Of Fenrir, the Wolf
It was another seven days without message. Thor had come to pick up Loki, and they went hunting with Baldur and Bragi, descending into Midgard. A light-hearted outing in good humour, Loki told them of Thor's misadventures in Utgard, including the tale of his Jötunn eel, and they spent the whole time teasing him about her. True to themselves, the Aesir had no idea of the significance of the magic they'd witnessed; they only laughed at the trickery performed on the greatest, loudest and most pompous of them.
Loki's decisiveness to proceed with his plan became stronger by the day. That good mood he'd felt ever since reassuring himself he was different from Skadi held sway, gave him energy. And so, with Sigyn gone, the Vanir due any day, and the Alfödr still away from his keep, Loki packed the bracelet made of spring carefully into a leather bag, next to a Svartalfar crystal light, and called a horse to him. Something slow and heavy started coiling in his stomach the moment he descended his mountain. It was between excitement and stage fright, and this time stronger than ever. Every step seemed like he was pushing through some infernal muck with the rest of the swamp simultaneously pressuring him forward.
Loki went out through the gates of Asgard and into the endless open fields surrounding it. These fields would forever hold any traveller close to the gates of the city no matter how much they rode, for they led nowhere. Or more precisely, they led into the not-worlds, just as the steppes of the Outlands did. Of course, these golden fields were enchanted to stop the unsuspecting from wandering off into the strange, or, for that matter, the strange from wandering into the unsuspecting. Utgarda, on the other hand, enjoyed his shapes in the mist, keeping himself exposed to the unformed. In Loki's opinion, an open wound waiting to fester.
Loki forced the horse into a wild dash over the golden terrain, closing his eyes and spreading his hands midway through the run. The horse's hooves thundered beneath him, his thighs burned as he strained to stay mounted. The wind whipped his hair back, made his clothes snap like angry flags. Loki concentrated only on how the air slipped through his fingers, imagining it water, than sand. Time stretched while what he imagined became more real to him than what his senses had been telling him was truly there. Fooling his own body, there was a moment in which he could not remember where he was, where he was going or even who he was, and when he opened his eyes, he was in the not-worlds once more. The sky was purple and the sun a light orange-yellow, near the horizon and strangely large. The earth beneath him was black and was shifting to form all the designs he'd drawn as ideas for Sigyn's bracelet. He smiled, slowing the confused horse and petting its sweaty neck for comfort. It would be a short ride today if he managed to keep his thoughts so light and unpolluted.
Only the clouds that followed him were the shape of a giant, black wolf, and throwing stones that never hit him. This was Fenrir, present in Loki's mind like a constant judge, and his father was travelling to see him.
Loki stretched his back and visualised the entrance into the cave that hid the Wolf. He felt the whipping wind that gushed between the rocks, the low, thorny plants that came in from either side to trip up the feet of horses and scratch the faces of their riders raw. He saw the black rip in the mountain face where the steep cavern was, the sharp stones coming up from the bedrock like teeth framing it, and just like that, he was there.
As he felt his horse's hooves hit real ground, Loki warped space around the pair of them so that Heimdall would not be able to spy them. He did this out of habit; Heimdall could not look into Fenrir's cave, no matter how much he may have wanted to do so, and so whatever he told his son beneath Gjöll was private. But Loki did not want to disclose when or how often he visited him. This was, after all, none of Heimdall's business, even if the man thought on occasion to make it so. He dismounted and bid the horse stand perfectly still, protected from sight.
No one ever came here, not ever the wild beasts. Not unless they meant to come, and very few would venture into the Wolf's cave. The moss at the entrance to the cave was undisturbed for so long it had grown all around and inside it like a thick carpet. Loki went down the slippery steps, lower and lower until the cave became warm again. There was light at the end of the staircase, low and waning, illuminating a high-ceilinged hall, and Loki took out his Svartalfar crystal, casting sharper shadows on the uneven, glistening walls. Gjöll, the river, stemmed from Gjöll, the rock, both the impossible remnants of the Elder World, and the water seeping over the walls of the cave cast eerie reflections. If one looked at them long enough, one might almost believe they were memories. Loki could hear something stir in the depths of the cave and his coiling excitement made him swoon.
"Father?" said Fenrir just before Loki came into view. "I did not expect you-"
Loki did not wait for Fenrir to finish his sentence. He vaulted across the moss-covered floor and caught his son's head in his hands. He had thought of what to say and how to say it, but all the words went out of his head. He felt Fenrir's fur, his strong jaw, the fetters cutting into his flesh, and whispered, "Fenrir! I have found a way to free you."
"What?"
"No, listen," Loki shushed him, memorizing the wolf's face with his hands. "I have found a way to give you a body outside of yourself. So that you would inhabit not only this one, but another at the same time, and through your will control it."
"Another body?" asked Fenrir, confused, finally getting Loki to stop fretting and look him in the eyes.
"Yes! One that would be free to go wherever you will it to go."
"Free to…" started Fenrir cautiously. "Just go?"
"Out of this place," Loki gestured wildly. "Away from your bonds!"
Fenrir waited for the echo to die down before saying, in that uncompromising way so particular to his mother, "That is not freedom, father."
Loki hissed dismissively at Fenrir's finer points. "Freedom is not as gaudy a thing as you would imagine it! It is walking, and talking, and eating."
There was a low growl. "You would tell me that walking, talking and eating are what I miss the most?"
Loki sat back on his knees to observe his bound son. Gleipnir, as thin as a ribbon and shinning like fish scales, bit into his muscles. Fenrir claimed to have gotten used to it, but every time Loki saw the bonds, he felt himself bleed. No, he was wrong to have forgotten his words, because there was one important thing to say first, one without which they could not proceed. Loki gathered his wits.
"Fenrir…" he said carefully, "If I can do this, and I do not yet know whether I can, but if I can do this… will you promise me to indulge in no sort of revenge?"
"Start no wars?" Fenrir mocked.
"That too," nodded Loki. "If I can do this, will you promise not to even speak your name aloud?"
"To hide in another body? Like a rat?" snarled the proudest of Loki's children. Then his anger was slowly replaced by consideration. "Does Hangatyr know of this plan?"
"No," Loki admitted, looking Fenrir in the eyes. "Nobody knows."
"I see," said Fenrir, white teeth flashing between black lips, glistening with challenge. "And why is that?"
Loki sighed, smiling wistfully. "I cannot really tell you."
"You do not trust that he would approve?"
As usual, the Wolf bit straight to the bone. "I have no idea what he would do," Loki shrugged. "Fenrir, if I can do this, promise me."
"You feign indifference to what the Sigfödr would do?"
"I feign nothing, and I am far from indifferent. Promise me."
"And if I do not promise? Then you would not do it?" Fenrir tested but Loki only looked on into his clear amber-coloured eyes. They have peered through this fake light for such a long time Loki would have expected them to become clouded with that milky foil of blindness, for no matter how purely the Dwarves distilled illumination, they would only ever be able to create this moonlike glow, better than fire only because it was steady and cool. They would never recreate the sun itself. The way it warmed the back, the way it smelled on the ground, the way it shone in the hair of someone you loved.
After a while, Loki only whispered, "Firstborn, promise."
Fenrir lowered his head. "On my blood, I promise."
"Thank you," said Loki, embracing him, playing with his large, soft ears the way Fenrir would never admit he liked.
"Have you gone to your other children with this proposal yet?" Fenrir asked, uncharacteristically patient with Loki's ministrations.
"Not yet. I would try it out on you first."
"Oh, joy," he snorted.
Loki laughed. "Have faith, wolf cub. It has been suggested that I know what I'm doing."
Fenrir snipped at Loki's ankle playfully in retaliation for being called a cub even now when he would have towered over his father, almost twice Loki's height, if he'd been able to prop himself on his hind legs. Loki chuckled and arranged himself at Fenrir's side, cushioned against his ribs and rocked gently by the wolf's deep breathing.
"But this is new magic?" Fenrir asked, trying to gain his bearing. Loki and Angrboda had not taught their children the elder arts, perhaps out of belated caution, and so Fenrir's question was only words overheard around the dining table.
"Oh, it's old, very old indeed, I suspect," Loki said in a low voice. "But new to me."
Fenrir gave another cynical grunt. "I didn't think there was anything new to you and Mother."
"Plenty, little one," Loki said, arching his head to look at his son's face. "Did you think us so vain to assume we know all that there was to know?"
"Not vain. Just that knowledgeable."
"If that were so…" Loki sighed when he remembered his other, lesser gift for his son. "I have visited your mother recently. And Hel, of course. Which reminds me…"
He took out the shimmering bracelet, digging it out of his pouch with not quite as much pomp and circumstance as he'd hoped to achieve. But the bracelet spoke for itself, its gentle magic working in this mossy, forlorn place just as it had in Eljudnir.
"What is that?" asked Fenrir, and even he in all his cynicism couldn't keep the awe from his voice.
"Leftovers. I'd made a necklace for Hel, crafted from spring. This is a nugget of that alchemy," answered Loki, turning the bracelet in his hand for Fenrir's inspection. It came out rather well, he thought, the faces of the little wolves lifelike and expressive.
"You made a necklace?" said Fenrir while Loki attached the bracelet to his wrist. The playful sneer in Fenrir's deep voice was unmistakeable.
"Don't needle me. Yes, I made a necklace."
"And how did that come out?" Fenrir snickered.
"Not bad, I don't think," Loki shrugged but then added. "Of course, Ivaldi would have found fault with it. Ivaldi would have found fault with Freya's pussy."
"Is it that good then?" Fenrir laughed.
"Without a doubt, wolf cub."
"I meant the necklace, old man."
"No, you didn't," Loki leered at his son before they both settled back into each other.
"Ivaldi…" said Fenrir pensively after a while. "Tell me again how you came to be an apprentice at Ivaldi's workshop."
"Fenrir, I've told you that one at least a thousand times," Loki grunted.
"Come now, you love telling it," Fenrir said, shaking his side to rock Loki's head. "I always thought it was supposed to be the mother who tells the stories to the children."
Loki snorted. "Your mother had mastered many things to be sure. But storytelling was not one. I won't tell you about Ivaldi again, but I will tell you two new ones. And you can say it's news, not stories, so you don't have to feel like such a childish twat."
"And you don't have to feel like such a fucking woman," Fenrir retorted.
"Well, now, that's sort of the point," said Loki contentedly and began telling his greatest, most fearsome son the story of Thor's engagement, then their humiliation and trials in Utgard until the cave echoed with Fenrir's deep, booming laughter. The Wolf ached for stories, just like any lonely man, and Loki felt more confident in his plan than ever. If only Odin could see him like this: just a son sharing conversation with his father. The moss around them became animal skins, the rock face, a deep forest and Gjöll, suspended above then and leaking water, the starry skies. They may have been two hunters returning to feed their family, two traders travelling to another town to sell their produce.
Fenrir was prostrate on one side, still giggling inanely. It sounded strange coming from such a tremendously big wolf. Loki lay happily warmed by the fur on his belly, head rested on Fenrir's chest.
Fenrir said, "There is one thing I would ask you. Ivaldi-"
"Fenrir, for the love of fuck! I'm not going to tell you-"
"No, old man, let me speak," Fenrir stopped Loki's exasperated outburst. "I had always wondered… you could have gone anywhere, learned any sort of craft, but you decided to go to the Svartalfar. Why?"
Loki raised his eyebrows and thought about his reply. "Because I knew it would annoy my father no end." Fenrir chuckled. Loki considered the true answer.
"Because I meant to make the study of magic my endeavour, and their magic was, and largely remains, unknown, yet everybody swears by it. Aesir don't use magic in the sense Jötnar use it, and besides, I didn't think to go to the archenemies back in those days," he said, to which the two of them exchanged ironic snorts before Loki went on, "Vanir magic… I would stay well away from Vanir magic. And the humans didn't have anything to teach me. At least not anything I was eager to learn. So in a sense, it was a logical choice. Why ask?"
"Hm," pondered Fenrir. "I do not use magic. And if I wanted to annoy my father, I have better ways of doing it. So not exactly the reasoning I could apply."
"To what?"
"I wondered where I should go…" Fenrir said, staring into the crystal light, his voice almost shy. "In my faux body."
"That depends on what you'd like to do with your time," Loki answered gently.
"Now, don't get me wrong, you're not coming with me and sitting on my shoulder, are we clear!" Fenrir grumbled at him.
"Very well," mumbled Loki when an idea struck him and he had to chuckle. O, yes! That would be wonderful indeed. "You can take care of yourself. But would you agree to a guide?"
"A spy," Fenrir tested him again.
"No, on the contrary," Loki sighed heavily, rubbing his face. "He's about as likely to do as I ask as you are."
"Who?" Fenrir asked.
Loki laughed to himself some more. "I'll see if I can arrange it. It will be a surprise."
"I do not share my father's flare for the unknown," Fenrir stated flatly.
"No, but you inherited your mother's no-bullshit attitude," Loki commented, rubbing Fenrir's long jaw lazily. "I would suggest you let him take you on his travels around Midgard, work your way from there."
"Very well," Fenrir agreed. Loki nodded contentedly. He had lost all sense of time in this cave but it was surely nearing sunset in the outside world. It was time he started back for Asgard and Fenrir knew it. Loki checked that the bracelet was comfortably attached to the Wolf's foot, ignoring the shimmering length of Gleipnir. Then he lowered himself and kissed his son on the forehead. Fenrir grumbled, but let him do it.
Loki whispered to him, "I will return with your freedom."
"Such as it is," commented Fenrir.
"Never satisfied, Firstborn," Loki chuckled, ruffled Fenrir's ears and took the old, worn light crystal from its niche, replacing it with the one he'd brought with him.
"Father," he heard Fenrir say and turned at the bottom of the steps but Fenrir seemed unable to say anything more, as if he'd forgotten how to form words. Loki knew, therefore, what the words had to be.
"You are very welcome, my Fenrir," Loki said and ascended the stairs, heart light, his purpose clear.
He found the horse where he'd left it, if shivering slightly, and led it by the reigns to climb up the very rock face. Unbidden, ideas came into his mind, fantasies of a time to come, a wild procession of possible futures. He knew he would have to reign in his imagination for the trip back into Asgard, otherwise he would relive every scenario in subjectively stretched time until he finally ran out of them. And Loki had always been very imaginative. This was the peril of the non-worlds. Men have aged inside them beyond their physical bodies to the point that, once they had finally found their way back into the world, they did so only to fall dead from exhaustion. That is, if they even found the way back. Old wisdom dictated therefore that one's mind should be clear before venturing into non-worlds, and called for hours of preparation. Of course, no one heeded the warning. Instead, people made up their own ways to instantly focus their minds on a single task. Loki mounted the horse once he'd gone up a sufficiently long way. There was a stretch of grey stone in front of them, almost like a road in the rock face, and going on for a good while but cut off abruptly where the mountain ended in a cliff. Perfect really.
Loki invaded the horse's will and made the abstracted animal run. The acceleration was almost enough to break its muscles. The horse frothed at the mouth, its terrified mind helpless to stop the leap off the cliff. For a while, it seemed they were suspended in the air while forward momentum fought gravity, but then Loki and the horse dropped downwards, wind howling around them. If he thought about the reality for even a moment longer, it may be too late. They might crash on the jagged stones beneath, stuck in Gjöll. But Loki was practiced at this, and the ground that came to meet them was not ground after all. The horse touched down gently into some sort of mist, buried to its flanks into it. Loki extended his hand, laughing, and found it was the consistency of Fenrir's fur. He did not release the horse's will, so that the animal could not panic and wonder off into its own imaginings, having been transferred yet again into a new and unconnected landscape. The two of them passed through this field of fur and feathers for only a few moments before Loki reimagined the walls of Asgard and they were once again standing in front of the city.
The sun tiptoed on the other side of the mountains now, glowing orange and caressing their snowy tips. Loki could tell it had been the warmest day yet as spring gave way to summer, and was glad he'd spent it away from his empty house where he might have gone restless with the heat and humidity.
Beyond the high, white walls, he could only see the tip of Hlidskjalf and could see its gallery was closed. Odin was not back yet. Whether Frey and Njörd were, Loki could not tell but there was something in the sounds of the city to suggest a bustle, like a beehive, so perhaps the Vanir have returned. Loki rode in, and through to the very centre of the city, even though he was not usually want to. On one of the wide streets running between mead halls he saw Hnossa, Freya's only child, walking around dreamily with charming trickles of hair falling out to tease her neck. She seemed to be entirely involved in tracing the geometry of the paving slabs and only noticed him when he steered the horse by her and tapped her on the head playfully.
"Oh, hello," she smiled.
"Is your uncle back, little Hnossa?" Loki asked her, dismounting.
"Yes, just this morning," she said and looked in the direction she had wondered from, in which lay Frey's hall. "He is strange."
"Strange, Hnossa?" Loki inquired unsure whether this was a general statement about her mother's brother or a comment on Frey's current mood.
"Hm," she nodded, eyes distant, then looked at him and said, "You smell of cold, Loki Skywalker."
"Do I?"
Hnossa bent over and stuck her nose into Loki's clothes. He laughed while she sniffed.
"Oh," said Hnossa. "You've been to see your son, haven't you?"
Loki stiffened. "Why do you say that?" he said with a titillating chuckle.
"Moss, and mist, and wolf," she listed the smells. "I guessed. How was he?"
"He was well," he told her. Hnossa was born long after the binding of Fenrir. She must have heard only the standard stories of the ravenous, vengeful Wolf, and these must have been somewhat alien and meaningless to her for she only nodded at Loki's response, as if the topic was nothing taboo.
"I am glad," she said and waved her goodbyes. Loki watched her stroll away, confused and a bit alarmed. Freya's daughter was, of course, pretty. She could not but be pretty, but there was none of her mother's sensuality about her. Even her innocence was only ever innocent, and not a coy invitation to defile her. She was contemplative rather than witty, and while she seemed to enjoy observing the people around her, she was little tempted to engage them beyond that. It was not shyness, but a meticulous academism that lurked behind her large, blue eyes. Loki sometimes caught himself thinking about her in almost the same way he thought about Hel. Hnossa inspired respect and protectiveness, and in turn she bestowed upon him her timid calm and careful affection. Still he never forgot that Hnossa was the beloved of Heimdall, the only person for whom he seemed to open that iron cast mouth of his and, according to legend at least, smile. It felt right that the man who could not be bribed would fall for the woman who did not know how to seduce.
After all of his caution, she may have been right now on her way to tell the Toll Taker all about the visit Loki had tried to conceal from him. Yet Loki's good mood did not dwindle. He crossed the city on foot, taking some food along the way to sate his empty stomach and stop it from rumbling. At the foot of his mountain he again let the horse leave and ascended the stairs. The sun was still beating down on this side, making the shadows long and sharp, warming Loki's neck. He came up all the way to the garden and only then noticed a figure standing there, obviously having just made the climb themselves. Sigyn massaged her neck, outlined by the sunset, her parcels and other luggage on the lawn around her as she contemplated her herbs. Quietly, Loki set down his armful of bread, apples, butter, cheese and bacon on the head of one of his petrified Dwarves. There was a good chance the ants would get at it all there. Sigyn would scold him for it. But only later.
Loki snuck up to his wife with all the stealth of a big cat and wrestled her onto soft, warm grass. She almost elbowed him in the head before realizing who he was.
"Y-," she exclaimed but Loki kissed her. Her skin was bronzed and tender from its exposure to the sun, flaking, rough to the touch. Her hair was stuck in salt-hardened tresses where it was long, and curled tightly, messily, from the sea water where it was shorter. She smelled of sweat, stone and salt, and her palms were calloused, nails broken from climbing the Southern rocks. She was as completely perfect as she had ever been.
They made love in the garden, right on the edge of it, and afterwards sat in the grass, naked, sharing the meal Loki had brought. They laughed like children. They threw pieces of food for the other to catch with their mouths, or lined them up on their bodies to lap up. Loki teased Sigyn for the tan lines crisscrossing her back. She pointed out the line of his pants had had the same effect which somehow led him to moon the city beneath them like a drunken idiot while Sigyn guffawed in the grass. With the stars coming out to fleck the light blue sky, Sigyn warmed the water and the two of them squeezed into a hot bath, wife nested against husband.
Loki picked up the comb and started gently untangling Sigyn's wet hair, however her knots held, as stubborn as sailor's knots frustrating his efforts until they got him cursing and Sigyn laughing at his misery.
"Oh, for fuck-, where were you, woman?" he said, splashing some of their bath water into her eyes.
Sigyn laughed, neck extended all the way back. "Down to the Sunken Mountains."
Loki grumbled. "You know I don't like it when you go that near to Muspelheim."
"I know it."
Loki sighed. Yes, she was just as stubborn as any other woman, if not a million times more. "It's not safe," he told her, as he'd told her on countless occasions, managing to eek another strand of her hair free of the knot.
"The rains were falling all over the South this year," Sigyn said as if that explained it. She meant that her precious roots, seeds, grasses and herbs were blessed with a particularly rich year and thus lost some of their potency, so she had to hunt for them further to the south, all the way to the islands that once were mountains, where fishermen-pirates, both human and Jötunn, made their secret harbours and caches, safe havens between their raids of the oceans around the worlds.
It was a place of stone, salt and sea. It was Farbauti's realm and also one of those mysterious places Loki supposed were home.
"Still," Loki insisted, "I don't want you going that far South."
"If I hadn't been that far South, we would never have met in the first place," Sigyn stated.
"And I don't want you meeting anybody else down there," he told her nuzzling her breasts frivolously while she giggled. "Who knows what villains you'd come across! And then what would you do?"
"As I remember, husband," Sigyn said in a very flat voice. "The one villain I met there, I very nearly cut his throat."
Loki snickered, rubbing his neck. "Very nearly. I remembered it the other day."
"Oh, I would have you remember it every day," Sigyn crooned spinning around in the tub, brush, knots and the Sunken Mountains momentarily forgotten, lost among playful embraces.
Afterwards, they lay in bed talking, animal skins thrown around the floor for the night was warm, pregnant with coming rain. While the mischievous zephyrs rustled her now dry and mostly untangled hair, Sigyn told Loki of her trip, of the people in Midgard she'd helped, studied. Loki listened, happy to have her next to him, filling him with peace as she always did. With her eyelids closing, he whispered to her, "I've been to see Fenrir."
"Was he well?" Sigyn asked, even more automatically and normally than Hnossa had done.
"He was as always," Loki said and then purged the momentary bitterness by saying, "In good spirits."
"Did you remember to bring him a lamp?" Sigyn inquired practically.
"I did, wife," Loki told her, chuckling softly.
"You should have told me. I could have made him the tincture for the bonds, to soften the calluses."
"He was fine."
"That's what boys always say," Sigyn snorted. Loki breathed a laugh into her shoulder, giving up.
"Do you think the Alfödr would ever let him loose?" she asked softly.
Loki closed his eyes and breathed in deeply. "I think so," he said honestly. "Today I think so."
"Good. Think so tomorrow as well."
"You like me in a good mood, wife?" he asked with a lascivious chuckle.
He could guess Sigyn rolled her eyes even with her face turned in the darkness. "That is not the point," she replied. "As you think it, the day draws nearer."
"Does it now?" he laughed.
"Of course," Sigyn said, entirely serious and matter-of-fact. "It is the first law of cause and effect. The smallest action governs the ultimate outcome, and every action is the product of a thought. Some thought," she said, wriggling her fingers. "Any thought changes everything."
Loki contented himself to kiss Sigyn's neck, memorizing her words. Apparently, both of his wives have of late taken to teaching him about causality. Who was he to disagree with their combined womanly wisdom?
"I will think it," he told her and pressed her closer to his chest, allowing her to drift to sleep.
She understood. She understood that if he only changed one thing: Fenrir's anger, Hel's solitude, Jörmungand's madness, then everything else had to fall into place. Maybe this was the hope of a blind man in the mist, trying desperately to avoid that one drop of blood that Angrboda had spoken of, but in this stumble at least Loki was led by a sight clearer than any his eyes could provide, or the eyes of any seer. Sigyn understood because she understood how a single thought could change the world. And when all of this worked out, the Alfödr would understand as well.
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.