Of Helheim and Loki's First Wife
He travelled the scenery between worlds, his horse trotting slowly and lazily for Loki knew that on these roads you would reach your destination no sooner if you moved faster towards it. The not-worlds would unfold at their own pace, at a speed which had no bearing on time. Distance too was a figment of the imagination, depending fully on how far the traveller himself felt one place was in relation to another. In the end, both time and distance varied with respect to the traveller's mood, and the trip was a long one today for Loki's mind was unfocused and burdened with complex thoughts. The lands between worlds were ancient and treacherous. It was easy to lose the way there, digging deeper and deeper into oneself.
Loki willed himself to gather his senses and soon the scenery bent to his will, fading slowly around the edges until, at the next blink of the eye, he found himself in the serene, eternal twilight of Helheim. Mountains towered over each side of the road bathed in the crisp air of young winter. The ever-present mists were forming on the hills, ready to roll down. Every day in Helheim was the slow progress from the crystalline chills of early winter, through its roaring winds and snow, to the black silence of the night awaiting spring that would never come. It was a representation of the first time, of the world formed from the mist and ice, before there were ever any to inhabit it.
The chilled air found crevices in his clothes, ways around the collar he'd pulled up, and between the belts holding his jacket in place. Loki frowned at the wind and folded his hands to warm them. The horse knew the way because Loki knew it, and continued to obediently walk in that same relaxed pace, oblivious to its rider's musings.
Loki heard a quiet shifting behind him like the whisper of fur against the stones and moss. He was being stalked. He was not in the mood. Helheim was home to many outcasts who were tough enough to live there, but not tough enough to carve a place for themselves anywhere else. These creatures, mostly wretched and despised, swore allegiance to Hel in return for a free living, but their loyalty did not extend far enough for them to show courtesy to Hel's guests. Anyone on the road to Eljudnir was expected to fend for themselves. Loki halted his horse and waited for his stalkers to come around to face him. Two shadowy figures, neither men nor bears, came out to stand in front of him. They were cursed creatures, human or Jötunn or something else, who have dabbled with things they could not handle. Much like they were doing now.
The bear-men and Loki looked at each other for a while, until the fiercer one of the two spoke, "Traveller, I have the right to claim the flesh! Give me your horse or we take both of you." His speech was rendered slurred by the over-large fangs in a mouth not meant for them, and by the intense, urgent hunger nestled in his throat.
Loki said nothing but continued glaring at them. The smaller bear-man squinted at him then suddenly turned to his companion. "Leave this one."
The other did not budge, desperation driving him on. "Give me the animal!"
"Leave this one, I tell you. It is Hel Father, the Skywalker!" said the smaller one, patting the leader on the shoulder fretfully.
"You should listen to your friend," Loki said. "I would not walk today."
Swatting his comrade's hand away the big one shouted, "The animal! Or gold!"
"Leave it," insisted the cautious one.
"It is our right!"
Loki sighed. "What would you do with gold in Helheim, bearling? Besides, I carry none."
"The horse then!" shouted the big one.
"No," said Loki.
"Then I claim it, and your life!" growled the first bear-beast and, mad from the drug that had made him what he was, charged Loki, quickly closing the distance between them in two powerful bounds. His friend had but a split second to think what to do, and, opting for loyalty, ran at the rock face to launch himself off of it and find Loki's flank. They were fast and coordinated but it was not enough. Out of thin air, Loki drew Laevateinn and cleaved the first berserker in half before the second even managed his jump. As the smarter one was turning in the air, he realized his mistake. A horrifyingly peaceful expression appeared on his deformed face. Loki's blade caught him under the chin and took his head clean off.
They were so starved of food and drink that their blood trickled dark and thick like batter. Loki wiped Laevateinn on some moss and ordered his horse to a trot. The wind brought heavy, large snowflakes that froze in contact with the dead earth and stone by the time Loki could see Eljudnir. It was covered in mist, standing alone above the Precipice of the World, with black water of Gjöll trickling to either side of it. Even embraced by the gigantic mountains, it was impressive. The house of all the souls who did not die good deaths. Murderers, traitors, deceivers, but also cowards, renegers, oath-breakers, and most importantly, those who died as adversaries of Asgard, or killed by Aesir hands – all were enclosed into the numberless, windowless rooms of that keep, with Hel their mistress. This was the bargain he had struck with Odin.
Loki reached the bridge into Eljudnir and nodded to Modgud, the bridge-keeper and solitary guard of the keep itself.
"Master Laufeyjarson," Modgud said with a shallow bow at him from her seated position on a rock next to the bridge. Large, calloused hands were rested lightly on her sheathed sword. "It has been a long time. The mistress will be pleased."
"Yes, Modgud," said Loki, producing a smile for her and riding out onto Gjallarbru. Modgud was by far the largest, tallest, most muscled woman he had ever met and he thought that perhaps her clothes would have fit Thor just fine. Then again, Modgud, his daughter's own Modgud, only ever wore armour. Her flat, wide face belittled the intelligence of her dark brown eyes, but Loki knew it to be there, along with a fierce devotion to her duty. It was not that anyone would ever think to invade Helheim but some have tried to take back loved ones, what is to say those rare ones to end up in Hel who were loved by someone or other while they were still alive. Modgud would stop them at the bridge over Gjöll.
There had also been those, heroic, demented, who rode into Helheim to take Hel herself. Those Modgud would let cross for those who thought to take Hel were all taken by her, and so their imprudent wish was fulfilled.
Loki dismounted and left the horse to take shelter from the wind as best it could. The doors of Eljudnir opened for him and he went inside. A wide corridor of silver and granite led to Hel's hall. He found her waiting for him, standing next to her throne. She had her mother's jet black hair, straight, silky and long, and her father's dark eyes, but there was something soft about her features which was absent from both her parents' faces. Her complexion was deathly pale, tinted blue like that of a frozen corpse, but Loki only had eyes for her careful, bashful smile which lit up her whole face. His only daughter. What man would not think his only daughter beautiful even if she didn't have those delicate hands, or those lovely, pouty lips, or that proud forehead?
"Hel," he said to her catching her head between his hands. Hel inclined her face upwards and they kissed on the lips, long and slow, the way he knew she liked to be kissed. "My Hel," he whispered to her as she smiled. "Show me your mother."
Hel nodded and led her father through a passage behind her seat into the chambers of the most precious dead. It was a short walk before Hel stopped in front of a door, unnumbered and identical to so many others. It opened for her, as it would only open for her, and Loki went in.
The woman lying on a bed of wolf skins was tall, dark haired and sinewy. Her features were perhaps a bit angular, a bit strong but by no means unattractive. Even in her death-sleep there was a slight frown on her face, as if she was in deep thought. Loki remembered that expression from the thousands of mornings he'd woken up next to her.
He kneeled at the head of the bed and whispered in the North tongue, "Angrboda was your name. I am Loki. I was your husband. I am the father of your children. Give me a moment of your eternity."
It was like watching a woman falling asleep in reverse. Angrboda's perfectly still features infused with light and consciousness, and she took a sharp breath with lungs that hadn't known air in years. Her eyes opened cautiously, blinking at the suffused light that was pooling from the very walls.
"Why do you wake me?" she asked once she found her voice. Carefully, she pulled herself up to sit against the headboard. Her body was so unused to moving it seemed to have forgotten how to do it, and Angrboda had to look at every limb as she manipulated it into position.
"I need your council," said Loki and took a seat on a tall-backed chair laid out for him, drinking in the sight of her. "And I do miss speaking in the mother tongue."
"Humph," Angrboda snorted and waited for the real reason.
Loki sighed, a distant expression on his face. "I need to let my mind trickle out, to see it reflected in another person, see if I can make sense of it."
"And you cannot do this with your wife?" Angrboda asked.
"I am doing it with my wife," Loki answered.
"Your Asynja lay," said Angrboda lightly.
She wasn't being cruel and she wasn't being obtuse. It was just her way of reminding him how much he missed her. Loki supposed she wanted to be sure he still did and so he never responded to the taunts. After all, in Angrboda's private opinion marrying Sigyn was akin to treason for any number of reasons, and none of them had anything to do with base jealousy. Yet she kept those accusations to herself today.
"I know what she would say if I told her what I want to tell you," he mouthed. "But you have always been the bigger mystery. The complete mystery."
"Only to you," said Angrboda somewhat distractedly.
"What do you mean?"
"Never mind," she shook her head. "What have you come to tell me?"
Loki sunk deeper into his chair, the excitement and joy flushing away from his face. He collected his thoughts. He would tell her everything and he wanted to tell it truthfully.
"It is a dream. I dream of the End Time."
Angrboda nodded heavily. "What do you dream?"
Loki closed his eyes and started speaking very slowly, "I could be anywhere, dreaming anything, when I smell smoke, and my fingertips feel numb. Like when they are scolded or frozen, and the blood is just coursing back." As he said it, he could feel it and rubbed his fingertips sheepishly.
"Wherever I was in the dream until then, it turns into a dead place and I slowly go down on my knees. Behind me I can hear a noise. I think it is buzzing; then I think it may be a waterfall. As if it is water breaking on the rocks. Then I think, no, it's too metallic, perhaps it is a forge. But as I listen, I realize it is the battle. End Time is behind me."
Loki swallowed. His legs felt cold, as if he'd truly sunk into frosty black mud. "I do not turn to look at it, because I stare ahead," he said, not daring to open his eyes and see Angrboda's face. "I see our sons. Jörmungand is coiled around me, as small as when he'd been born. He convulses once, twice and goes still as I look at him. Out of my focus, I can see the Hammer Wielder, face down on the ground. Or I hold Fenrir, and he is already dead, and I know Grimnir weakened him, only to die inside, and his son finished the work. And I feel… rage. Angrboda, I feel fury."
"This is the end of your dream?" he heard his wife ask.
Loki hesitated, but he'd made up his mind to tell her everything. Eyes shut, he licked his dry lips. "No. Because I kneel there and become once more aware of the battle behind me. The anger makes me stand and I turn to look but before I can see I wake up." He corrected himself, "I wake myself up."
"You run from the vision?" Angrboda asked.
Loki shook his head. "I… don't know. I-, maybe," he stuttered. "Yes. I do not want to know it."
"Why not?"
Finally opening his eyes, Loki found his wife perched at the foot of her bed, observing him meticulously. He gave her an exhausted, almost sardonic smirk. "I do not want to know whom I fight."
"Are you afraid who your opponent may be?" Angrboda asked sharply.
"You misunderstand me. I do not want to know… with whom, against whom I fight."
"Oh," his wife said, her eyebrows easing out of their knot for the first time.
"Angrboda," Loki said in a harassed whisper. "I do not want to know which it will be. Will I be true to my blood oath, or to my blood?"
"I see," she said considering his words. "Both are cruel betrayals."
Loki smiled weakly. "You think one more so than the other."
Angrboda nodded. "I do."
"Let us not have that debate today."
"Very well," she matched his faltering smile. "I am not entirely insensitive to your..."
"My sensibilities?" Loki suggested.
"Your delusions," Angrboda concluded, experimentally stretching her back.
"Hmm," Loki laughed through his nose. He extended a hand towards her. "Come here, wife."
"Those words you can use on your wife," Angrboda said without the smallest trace of humour.
Loki relented. "Come here, my oldest teacher. I miss your harshness."
"My harshness?" she snorted but gripped his hand and got up to her feet. Her two steps were insecure but determined and she seated herself on his lap in a very controlled, graceful way.
"You are a monolith, Iron-bred," Loki mumbled, combing her hair over one shoulder to expose her long neck. He pressed his fingers into it and Angrboda gave a satisfied mumble, almost like a low purr. "I can never have a full grasp of you."
She laughed in that way specific to her, ringing and haughty. "Am I such an unknown?"
"To me you are."
"I am transparent to all others," Angrboda said leaning further back to catch his hands.
"Impossible."
"Oh, but yes. I have always been. You had made me so."
"I don't remember having ever made you do anything," Loki commented and was rewarded with another crystalline laugh.
"You have made me simple, Loki," said Angrboda and leaning all the way into him. Loki made room for her on the chair and they relaxed there, her legs over his, his hand around her waist, rust-red hair tangling into black. "Everything I do, and all my dark mystery, it only ever baffles you who are the cause of it. Everybody else sees me for what I am."
"What is that?" Loki asked.
"Yours," said Angrboda simply. She was not the type of woman who demanded poetry, neither was she the type who freely gave it away in a thousand tattered phrases, worn from overuse. She made simple statements, asked the necessary question and gave straightforward answers. This was her honesty. Still, Loki felt a surge of male possessiveness and kissed her shoulder, cradling her hip in his hand.
"Your dream," Angrboda said watching him closely.
"My dream?" he prompted.
"Does it feel prophetic?"
"Seeing how I never get to the prophetic part… Shall we just call it a nightmare for the time?"
Angrboda smirked but remained serious. "I will think on it. But perhaps you are wise not to have turned. I would have."
"Would you have?" Loki quirked his head.
"I think so. And whatever I would have seen there, I would not have liked it."
"Indeed," Loki said darkly. "Yet there may come a time when I will feel that anger, when I will have to make that choice."
Angrboda contemplated a while. "There may yet. But when, if, it does you would know what choice is the right one for you."
"How can you be sure?"
"Because, my love, Ragnarök could not start without you having made it," she said softly. "And you would never make it unless you wanted to."
"I wanted to?" Loki frowned. "I do not want to."
"Not today, not tomorrow, not in a lifetime, and maybe never. But if you ever do want to make it, you will know which one to make. It is a simple tautology."
"Hmm," murmured Loki, burying his face in Angrboda's hair while she played lazily with the fingers of his hand. She smelled of the night, or at least she did in his mind, calming and refreshing him.
Her simple tautology was disconcerting, but also strangely comforting. That he would choose Ragnarök seemed an insane thing indeed, but that without his choice it could not begin rang somehow true. He had been playing the fence between Asgard and Vanaheim on one side, and Jötunheim and Muspelheim on the other for centuries. They had come close to total war several times, twice even through his own efforts, but Loki had always laboured to settle the matter. He had so far been successful, and had brought the world back from where it had been teetering on the brink of damnation. In the future he knew there would be plenty more of hot-headed Aesir to contend with, or young, teething Jötunn who would try out their bite. As long as he did not make up his mind to go either way, perhaps he would be able to contain every one of these expeditions into ruination.
"Oh, there's another thing," Loki mumbled after a while. "I may have to go see Uncle."
"Oh?" said Angrboda, voice filled with surprise and almost girlish glee. "What possessed you?"
"I know you like how he takes the piss out of me, but that's really no reason to rub it in," he told her.
"Rub it in? I was just wondering why?" she said innocently.
"Simple reason, the one you're going to scoff at, is that the Alfödr asked me to," he said and predictably she scoffed. "The more complicated reason… Do you remember Thrym?"
Angrboda pouted her lips, trying to recall what was to her a name from another life.
"You know, the tall, dark-haired one, son of that guy…" Loki said, finding he could not call to memory the name of Thrym's late father. "The tall, dark-haired one."
"Oh, yes," Angrboda nodded. "Who married that one, what was her name?"
"Hadda," Loki growled. "I am told."
Angrboda raised an eyebrow and folded her knees over the side of the chair, looking for a more comfortable position. "Hadda, that's right. I gather she is still as much of a bitch as I remember her being."
"Older, but just as much of a bitch. In any case, Hadda's little boy, Thrym, had stolen Mjölnir and-"
"Stolen the Hammer?" Angrboda put in immediately.
"You are quick," Loki smirked. "Stolen and bound it."
"How?" she asked, aghast.
"How he'd stolen it, I have no idea. Thor won't say, not under the pain of death. As to how he bound it, well that's the point isn't it?" Loki mumbled, twining his fingers with Angrboda's. "It seems it wasn't him that did it, anyway. Hadda got her hands on a collection of brass leaflets, forty or more. You see where this is going?"
He could tell she did, for her face was growing darker by the moment.
"Well, the obvious place she might have gotten them from is Utgard. To use the Alfödr's words, it suggests itself."
Angrboda got up from Loki's lap to pace once around the small room, slow and steady just like her thoughts. Loki settled into the chair, feet up over the hand rest. It could be mere minutes, it could be hours, but Angrboda would not be disturbed in her thinking.
"Utgarda would not have given the Old Script to just anybody," Angrboda spoke after a while. "He is not that irresponsible."
"I am not so sure," Loki said.
"I am," she said making another circle around the room before bursting out, "The Runes are not playthings! How could anyone be so fucking stupid to use them without knowing the first thing about what they do or how they work? Where does that type of hubris even come from?"
"Ignorance," Loki suggested. "Greed. Or desperation. Take your pick." He thought briefly of the berserkers he'd killed on the way to Eljudnir.
"Ignorance, hah!" Angrboda spat each word like they were bile. "Hadda is one of that ilk who would carve out their own children to make steps upwards, never mind kissing arse and spreading her fucking legs! Acting on base impulse, selfish and near-sighted, that bitch, whatever cunt gave her the leaflets, all of you!"
"All of us?" Loki inquired.
"Ah, yes, well you are the champion of playing the dangerous game!" she said with a sardonic grimace on her face.
He frowned. "Never with the Old Script, never with the Elder Magic. You have taught me well."
"On that account, maybe! But look at everything else you've done, what you're doing. You and Grimnir are messing with things you have no grasp of."
"We are trying to prevent them!" Loki protested, getting up.
"You are two blind men tiptoeing in the mist, and the next step might take you over the fucking edge! There is no older magic than causality, Loki, and no stranger law. And it cannot be wielded!"
"I do not seek to wield causality-"
"You would steer the future! What the fuck do you call that?"
"Hope," whispered Loki. "Will."
Angrboda stared at him, eyes harsh and the colour of a glacier. "Terror."
"Defiance in the face of it."
"Hubris."
"So you would have me lie down for it? Let it all happen?" Loki shouted. "Woman, how could you expect that I would know what I know and take it?"
"What do you know?" Angrboda hissed. "A drop of blood in the ocean."
"I know that there is a future in which everything I knows implodes in onto itself! I know there is a time in which I watch my children slaughter and get slaughtered!"
"There is that future," she nodded, voice harsh and low. "What is the way to it? Where is it you are steering?"
"Away!"
"And into what?"
Loki realized he had her hard by the shoulders. Her numb body couldn't feel it completely but he knew it was hard enough to bruise. He did not lessen the grip. "What do you care?" he snarled. "You crawled into death."
She glared at him until they both got their breathing under control. Then she closed her eyes, and he exhaled the anger in his chest. Their foreheads met midway.
"I thought we weren't going to discuss my delusions today," Loki breathed.
"We are not going to," she said, seeking out his face with her hands. "You are right, and you are wrong at the same time. Either choice damns you."
"You said I would make the choice when I want to. Without it, nothing will come of this blood drop."
"So guard yourself from wanting to make it. I do not know what else to tell you. The world works like alchemy: it does what it does, and sometimes what we ask it to do, but we are not sure how. And certainly not why."
"Time, heat and pressure," Loki whispered with a smile. "I have missed your temper, Iron-born."
Angrboda chuckled, rocking them back and forth gently. "I have not. We fought like cats and dogs, you and I, didn't we?"
"We made up like cats and dogs later."
"You always had a taste for volatile women. I am surprised to hear your Asynja is so docile."
"So everybody seems to think," Loki said pensively. "I would not call her docile."
"What would you call her?"
"I don't really know, but I know she is like you in all the relevant ways, wife. Patient, wise. Beautiful," he said, brushing Angrboda's hair back so that it fell over his hands, locked around the small of her back. "Mine."
Angrboda straightened to look him in the eyes. Her face was uncharacteristically soft, almost pleading and Loki gave her all of his attention immediately.
"I did not leave you," she said. "I left noise and terror and pain." Her voice was tired and he realized just how much she had been leaning into him.
"But you did, my breath. You left me too." He said it with no bitterness, only the honest, empty sadness he had grown to acknowledge lived in his heart, and learned to cohabit it with. He led her to the bed and arranged them there, knowing that this was her limit and she would go back to her sleep.
Head on his shoulder, and her black hair spread out around them like the wing of a raven, he could tell she was thinking many things at the same time and so he let her think. It hurt him that he would have to leave her, like it hurt every time, not because she would be asleep in a windowless room, locked in without dreams, but because he knew he would have to go out into the world full of windows and views without her. Full of worries. And worrisome dreams.
It was a selfish pain, but then again Loki was a selfish man.
She had taught him to use the Runes; together they had become masters of the Elder Magic, and once, when they were still quite young, and he was not the blood brother of the Hanging God, they'd gathered to themselves an army, great enough to threaten Asgard's reign.
Loki's timing was perfect. Right after the war Asgard had fought with the Vanir both their strengths were depleted, and the truce between the two peoples was young and unstable. And there he was, wife and eldest son at his side, along with a multitude of Jötnar from both of their realms, united, organized and eager to get rid of the foreign rule that had been oppressing them since time was created.
He was even then fully aware that he was not their leader. As he'd told Thor, the Jötnar didn't have kings, they did not accept authority. They bowed to power and bent to leadership just like any other race, but the reason Loki had succeeded in persuading them to all point in the same direction for a change was mainly their hate for the Aesir who would rule them. Loki and Angrboda had given the Jötnar pride, and demanded only that they stop their petty squabbling for the moment. That, and a few key faces present in their camp was enough: they had a force that could defeat the Aesir in any battle. But not win the war. Loki was very aware of that fact.
So was, it turned out, Odin. Loki had delivered his ultimatum to Asgard personally. With Angrboda waiting in Jötunheim, ready to cross the river with all the rage of the North, and Fenrir waiting in the South to take the Muspell warriors into the city which was at that time not yet protected by the wall, he sat down with the Alfödr for three full days. At that time, of course, the Alfödr was to him not the Alfödr at all, but the Father Slayer as the Jötnar called him.
They started by being civil to each other, then by insulting each other in the politest ways possible. Then they went on to try to bribe each other, Odin offering to Loki rule over this or that, Loki offering power-objects in Jötunn possession. On the second day all the niceties were over with and they spent the night threatening each other, attempting to incite the other into giving away their strategy. Finally, dawn of the last day, Odin asked Loki what he wanted for the Jötnar. Loki answered he wanted only self-rule; he wanted the Aesir warriors to stop breaching borders, stop trying to overtake the Jötunn lands, raping its women and stealing its riches. If Odin could provide that there would be no war.
Without a single word, Odin drew his dagger, cut his wrist and put the blade on the table in front of Loki. Loki remembered being so surprised he could barely think. In a daze, he cut his own wrist, almost down to the bone, and offered it to the Alfödr. Odin bound their hands together with a silver chain he had around his neck, the same one he later bestowed on Loki with the iron tablet hanging from it. The blood they'd spilt onto the table they both fashioned into Runes with each of their names, and thus the blood oath was sworn, and Odin and Loki were brothers.
Nobody, not even Loki, knew to this day exactly how he had managed to persuade the Jötnar to leave the battlefield. It was by all accounts a much bigger miracle than assembling them in the first place. Angrboda had understood that they had no power to win and keep winning against the Aesir, and even if they had done she would not have supported total war. Thus, through her efforts also what might have as well become Ragnarök was averted that day. Vaguely, he remembered that they'd used logic, argument, reason, and where those failed: trickery, bribery and threats, all in a hyperactive horror, but whatever the case, the mighty army, the greatest Jötunn army ever gathered, was dispersed that same day.
Odin kept true to his word. Jötnar had self-rule from that day on but the animosity between their peoples was never extinguished. Still, what surely started as a desperate last bid for peace became one of the most powerful bonds Loki could boast. Even while they were negotiating as enemies, Loki had to admit Odin had won him over. Angrboda said he had always liked volatile women. Well, it would seem he had always liked cunning, ruthless men. Their true friendship started much later, with the blood bond already in place. But the attraction was there from the first meeting.
Angrboda did not approve of Loki's growing fascination with the Aesir and their cat-and-dog fighting grew ever more explosive. Nevertheless, it was Angrboda again, saying she had seen enough and would sleep, who was the reason Loki had gone behind Odin's back and almost caused Ragnarök a second time.
In the present, Loki realized she had gone still and stiff. He held his dead wife in silence for a while longer. "I have wandered off," he whispered to her.
"You will wander back," she murmured, barely audibly, like with her last breath.
"Sleep, Angrboda. I will wander back." He kissed her lightly on both eyelids and slipped from beneath her. He walked to the door without turning to look at her again. Hel was waiting for him and walked in front to lead him into her room, pretending not to have noticed the red lining of his eyes. It was a meaningless courtesy for Hel was Eljudnir and knew everything that went on in it. Nevertheless he was grateful to her for it, as he was when moments later she pushed a glass of strong wormwood brandy into his hand.
Loki sipped the brandy and thought of the conversation he'd had. Hel waited patiently until he finished the drink. Outside, a whirlwind of snow and ice was ramming into Hel's windows – the only room in Eljudnir to have them. Loki was not quite sure about the view: it looked into the edge of Gjöll, as it fell off into Ginunnga Gap but Hel seemed not to mind looking into the edge of the world.
"Thank you, my Hel," he said to her when she took his glass.
"You are troubled, father," she spoke. Her voice was light, almost shy, and nothing like her mother's.
Loki smiled. "Passing worries."
"They are not."
"The mystery is constant, but the worries are passing," he told her. "Tomorrow I will laugh at myself. No, one was enough," he said when Hel went to refill his glass. "But I have a present for you."
He reached into his jacket to feel for a small parcel of fine velvet. He walked over to Hel, opening it. Suddenly, the room smelled of cantaloupes and warm rain. The transformation was immediate and incredible; Loki could hardly believe it himself. In Asgard, where it actually was spring, it could never achieve the brilliance it did here, in eternal, misty winter.
Carefully, he picked up the silvery jumble of chains and interwoven shapes: trees bearing fruit, rivers flowing between them, vines laden with young leaves forming triketra-knots and binding everything together. It was not the most complicated design, but at least there were no unseemly gaps or messy connections. It flowed fairly well, as Ivaldi would say. But the real magic was the metal, and the little gems with their smells, their heat and their life, like little beating hearts in amber, green and red. Hel gasped and braved to touch it.
"It is woven from a spring day," Loki explained, overjoyed to see Hel lean over to smell it, to bashfully touch the leafing branches of one little tree. She lifted her eyes to him and smiled like a little girl. Then, brushing her hair away, she turned to let him attach it around her neck. Obligingly, he did and watched her unable to stop running her fingers over the metallic surface, craning her neck to see it.
"It suits you," he told her before she could sprain a vertebrae.
"Thank you," said Hel.
He nodded, warm despite the hailstorm he had to walk into. "I must away. Kiss me, my Hel."
Hel enveloped her father's head in her tiny hands, much more alive now thanks to the alchemy of the necklace, and they shared another slow kiss. Loki held her thinking of nothing but the feel of her little body, so incredibly fragile for one of such fearsome power, and imagining nothing but the good things he wanted for her, all the good things she deserved. "I will come again as soon as I can," he promised and touched his lips to her forehead.
They walked back into the hall, Loki refastening his jacket tighter around himself, when suddenly Hel spoke again. "Father."
"Yes?"
Hel hesitated, looking him in the eyes with those big black orbs so like his own. She was troubled but he could not tell why. "There is a woman who was known to me," she said slowly. "But who took her thoughts away with her. Three times she unbound herself from me."
Loki frowned. "What woman?"
"Gullveig, a daughter of man. The speaker of dreams."
"Yes?"
"I remember wishing to own her thoughts for you, but I cannot remember why. I do not know where she is. But perhaps you should find her."
Loki nodded that he understood and went out into the cold to see if his horse was still alive.
Gjöll: One of the great rivers of Norse cosmology; flows though Helheim. Also the name of the stone Fenrir is bound to.
Gjallarbru: Bridge over Gjöll
Asynja: Name for the Goddesses of Asgard (as opposed to Aesir, which is the collective for all the gods and goddesses; the male gods are As)
Grimnir: "Hooded one"; kenning for Odin, used most often when other races, especially the Jotnar, speak of him.
All the dramatic episodes and characters here are copyright of traditional Scandinavian and Icelandic tales, as found in the Poetic and Prose Edda, and some other sources. However, some are reinterpreted or changed slightly to suit my dark purpose. I encourage any of you who are interested in what the original story might have been, or how it pertains to what I have written here, to either ask me directly or research online.
Having said that, it shouldn't matter too much whether or not you are an expert on Norse mythology or not; everything gets explained eventually. I hope.
Except in some cases in which an alternate spelling is more common, I use John Lindow's guide to Norse mythology for names of people and places.
