Jötunn. I grow bored, tell me a story."
Another day, another interminable ride, this one slow and awkward, the horses picking their way over roots and fallen logs along what used to be a path. Probably. At some point.
Above us, the trees of the Myrkviðr are living up to their reputations. Dark and tangled and strange.
"A story?" I turn to look at Þrúðr. She's stiff-backed and stern, eyes focused ahead and knuckles white around her reins. Still, this is the most she's said to me since we left, so: "Uh, sure. What kind of story?"
"Of Father," she says, still pointedly not looking at anything. "I wish to know . . . something the skalds do not sing of." She's especially not looking at her brother, and the way he's trying to catch her eye with an expression even a blind jötunn can read as What are you doing, fool girl?
I grin. "Sure," I say. "I got a few of those."
From up ahead, Magni growls, "If you slander Father's memory with your lies—"
"Relax, relax," I say. Then, very distinctly to Þrúðr, "You'll like this one."
She nods, once. Almost glances my way, even. "Proceed."
"Right," I say. "Well. This is a while back, starting before you were born. About eight months before, in fact, because the first I remember of it is your old man running out to find me one day. 'Loki!' he shouts"—and I do the dialogue in the old tongue, for effect—" 'Loki, show yourself! I have news!'
"And meanwhile I'm thinking, Oh shit, what now . . . But I come slinking out and Thor grabs me, fingers crushing into my shoulders and he's shaking me"—I mime the gesture, chains rattling as I do—"and bellowing, 'Loki! My wife, Sif. She is with child, Loki! I am to be a father!' "
"Do not think to dishonor our mother, ei—"
"Silence, little brother!" Þrúðr snaps. I resist the urge to z-snap at the back of Magni's head.
Instead, I continue, "So Thor is bellowing, and when my eyes stop rolling in their sockets I see he's grinning this great big fool grin. Ear to ear like a Glasgow smile, and I don't think I've ever seen the guy so damn proud of himself.
"We go drinking to celebrate, as you do, and for the next month I can track the progress of the announcement by the number of people staggering around with mild brain damage. And meanwhile it suddenly hits your old man that he is, in fact, about to be someone's old man. So he goes scouring all over Ásgarðr for advice. Odin is useless, as usual"—he never did have much of a way with kids—"so Thor ends up at Frigg's knee. She teaches him how to hold a child and how to nurse and how to wrap swaddling, and she shows him how to make your mother comfortable during the pregnancy, even what to do during the birth. And everyone's tittering behind their hands about The Mighty Thor going soft, doing women's work, but your dad? He gives exactly zero shits, sitting next to Frigg, Mjölnir abandoned on the floor while he practices changing diapers." I mime someone with huge hands delicately folding a tiny scrap of fabric. Þrúðr bites back a giggle, and actually it occurs to me I don't really have to fake the size difference. Like this, I'm probably an inch or two taller than Thor was, if not nearly as broad. But my hands are big and my claws are thick and—
Right. Story, telling a.
"So the months roll on and Thor's cluckier than a barn full of hens, rarely leaving your mother's side unless she gets sick of the sight of him. Then it's all"—a nice falsetto, not quite Sif's voice but close enough to make Móði startle—" 'Thor, my love. I absolutely must have only the finest Álfheimr dates. Fetch them for me, please?' Then it was into the chariot and off we went. Seven months of that." I huff, shaking my head.
"Eventually, your mum goes into labor, as mothers do. Huffing and puffing, and your dad is there, holding her thin fingers in his own massive paws while she screams abuse and curses him all across the Realms." I pause, knowing a comment is coming and not disappointed when Þrúðr says:
"Father . . . was there for the birth?"
Birthing is women's work, no men allowed. "Of course he was," I say. "As if he'd've missed that." Before anyone can think to ask why I was there, too, I continue: "So your mother huffs and puffs and blows the house down and then, eventually, pop! Out you come. Frigg's the midwife and she wraps you in a blanket and, over your screams, announces you're a girl. Then she hands you to your father. Or tries to." I pause for effect, grinning. Þrúðr is watching me, eyes bright and round.
"So your dad," I continue, "who's spent the last eight months in a state of elated panic, he takes one look at you, and his face? His face just goes stone. Cold. Empty." I make the expression, blank and terrifying, staring straight at Þrúðr as I do.
She flinches, the hurt oozing out of her as if I'd just slapped her across the cheek. Maybe I have. Sort of. Just a little.
"And Thor," I say, "he looks at you, and he says, 'Þrúðr Þórsdóttir.' And then he walks out of the room without so much as a backward glance."
I feel the tears edge around Þrúðr's shock, betrayal and disappointment not helped in the slightest when Móði laughs and says, "Perhaps he'd been hoping for a son, eh?" Magni laughs as well, and Þrúðr turns her head, shamed and humiliated. And angry. Very, very angry.
She remembers why she's here.
And I say:
"It's funny he should mention that, because a lot of people said it at the time, too. I mean, Thor spent like the next three months avoiding you and Sif like the wrong end of a magnet. Didn't even talk about you. Instead, he was busy dragging me all over the Realms, hitting this and killing that, and I put up with it for a while but finally even I'm like, 'Mate. That's enough.' 'Cause, y'know. I've got the family at home and I haven't seen 'em in a while. Too much of a while. So I'm all, 'I'm going home, bro. You wanna avoid your girls, that's your problem, but I got my own wife to kiss and kids to play with, y'know?' "
Þrúðr glances at me, brow furrowed. As if I just said something she doesn't quite believe.
"So I head home," I continue. "Kiss the wife, tussle with the boys. All the good stuff. A day passes, then two. It's evening, I've just put the boys to bed, and Sigga's suggesting we go for a walk, it's a nice night out, wink-wink, and I'm like, 'Woman, your meteorological predictions sound intriguing, tell me more,' when wham!" I slam one hand into the other, hard enough to send Gluestick's ears swiveling. "Wham wham wham! From the front door. Sigga's trying to convince me to lie on the floor and pretend we've been murdered, but by this stage I can hear your dad howling my name and he sounds kinda upset, so fine, I open the door.
"Thor nearly punches me out for my trouble, so intent is he on knocking, and when he sees me he grabs me and lifts me off my feet and shakes me and says, 'She's gone. Sif's gone!' I'm thinking, Jesus Christ who's abducted what now? But no, turns out that's not it. Sif hasn't been taken, she's just gone for a night out with the girls. She's gotten sick of her husband so she's headed out and left him with the baby, with you. And meanwhile, Thor's nearly beside himself and he keeps saying, 'She won't stop crying! You have to help me, she won't stop!' except he's still shaking me and so I'm about to hurl into his beard when Sigga manages to convince him to put me down.
"And, mate, I tell you I don't think I've ever seen your dad look so goddamn miserable. I look at Sigyn and she looks at me and we both kinda go"—I make the gesture for Well, what can you do? as best I can with both hands tied—"because Sif is gone and Thor is useless, and you're just a baby, y'know? Barely a few months old. And Sigga's a mother, and I'm a father—"
"And a mother," Magni sneers, right on cue.
"Right," I say, not missing a beat. "A father and a mother, and neither of us are going to let some poor infant howl all alone by itself. So I wave good-bye to my wife and my 'walk,' wink-wink, and go with Thor to Bilskirnir. Sure enough, there you are in the middle of the hall, bawling yourself stupid. I run over and grab you and, eurgh. You're crying 'cause you've shat yourself, and you reek."
Þrúðr's cheeks flush fetchingly scarlet, her brothers not bothering to hide their sniggers.
"See," I say, gesturing toward them. "They laugh now, but here's the thing: I spent years wiping the shit from your father's ass, back when he was a pink, squirming, stinking newborn. Wiping his shit and drying his piss and cleaning his puke off my clothes, and if you think I didn't remind the cowering idiot of that while I'm holding you out and chasing him across the hall, then you obviously haven't been paying attention.
"I keep telling him, 'She's your goddamn daughter. She's a mess, she's upset, she doesn't know what to do because she's a fucking baby, literally, and she needs her daddy to man the fuck up and clean her and change her and rock her to sleep.' And I'm trying to hand you over and Thor's got his hands up like he's trying to push you away and he keeps saying, 'I can't. I can't do it, Loki!' And I'm like, 'Don't try that shit on me what the fuck's the problem?' And meanwhile you're still wailing and I'm shouting and finally, finally your dad snaps and he roars: 'Because she's so tiny! How can I hold her?' "
Silence. Dead silence from Þrúðr and from Móði. Even Magni. I let the moment linger, then:
"And I look down and I see you and I see your dad's hands. And he's right, you're so small and they're so big. Big and thick and callused, hands that bring storms and kill jötnar, attached to a guy who's not allowed to walk on the Bifröst lest he crack it with his step. Because Thor is huge and he's strong and he's so stubborn he makes his goats look compliant . . . but he's afraid, too.
" 'I have dreams,' he tells me, and I've heard Thor say a lot of things but never in the way he's talking now. Quiet and thready, a barely audible murmur of shame beneath his daughter's distress. And that voice tells me about how, every night, when he sleeps, your father reaches out to hold you and comfort you and then watches in horror as his big, strong fingers squeeze just a little too hard and—" I stop, Þrúðr flinches. "You get the idea. And so did I, and I also realized what I had to do to fix it."
"What?" Þrúðr's voice is soft, full of heartbreak for her big oaf of a father.
I grin, sharp and stitched. "I told Thor there was only room for one baby in Bilskirnir, and that being small and helpless didn't equate to being a fragile little snowflake that needed cotton padding and a glass fucking display case. Moreover, I told your dad he had exactly until the count of five to realize this, because after that I was dropping you on the flagstones to see how well you bounced."
"You did no such thing!" Þrúðr snaps, then blinks as if she's startled herself with her own vehemence.
Meanwhile, Móði chuckles and says, "It would explain a lot about you, Sister!" There's a nervous edge in his words, though. The awkwardness of a boy who wants to offer comfort, and isn't sure how to do it.
I laugh, too. "Maybe," I say, "but it's moot. I didn't even get to two before your father grabbed you in one hand and the front of my tunic in the other, lifting me off the floor and threatening to see how well I bounced instead."
Þrúðr gives a satisfied little huff, nose in the air as she says, "Good! As you deserved."
"Lucky for me I distracted your dad by pointing out that you were nestled in his palm and hadn't yet dissolved into a red and pulpy spray, no matter how close he was to being taken by the berserk. I've never seen Thor look so happy, dropping me like I'm on fire in order to hold you up in both hands, laughing and crying and saying your name, over and over." I pause. "Then, of course, the stink reasserts itself and suddenly you're being held out at arm's length again while Thor tries not to gag. So I help while he cleans you and changes you, then watch as he rocks you to sleep. By the time your mum gets home an hour or so later, Thor is flaked out in front of the hearth and you're curled up asleep under his beard."
To say Sif and I—Sif and Loki—never really got along would be an understatement. But that night had been the start of a truce, at least for a week or two.
"Anyway," I say, "after that, your dad went back to being insufferable, taking you around everywhere and showing you off to everyone in Ásgarðr. And people gossiped and giggled and called him 'Mother,' but the truth of it was Thor was the best damn father in the whole fucking Realm. He loved you, all of you, and your mother, and he would've chewed off his own hammer arm if he thought it would make you happy.
"Thor was a lot of things," I conclude, "not all of them good. But he was a brilliant dad, and it's a shame not so many people remember that." I pause. "Well. I think it's a shame. Your mileage may vary, as the humans say."
Story done, I let my voice fade, and for a while the only sounds are the fall of the horses' hooves and the distant rustle of the þurs scouts who've been following us since we entered the forest.
After a moment, Þrúðr says, "Thank you. For your words. They were . . . Thank you." Her voice is steady, but thick, and when she sniffs, two teardrops leave dark little circles on her saddle.
I shrug, shifting and stretching as best I can while chained and riding bareback. "Anytime," I say.
No one asks for a second telling.
* * *
We ride all day, eventually making camp just before the light gets dangerous for the horses. I ache, everywhere. And itch. And I'm starving. And in the end I practically fall off Gluestick's back. Magni laughs at my discomfort, calls me soft, and chains me to a tree. Then he and Móði vanish into the woods to hunt for game, leaving their sister with instructions to scream if I get any ideas.
I have ideas. They aren't the sort to make Þrúðr scream.
Instead, she busies herself building a fire and using a little kettle to collect water from a nearby stream. I sit next to my tree and try to look nonthreatening.
When Þrúðr begins struggling with the fire steel, I say, "Here, allow me." Then I snap my fingers, and the pile of kindling sparks and blazes. Þrúðr lunges backward, blinking first at the fire, then at me, eyes huge and mouth a round circle of uncertainty.
"Your brother's runes aren't as good as he thinks they are," I say, settling myself back against the tree trunk. "But . . . shhh. Don't discourage him." Then I wink.
This is, in fact, a lie. Móði's runes were fine, but the manacles have started rubbing my wrists raw, potentially exacerbated by yours truly pushing a few rocks and sticks beneath the iron. Raw wrists mean blood, which eats through magic and metal alike. Not all the way, but enough to spark.
Þrúðr scowls at me from across the fire. "I know what you're doing," she says. " 'Good cop, bad cop,' wasn't it?" She mangles the English, but it's comprehensible.
I laugh. "Sort of. Related, anyway."
"Mother warned me of you." Þrúðr uses a sword to stoke the fire, and I don't miss the threat. "All the women warned me of you."
I try a grin, the sort I use on Sigmund sometimes. Less maniac sharp, more rakish smooth. "Oh, c'mon. I'm not that bad. Besides, I'm married." And, okay. It's not the most convincing excuse, and even less so in the tenth century, but . . .
But I don't expect Þrúðr to tense up like she does, don't expect the pure wave of frozen loathing she extrudes.
"Yes," she says. "And we all saw what ills—what injuries—you inflicted on your wife, no matter how she tried to hide them."
My brows hike. "Whoa," I say. "Whoa whoa whoa. What?" Because fuck knows I wasn't the greatest husband in the Realms, but Þrúðr isn't accusing me of bad life choices and jerkish behavior. When she says "injury," she means of the physical sort.
Þrúðr sits, straight-backed and stern, fire leaping and cracking between us. "We knew your shame, níðingr," she says. "We all knew it. Often did we try and spare Sigyn of it, yet never would she listen, so cruel were your abuses that—"
"Þegi þú!" The chains pull taught because, suddenly, I've lunged to the end of them. Metal biting into my flesh and hearts racing, black poison bubbling up and spilling over before I can stop it. "Still your tongue, you half-caste fledgling! Do not speak of what you do not understand!"
That's not my anger, not exactly. That's Loki's, and it is vile and it is writhing. Þrúðr's hit a nerve.
She knows it, too, nose high and holding the sword out before her, blade cutting through spluttering flames. We can't reach her from here, but we can nudge the fire, just a little, just enough to—
(whoa, calm the fuck down! what's gotten into)
"Do not think to lie in this, jötunn," Þrúðr snaps. "We all saw evidence of your depravity, even as Sigyn tried to hide it."
"I loved Sigga! I still love her, and every day I ache that we cannot truly be together." Oh, ouch. But Sigmund's my boy, not Loki's wife, and he holds her soul, but it's buried. Not like skin on skin and—
(caressing pale flesh, her giggling laughter washing spite and hate from my hearts even as my tongue and lips caress the soft hollow of her throat, lingering as her fingers wind into my hair, holding me still with strength far in excess of her small frame as she commands me bite)
Oh.
Oo-oo-oh. Right. That.
Loki is saying, "—me of any ill and I care not for your 'dishonor.' But for all my shame I never, never raised a hand against my love, my heart, and I would tear the same out from any who would accuse it!" We growl, trying to lunge forward again, metal biting into skin and drawing blood, and if he keeps this up—if we can't calm down—then we might just bleed enough to break the iron.
(not yet not yet not yet breathe, man, breathe it won't)
"I saw the marks!" Þrúðr says. The point of her sword is shaking, and if she screams, if she alerts her brothers . . . "We all did! Bites and burns that would appear upon her neck and arms after you had called upon her. If these were not your doing, then whose? And why would you allow it?"
Þrúðr's eyes are wide and damp, full of uncomprehending pain. Time moves differently in Ásgarðr, age even more so, and I try to remind myself—remind my black and roiling heart—that Þrúðr is a girl. By modern standards, she'd barely be old enough to drink.
I pull myself back. Physically, one hand across my own chest, and inertia might not work that way, but narrative does, meaning I end up back on my tail with a thud.
"Jesus," I say, hands running down my face, making the words come out in English. My words. "Is that . . . is that what the ásynjur thought? That L— That I used to . . . to beat Sigyn?" It explains a few things. More than a few, I guess.
"Didn't you?" Þrúðr says, but the challenge in her voice is softer than it was. "The bites—"
"Were mine," I say. "Jesus, I won't—" I look up, meeting Þrúðr's gaze. "The bites and the burns, yes. They were me. But it wasn't . . . I loved Sigyn. And those things . . ." How do you explain kinky sex to a Viking teenager? "Sigyn would ask me to do them to her."
The point of Þrúðr's sword lowers, just a fraction, her expression flat with disbelief. " 'Asked'?"
"Yeah."
"Why? Why would anyone . . ."
"She liked it. Um. When I bit her. It made her—" Jesus, am I blushing? I think I'm fucking blushing. I hope my skin is dark enough that Þrúðr can't tell. "She liked it," I repeat. My own sexual deviances are one thing, but these are the secrets of a dead woman.
Þrúðr blinks. "She liked it . . . when you bit her? Left marks and drew blood?"
I nod. "Some people do," I say. "It's not . . . It's just a thing. There's nothing wrong with it."
"Oh." Something in my awkward, stuttering reluctance must be convincing, because Þrúðr looks away, sword lowered and shoulders hunched. She's blushing, not meeting my eyes, and trying not to think about all the things she doesn't know about being an adult woman.
Somewhere up above, leaves rustle as unseen figures dart among the branches.
* * *
Said leaves are still rustling sometime later, when Magni and Móði return. Þrúðr has spent that last little while in awkward, mind-churning silence, thinking awkward teenage thoughts. When her brothers return, it's a chance to trade that for anger instead.
"All that time," she snaps, "and nothing to show for it?"
Magni and Móði have come back empty-handed, not a deer or hare or bird in sight, and they bluster with excuses about the forest being "barren" and "cursed." When I scoff, three heads turn my way.
"Something to say, jötunn?"
I loll my head and grin at Magni. "The forest's neither cursed nor barren," I say. "You've just been punk'd."
"What?"
"Pranked," I elaborate. "Tricked, fooled, played for suckers, fall—"
"Enough. Who has done this? If I find you have had hand in it . . ." He lets the threat hang. I shrug and pretend the thought of . . . that doesn't set my feathers on end.
"Blah blah blah, you're a big man, I get it. But I'm not sure they"—I point upward, into the trees—"do."
The reaction is perfect, the Brat Pack instantly on alert, peering up into the branches. The now suspiciously silent branches.
"What trickery is this? Show yourselves, cowards!" Magni demands of the trees.
"Forget it," I say. "They're local kids, having a laugh by chasing off your game."
Móði scowls at me, tasting of suspicion and confusion. "There are no children in the Myrkviðr. No one lives in this place."
"The þursar do," I point out. Funny, isn't it? Who gets included as a someone and who doesn't.
Þrúðr looks back up into the trees, then smirks at her brothers. "You were outwitted by jötunn children?"
Magni growls at her, then back at the trees, raising his hammer as he shouts, "Monstrous whelps! I should smash you where you stand!"
"Yeah, well," I say. "I guess if you really wanna find out just how monstrous the þursar can be, murdering their children certainly would be a fantastic start."
"Quiet, jötunn. You go hungry with the rest of us."
I shrug, closing my eyes and leaning back against my tree. Honestly, I'm ravenous, and another night on an empty stomach is as irritating for me as it is for Magni. But I'm not going to let him know that.
Instead, I listen as Þrúðr scolds him again and tells him to sit down and stay out of the way while she finds them food from her saddlebags. Stale bread and hard cheese, an apple and a few strips of jerky. They're hardly going to starve, the big babies.
I try not to think about it and, in fact, am still trying not to think about it sometime later when I hear footsteps head my way. Þrúðr, who bends down beside me and offers the last of the bread.
"In exchange for what?" I ask. Þrúðr's expression afterward makes me wish I hadn't. Shit.
But she doesn't pull away, and eventually I take the food. It's floury and awful, and just enough to remind me how long ago my last decent meal really was. To think that, just the other day, I was eating an eight-course degustation at one of the finest restaurants in Miðgarðr.
"The children," Þrúðr says, watching me eat. "Are they a danger?"
I shrug. "They're just kids. Their parents? Maybe. But if we stick to the road and don't look like we plan on staying long, they'll leave us alone." I hope.
"Móði thinks they may attack us in the night."
"I'm sure Móði thinks a lot of things." Few of which have much worth, if his track record is any indication.
A little crease appears between Þrúðr's delicate, (literally) golden brows and she says, "Can't you . . . speak with them? Tell them we mean them no harm? Parley for food, perhaps?"
I laugh, short and sharp and humorless. Honestly, it's not the worst idea anyone's ever had except: "One, I'm not convinced you do 'mean them no harm,' and two, you don't know very much about the jötnar, do you?"
Þrúðr flushes and looks away. "They are our enemies, and have been since the days of Búri and Ymir. What more is there to know?" Her hands are curled into fists against the wool of her skirt.
"Just because we all have horns and feathers doesn't mean we're all the same," I say. "The jötnar in this forest are þursar. I'm not, and they'd be able to tell just by looking at me." Honestly, it's probably one of the reasons the kids are following us. To the jötnar outside of Jötunheimr, my people are boogeymen and fairy tales.
"Meaning," I continue, "that the locals are no more likely to listen to me than they are to you. Probably less." The æsir are at least neighbors, of a sort. Meanwhile, I ran away from my people as a teenager, hooked up with the murderer of my great-great-great-whatever-grandfather, and spent a lifetime aiding and abetting the casual slaughter of my own species. Historic blood feuds are one thing, all that's quite another.
"So you will not help us?" It occurs to me, as Þrúðr says this, that she might be over here trying to prove a point. To her idiot brothers.
I sigh, roll my neck and shoulders, then let out a sound that's somewhere between the crack of a whip, the click of a camera shutter, and the cry of an eagle. It's been a long time since I've done that. Well, technically I've never done it, and even Loki's memories are hazy and faded, painted over by a lifetime of æsir dress-ups.
The noise startles Þrúðr and, from the sound and feel of our observers up above, it startles them, too. I don't think I get the call quite right—by now I'd have an accent, if nothing else—but I hope they catch my meaning.
"What was—?" Þrúðr starts.
"Territory call," I say, straining my Wyrdsight as far up and out as it will go. The range is minuscule, compared to what I'm used to back home. "Now everyone in earshot knows we're just passing through."
A moment later, I hear it: an answering cry, coming from the trees. Not from our observers, but farther away. The voice is an adult's.
"Aa-aa-and there's the answer," I say.
"Which was?"
" 'Get the fuck out of our forest,' more or less." I omit the part wherein I was called a featherless traitor. "Sorry, kid. I tried."
Þrúðr nods, one hand reaching out as if to touch. "Thank you," she says. "For trying."
She's just so earnest, so naïve and so sincere, and if there's one thing that kills me every time, it's that. So I sigh and say, "Look. For what it's worth, I don't sleep like you lot do. So I'll keep an eye out until dawn."
"Thank you, it's— I would appreciate it if you did." She gives something of a conspiratorial grin and whispers, "My brothers mean well, but I think they fall asleep during their watches."
I return her grin, holding up my thumb and foreclaw in the universal gesture of "maybe just a little." Then I wink, and Þrúðr laughs and goes to stand. As she does, she says, "I . . . I am sorry about before. What I said about—"
I cut her off with a wave of my hand. "Forget about it. It's . . . It was a long time ago."
I don't watch her reaction, just listen to her footsteps and the rustle of her skirts as she walks away, and maybe—just maybe, if I'm feeling very, very honest—I may admit to feeling something very similar to a twinge of guilt.
("she makes her own choices")
So sayeth the poison that drips from my blackest heart. Still . . .
Tomorrow we should reach our destination. I guess I have until then to reconsider.
Stomach growling, I curl into a chain-wrapped feather ball, close my eyes, and pretend to sleep.