She raised an arm to point to it, and the wind flattened her nightgown against her body. Her nipples, every goose-bump on the areolae, were visible momentarily, dark against the white cotton. Shadow shivered.
“Odin’s Wain, they call it. And the Great Bear. Where we come from, we believe that is a, a thing, a, not a god, but like a god, a bad thing, chained up in those stars. If it escapes, it will eat the whole of everything. And there are three sisters who must watch the sky, all the day, all the night. If he escapes, the thing in the stars, the world is over. Pf!, like that.”
“And people believe that?”
“They did. A long time ago.”
“And you were looking to see if you could see the monster in the stars?”
“Something like that. Yes.”
He smiled. If it were not for the cold, he decided, he would have thought he was dreaming. Everything felt so much like a dream.
“Can I ask how old you are? Your sisters seem so much older.”
She nodded her head. “I am the youngest. Zorya Utrennyaya was born in the morning, and Zorya Vechernyaya was born in the evening, and I was born at midnight. I am the midnight sister: Zorya Polunochnaya. Are you married?”
“My wife is dead. She died last week in a car accident. It was her funeral yesterday.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“She came to see me last night.” It was not hard to say, in the darkness and the moonlight; it was not as unthinkable as it was by daylight.
“Did you ask her what she wanted?”
“No. Not really.”
“Perhaps you should. It is the wisest thing to ask the dead. Sometimes they will tell you. Zorya Vechernyaya tells me that you played checkers with Czernobog.”
“Yes. He won the right to knock in my skull with a sledge.”
“In the old days, they would take people up to the top of the mountains. To the high places. They would smash the back of their skulls with a rock. For Czernobog.”
Shadow glanced about. No, they were alone on the roof.
Zorya Polunochnaya laughed. “Silly, he is not here. And you won a game also. He may not strike his blow until this is all over. He said he would not. And you will know. Like the cows he killed. They always know, first. Otherwise, what is the point?”
“I feel,” Shadow told her, “like I’m in a world with its own sense of logic. Its own rules. Like when you’re in a dream, and you know there are rules you mustn’t break. Even if you don’t know what they mean. I’m just going along with it, you know?”
“I know,” she said. She held his hand, with a hand that was icy cold. “You were given protection once. You were given the sun itself. But you lost it already. You gave it away. All I can give you is much weaker protection. The daughter, not the father. But all helps. Yes?” Her white hair blew about her face in the chilly wind.
“Do I have to fight you? Or play checkers?” he asked.
“You do not even have to kiss me,” she told him. “Just take the moon from me.”
“How?”
“Take the moon.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Watch,” said Zorya Polunochnaya. She raised her left hand and held it in front of the moon, so that her forefinger and thumb seemed to be grasping it. Then, in one smooth movement, she plucked at it. For a moment, it looked like she had taken the moon from the sky, but then Shadow saw that the moon shone still, and Zorya Polunochnaya opened her hand to display a silver Liberty-head dollar resting between finger and thumb.
“That was beautifully done,” said Shadow. “I didn’t see you palm it. And I don’t know how you did that last bit.”
“I did not palm it,” she said. “I took it. And now I give it to you, to keep safe. Here. Don’t give this one away.”
She placed it in his right hand and closed his fingers around it. The coin was cold in his hand. Zorya Polunochnaya leaned forward, and closed his eyes with her fingers, and kissed him, lightly, once upon each eyelid.
Shadow awoke on the sofa, fully dressed. A narrow shaft of sunlight streamed in through the window, making the dust motes dance.
He got out of bed, and walked over to the window. The room seemed much smaller in the daylight.
The thing that had been troubling him since last night came into focus as he looked out and down and across the street. There was no fire escape outside this window: no balcony, no rusting metal steps.
Still, held tight in the palm of his hand, bright and shiny as the day it had been minted, was a 1922 Liberty-head silver dollar.
“Oh. You’re up,” said Wednesday, putting his head around the door. “That’s good. You want coffee? We’re going to rob a bank.”
Coming To America 1721