Then, we were upon them. They sat underneath a large respectable elm tree-a young woman about our age, a woman about my father’s age, and a woman about my grandmother’s age sat on a yellow blanket that seemed cheery in the dismal fog. A cloaked old man sat beside the young woman. He wore a floppy hat with a wide brim, perched oddly on his head to cover one eye. All four of them fiddled with yarn and knitting needles. The women were deft and efficient, but the man knitted with no dexterity at all, as if his needles wriggled of their own accord.

“Holy shit,” Kate whispered in my ear. “I think that’s Odin and the three Fates.”

“Odin was what, the king?” I whispered back.

“Yeah, he’s the Norse what Zeus was the Greeks.”

“Oh. I guess you’d better say hi or something.” She looked at me pointedly.

“Thanks a lot,” I muttered.

“You said this was something you had to do. So do it.”

Kate was more assertive now. I didn’t know what to do about it. There was a hardness in her words, not cold, but I got a sense that I’d used up any slack I’d built up in our friendship and she wasn’t letting me slide anymore.

I took a deep breath and raised my hand in greeting. “Hello, we’re-“

“Sit down, Daniel, Kate,” the youngest said abruptly, and then smiled at me. She had red hair and brown eyes and had a serious, sexy librarian vibe going on. We joined them on edge of the blanket.

“I am Verdandi,” the middle woman said. “My sisters are Urd and Skuld.” She pointed to the younger woman and the older, respectively. “Would you like some cookies?”

“No thank you,” I said. Kate shook her head.

“Of course people had to show up to watch,” the man grumbled. “The one time I lower myself to learn a woman’s craft.”

“Balls,” Skuld said. “You knew they were coming, Odin. And you go and tell those fishermen who worship you that their knitted nets are womens’ work. See if you’ll get another sacrifice.”

“I haven’t had a sacrifice in twelve hundred years, hag,” he said. “And I have to keep face.”

“You and your face. I have no idea why you’d want to keep that old thing anyway,” she replied.

Kate snickered, and Urd smiled at us. She pulled and unknotted black yarn from a burlap bag that sat between her and Odin. It went from her to Verdandi, who began knitting it to add onto a large afghan. She wouldn’t get very far, though, because Skuld pulled out the stitches from the bottom as Urd knitted at the top, rolling up the kinked yarn into a fat ball. Other balls sat in a large shallow bowl behind her.