Chapter Three: Trickster
"So, do you know what this guy looks like?" Her friend Colbie's soft feminine voice came through the receiving end of Anna's international cell phone. "The one you keep dreaming about?"
"I don't know." Anna replied, biting her lip as she walked along the road that lay parallel to the river. "I never get a clear image. But the eyes, they're always green."
"Hmm…" Colbie seemed to contemplate this.
"But I don't wanna talk about it." Anna said hastily, having already been badgered enough when her Grandma saw her haggard face the other morning. "How's college?"
"Eh, it's University of Portland," Colbie's voice dripped with lazy sarcasm, "It's oh so exciting, don't you know?"
"Hard to have a dull day with you around." Anna smiled, missing her oldest friend fiercely. "Made any new friends?"
"Loads," Colbie's smirk was apparent, "They're all long-haired grungy metal-heads."
Anna laughed at the image that conjured: preppy Colbie lounging around some studio turned bar with a bunch of scary looking hand-banging Metallica fans.
"I gotta go," Anna said as the static began to invade her cell reception again, "Look, try to have fun, okay? Bye!"
Snapping her dinosaur of a cell phone shut, she fingered the Euros in her pocket and ran her eyes over her Grandpa's messy English handwriting. Flour, yeast, turnips, tomatoes, cucumbers, bird seed, ect. Suddenly, something dark flashed in the corner of her eye and she froze in her tracks. Turning her head she swore she saw the intricate pattern of a shawl drawn over scraggly grey waves of hair disappear into the wood beside her.
"Grandma?" Anna called out tentatively.
Pocketing her cell phone, she stuffed her papers into her bag and rushed over to the edge of the forest. It was oddly peaceful she found, once within the maze of birch and pine. Avoiding the scraping fingers of the brush below as she drifted through the wood. In honor of the gracious sunshine, she had donned her favorite white skirt with delicate blue rose pattern. It billowed out in an a-line under her short sleeved white cotton button up shirt. Brushing a stray lock of honey yellow hair from her eyes, she watched hints of her grandmothers scarf flow in the breeze, always just up the hill a ways.
"Grandma!" She called. "Hey! It's me, Anna! Wait up!"
She never imagined her grandmother could move with such smooth speed. Arthritic joints could not possibly allow her grandmother to move with such silent momentum. Bewildered, Anna trotted up the wooded hill behind her grandma and continued to call out to her.
When her grandmother vanished from sight once more, Anna fought to hike up the side of the small hill and paused at the small radius of the top. Glancing around, she found herself alone in the cool breeze looking down upon the little village below.
Quiet alone.
"Grandma?" She called quietly.
A long silence was penetrated by a breathy sigh behind her.
Whipping around, Anna was met with a blast of icy air to her face and a sight that rent her blood freezing in her veins. In the shadow of the great mountain set in the background was… Louis. Two sly green eyes bore into hers, a sharp angled face, dark raven black hair- it was Louis… Dressed in some renaissance looking outfit of green and black, a cross between ancient and acutely modern fashion.
"Louis?" She asked, breathless and suddenly feeling quite vulnerable.
"I'm afraid that's not my name," He smirked, eyes like burning green embers as he took a slow, calculated step towards her.
"Than who are you?" She demanded, holding her ground and watching his grin deepen at her response.
"I'm hurt you don't remember me." He stated, coolly shrugging off her command. "You were nine years old at the time, such a precious little thing… Your mother was gardening in your front yard, your little sister in her play pen. You were watching lady bugs as they crawled up your palms. You chased one into the street and if I hadn't… If I hadn't caught you in time…"
His face turned suddenly grim, his eyes far away and misty. She swore she saw a shudder ripple through him.
"But you were safe soon enough," He continued, the playful smirk making its appearance once more, "You'll always be safe, with me."
Anna felt her heart begin to race, her palms slick with a cool sweat. She felt her throat furiously fight to push forth the words past dry lips.
"Who are you?" She asked again, her feet shifting over the ground slightly, no more than a twitch.
He seemed familiar. Not in the sense of seeing an old friend from childhood, but in a way that was almost primal. Like the way an owl loses its mate and immediately knows its life has come to an end. It was an instinctive remembrance.
He noted this, her skittish contemplation of escape, and before she could blink his smooth, angular face was inches from her own. Crouched slightly to come nose to nose with her, his breath smelt of cool winter green… perhaps some sort of mint…
"You're familiar with your Norse Mythology." His mouth twisted into an infernal smirk, teeth flashing surrealistic white, cool breath reaching her skin. "You tell me."
Backing away slightly, she felt the rocky earth beneath her heel give way and she splayed out her arms in an attempt to steady herself. It was too late, as her flailing limbs would not be enough to balance herself. She was going to tumble over the small cliff and most likely break her neck, rolling down that steep incline. Wide eyed, she blindly gazed up into the man's flashing green eyes.
Suddenly an inhumanly cold pressure appeared at the small of her back. Finding herself pulled back to the safety of the hill top, she gripped the man's sleeve as he drew her away from the edge.
"Easy, Anna." He admonished almost… tenderly. "Don't frighten me like that."
His grip upon her was tight, but somehow faint, like in a dream when someone grabs you while in reality you hardly feel a thing.
"Get off of me!" She gasped, releasing his sleeve and raising a hand to shove him away from her.
Her hand went right through him.
He had vanished.
Like dry ice rushing towards the heavens in a great plume of whispery mist, so was he. As if he were suddenly rendered into steam, he evaporated before her bewildered eyes into a multi colored puff of smoke.
"I assure you," He was at her back abruptly, she temperature behind her swiftly declining, "I mean you no harm."
Turning on her heel, she held her hands in steady fists, ready to strike if the moment presented itself.
"A shapeshifter," She said slowly, her thoughts coming as if through a thick vat of honey, "Like Loki…"
"Yes," He smirked, though his eyes remained coolly detached as they gazed down at the village below them, almost melancholy, "just like Loki."
When his eyes returned to hers, she knew the truth in them as his sorrowful eyes flickered between her own and the illuminated necklace at the hollow of her throat.
"That's impossible." She whispered, watching him saunter towards her… like a wild cat stalking its prey. "You're not real."
"But I am." He said with a flourish of his arm towards her. "Here, touch me. See for yourself."
Backing away violently, she watched the mournful gaze of his beryl eyes turn seething hot.
"You don't trust me?" He said, more of a declarative statement than question.
"I have no reason to." Anna replied, turning as he paced in one great arc around her. "Why are you here?"
There, she watched, his smirk returned. "The course of true love never did run smooth."
Anna blanched. What on earth was this… this thing going on about? As she lilted her head to the side, a habit of her confusion, she watched the shadow of sorrow create a thin film over his eyes once more. He laughed bitterly, making her cringe.
"Why am I here?" He repeated quietly, his voice changing tempo. "The soldier's lot requires far journeys; send his girl, the zealous lover will follow her anywhere. He'll cross the glowering mountains, the rivers swollen with storm; he'll tread a pathway through the heaped-up snows; and never whine of raging Eurus when he sets sail or wait for stars propitious for his voyage."
As he recited this, Anna watched the flurry of emotions pass over his… this Loki's features. Passion, the likes of which Anna had never seen before, splayed across his fervent lips as he spoke, his brows lifting with a dreamlike grace, his hands trembling with near imperceptivity. But what froze her breath in her lungs was watching the intense mourning, the grief within his glistening green eyes.
When he had thoroughly finished, Anna took a deep breath and felt her slender, pink nails bite little half moons into her palms.
"Anna," He said her name, caressed in the softest of sighs, "I've waited a Millennia for you."
"You're insane." She whispered, trembling with the instinctual fear that pervaded her senses.
Yes, from fear, she thought. The torturous shudder than rippled through her was from fear…
"Aren't all the Gods?" He asked playfully, his eyes lighting up tremendously before they steadily grew weary once more. "I have waited such a long time to find you, Sigyn. And I won't be taking no for an answer again."
Approaching her like a feral cat closing in upon a frightened mouse, his emerald leer held her captive, hypnotized. Anna bit her lip in an effort to remain calm, placid; an image of indifference to this beryl-eyed maniac.
"Anna, I can give you anything you desire." He went on, stretching his long, slender fingers towards her neck. "Jewelry, perhaps? A different precious stone for each hour of the day, in colors you've never dreamt of. Literature, maybe? The library of Asgard is most abundant. One can get lost for days in the archives. Flowers? I'll give you a garden filled with fragrances and rarities untouched by mankind. I'll give you anything… just yield to me, Anna."
The pad of his elegant index finger caressed the smooth oval of her moonstone and she gasped. With a burst of illumination, her pendant jolted her with a surge of electricity. It was not as painful as a shock of static, but still powerful enough to draw the breath from her lips in one rushed exhale.
She watched the almost mad elation light up those emerald green orbs as he lowered his arm, the sensation of electricity evaporating. Struggling for words, Anna knew from the look of zealous adoration in his eyes that no was indeed not an option.
"Give me time," She felt herself splutter quietly as he bent down to the earth beneath them, "I-I need time to think."
She watched his long, pianist's fingers pluck a stray daisy from the ground below, sheltering it in his grasp tenderly. Standing erect, he seemed somewhat less alarming now. Absolutely still, hardly breathing, Anna watched as he slid the flower's stem over her ear. Disarmed by this almost childlike gesture, Anna felt emboldened to speak.
"I don't know you," She said, watching him eye her heated cheeks with interest, "I won't just listen to the pretty words of a complete stranger and believe everything you say. Give me time, please."
He had been slowly encroaching upon her personal space while she spoke. His lips at her ear in moments, she trembled slightly when he spoke in a smooth, velvety whisper.
"If it's time you need," He whispered, "It will be given. Just remember, Anna, you were promised to me long before your birth… And you will yield to me."
Opening her eyes, not entirely sure when she had closed them, Anna felt the blood drain from her face.
She was alone on the windy bluff.