should ask Mom and Dad," I said. Which didn't really help. I don't think Sonja really wants me dead -- but she isn't wishing a lot of good things for Odin. She says she's looking forward to Thanksgiving -- the day Odin becomes a delicious roast ham, with crispy rind and pineapple on the platter. And then she smiles in a haunted way that's meant to scare me, says she's marking off the days on the calendar. It's as though she's developed a new kind of big sister mean streak. Maybe my mom shouldn't have given her that fancy-schmancy name. She must have seen it in one of her romance novels or someQuednau, Marion is the author of 'Gift of Odin ', published 2007 under ISBN 9781554510764 and ISBN 1554510767.