And Baby Makes Three

That was the understatement of the century, now that I think back on it. For I had
absolutely no experience with children of any kind. And I sure as blazes wasn't going to use
my own childhood as a model. The only things I knew about them were from watching
mortals tend their kids, namely that you fed it when it cried, cleaned it when it needed it, and
held it until it slept.

"Ava, do you know anything about babies?" I asked, hoping to be let off the hook.

"No, Master. Not a thing. Us Nisses don't have babies like this. We are born from
acorns, mostly grown."

Wonderful. I almost asked her if there was an acorn big enough for me to shove this
baby in. I checked the impulse, because it was hardly the kid's fault that whoever had left
her here didn't know that I was a mere man alone.

"Master, where did she come from?"

"The moon," I muttered, removing more of the rabbit skins, since it was very warm
in the kitchen by the hearth, which is where I'd put the basket.

"Really? How'd she get there?"

"It's an expression, Ava!" I groaned. Nisses. They can be so literal. "Look, go and
make some tea and porridge, okay? I'm hungry and so is she, from the way she's howling."

For the baby was crying, those harsh feed-me-right-blasted-now wails that every
mother has heard ten hundred times. I winced and shook the basket gently.

"Hey, sweetheart, no need to scream," I purred, using my best gentle tone and giving
her my infallible smile that made all the women sigh.

She could have cared less. Her little face was beet red now and she sounded like
a roomful of scalded cats.

Ava had her hands over her ears. "Master, make her stop!"

"How?" I snapped. "Odin's bloody eye, I don't know what she eats."

"Milk," the Nis panted. "Babies drink milk from their mother's, uh, breasts."

"Oh, great! That helps a lot. What do you suggest I do? Grow a pair?"

"How am I supposed to know!" Ava wailed over the baby's cries. "I just clean
houses. I don't know nothing about no mortal or Aesir babies."

Think, Loki, I ordered myself. Short of going up to Valhalla and hauling out Frigga
to nurse this baby, what can you do? The obvious answer was sitting in front of me in a pail.
Olga's milk was plenty nourishing. It was good enough for me, it would be good enough for
this baby. "Ava, go up to my tower and fetch me a small glass bottle and a pair of calfskin
gloves," I ordered. "Hurry! She's getting worse."

Olga's teat, but how could something so small scream so loud? They could probably
hear her all the way in Midgard. I tried to hush her without success by giving her my finger
to gnaw on. She sucked on it for about two seconds, got nothing, and spat it out. Then she
gave me a look of utter bewilderment and screamed her lungs out.

Ava returned with the items I'd requested in a flash, and I set about rigging a bottle.
I'd done this once before for orphan lambs, if it worked for them it should for a baby. I
filled the glass bottle with warm milk and fastened the makeshift nipple on it, sealing it with
a soft word of magic. There!

Then I picked up the baby, who squirmed and howled even more in my arms. "Settle
down," I told her sternly, and cradled her inexpertly in the crook of my arm. Now, how had
all the mortal women I'd seen do this? I wondered, propping her little head with its
screaming mouth on my arm and letting my hand cradle her bottom. Which was wet, I
realized with a grimace. Ah, hells. First things first. I stuck the bottle in her little mouth
and wonder of wonders, she shut up and began to suck.

Ava and I breathed twin sighs of relief.

"What kind of idiot leaves a baby on my doorstep?" I wondered as the baby drank.
"Don't they know I've got no wife?"

Actually, I've a pretty good idea who it was that put her there, but I've got no proof,
so I won't bother to mention names.

The baby was guzzling the milk like there was no tomorrow and I wondered how
long it'd been since someone had fed her. From the way she went at the bottle it looked like
a week. I had no idea how old she was, though she didn't look as small as some of the
newborn mortal children I'd observed. She was plump with rosy skin and a soft cap of blond
down on her head. I had her wrapped in a rabbit skin, but underneath it she was dressed in
a very soft little tunic. Clearly someone had taken time to weave this for her, so she hadn't
always been neglected.

Abruptly she spat out the nipple and began to cry again. I tried giving her the bottle
again, but she turned her head away and howled. "Now what's wrong?" I demanded. I tried
to recall what, if anything, I'd seen mothers do with crying babies. I recalled seeing them
holding the baby on their shoulder and patting the kid on the back. I shrugged and tried it.
Almost instantly I was rewarded with a huge burp.

"Guess I can't blame you for crying," I said, rubbing her back again. She hiccuped
a bit and burped again. "Feel better now?"

She gurgled softly, and I fed her the remainder of the bottle, burping her afterwards.

Then I had to change her, and I set about doing so with haste, wiping her with warm
water and a soft cloth, then wrapping her little bottom in a clean white cloth that was inside
the basket. She squirmed a bit under my clueless handling, but eventually I got everything
back on and had settled her in my arms. I found a small piece of parchment in the bottom
of the basket and I opened it and read it eagerly, hoping it would tell me where I could take
the little mite.

By the time I'd finished it I was in a red-faced seething temper, and spitting every
swear word I'd ever learned.

Here is what the letter said.

My name is Helga. No one wants me. Please take me in, I'm an orphan without any
family. Thank you.

That was it. No I'm so sorry, could you take my baby, just her name and the words
no one wants me and the fact that she was an orphan. Reading that paper made my head
ache.

I took another look at the sleeping baby. She could have been anyone's child, from
a humble servant to a prince's by blow. She was probably half-Vanir or Aesir, I couldn't tell
which. She was also, I sensed this instinctively, half-mortal. Which was why, no doubt,
she'd been abandoned. Whichever parent was an immortal had probably decided against
raising a weak half-mortal child and had thought it was easier to just throw her to the
wolves. Plus, she was a girl, and most of the randy Aesir of my acquaintance wanted
nothing to do with a daughter. They thought girls were nothing but a burden. All they cared
about was raising big strong sons that could lift whole oxen on their shoulders and drink,
fight, and wench all day and night. Spare me, please! Where did they think sons would
come from if there were no women, I ask you? Maybe from acorns. It wouldn't surprise me.

Worse than even that was the fact that she was Gifted. Like me, she had magic in
her veins. Small as she was, I could sense the power in her. A magician always knows
another of his kind. Had her unknown parents known that? Was that why they'd dumped
her here? Because they wanted nothing to do with a witch-child?

Half-Aesir witch brat. I could hear Hefrin speaking those words as if it were
yesterday. It made me as angry now as it did then. More, if you want the truth. For here
was yet another half-bred child of magic, unwanted and abandoned. Just the way I had been.

I closed my eyes, trying to shut out the dark memories of my childhood, but they
came flooding back with vivid clarity, and they tore open my heart the same way they'd
done then. "Not again," I heard myself growling. "Never again!"

"Never again what?" came Ava's plaintive query from the hearth where she was
making oatmeal.

"Never again will a child be treated the way I was," I finished softly. "Not if I can
help it. We have no choice, my friend. No one wants her. It says so right here," I thrust the
parchment under Ava's nose.

"Does that mean what I think it does?" the Nis squeaked, flashing me a look of
astonishment.

"Uh huh. It means we're keeping her." I stared down at her and smiled. "You won't
ever be Nobody's Daughter, little one. From now on you're mine."

"Helga Lokisdotter," Ava sang.

"No. Not Helga. She's not keeping the name they gave her." I said firmly. "They
don't deserve to name a child after they've cast her out to die. I'm calling her Belle. It
means beautiful in French. Look at her, Ava. Isn't she beautiful?"

"Oh, yes. As beautiful as the stars of summer."

I kissed the baby gently on the forehead. "So then. I rename you Belle Laufey Lokisdotter.
And you'll never want for anything ever, that I promise you. I'll be both mother and father
to you, child. And may the Norns help us both."

Belle was unimpressed by my declaration, remaining sleeping through it. That didn't
matter. I had made a promise and I would keep it. It was the most important promise I had
ever made. I only prayed I'd never regret it. I needn't have worried. For despite all the
times my daughter has made me want to pull out my hair or throttle her, I never regretted
making that vow. Not once. For I loved her like my own flesh and blood.

That said, I placed her back inside her basket, which would act as her cradle till I
could make her a real one. Then I began to eat my long-awaited breakfast.

Stupid dumbass idiots, I thought angrily as I ate, glancing at the basket from time to
time. How could they just give away a poor thing like her, as if she was nothing, like a piece
of trash? How? She's healthy and adorable, how could anyone NOT want her? Thor's
Beard, but all she did was look at me and I fell in love with her. Me, the Trickster! The Thief
of Asgard. How's that for irony?

It would have been funny if anyone else had told me about it. But I didn't feel like
laughing. I felt like crying. Poor little thing. Nobody gave a damn about you, did they?
Only that was wrong. Because I did. I cared very much. And I didn't even know why.

* * * * * *
I'd thought my routine wouldn't change much with this new arrival. I must have been
drunk. Because Belle's arrival changed everything. For the first time in my life I was
responsible for someone other than myself. It was damn exhausting. She woke me up in the
middle of the night because she was wet and then again some two to three hours later
because she was hungry. I learned to sleep in quick snatches, like a cat, one ear always
tuned to where her cradle rested near my bed. I also learned to make a bottle ahead of time
so I could feed her at midnight before she woke up half of Asgard screaming.

Ava saved my sanity many times during those first weeks, helping me change her and
make clothes for her and all the other thousand things a new parent has to learn to do. She
loved Belle as much as I did, and she would watch her for me when I had to leave to go to
Valhalla to trade for things, and steal others when I felt like it.

How my Aesir companions howled when they learned I was now the parent of a
foundling. "Feed me, Mama!" Tyr mocked, prancing about holding a doll to his breast.
"I'm hungwy!"

"Why aren't you wearing a skirt and a shawl today, Loki?" Thor snickered into his
beard.

"Why aren't you?" I shot back, bristling. "You looked pretty tempting in a veil and
a corset last time, your hair all curled and perfumed, when we went to fetch your hammer
from the giants. Or don't you remember that, Thora darling?" I simpered and fluttered my
lashes at him.

"I did not!" he blustered, getting even redder. It's always bothered him when I refer
to that little escapade, he thinks the fact he had to disguise himself as a woman to get into
the giants' stronghold is demeaning. I don't know what the big deal is. Men's clothes,
women's clothes, they're just clothes. Underneath you're the same as always.

"Oh yes, you did, sweetheart! I was there. And all those hairy giants were drooling
over your shapely backside and your lovely calf eyes! Strong as an ox and stupid too, just
the way we like 'em!" I grunted, imitating one of the giants at the wedding feast.

"You calling me dumb?" growled the Thunder Lord.

"As an ass," I sneered, my temper sparking. Then I brayed like a donkey. "Go home,
Thor. Your husband's calling."

The others roared with laughter. Thor went beet red and clenched both fists. "Shut
up, Loki!"

"Make me, jackass!" I cried recklessly, and deliberately wiggled my rump at him.
"C'mon, little donkey, kick me."

Thor swung his foot, but I was prepared for him and I sprang up and somersaulted
behind him, landing neatly on both feet. Then I conjured a switch and smacked him across
his big fat backside. "Naughty donkey!" I scolded. "You shouldn't kick your master," I
sang.

Thor roared and spun about. "Loki, when I catch you . . .!"

"Which will be never!" I laughed, and tapped him on the leg with the switch before
I was away, dancing right across the table, grinning my signature grin.

"Want to hear a song, fellows?" I called, doing flips in and out of the mead pitchers.
"Once there was a little jackass and his name was Thor . . .Hee haw hee haw!"

Thor was knocking everything off the table by then, trying his damndest to hit me.
I, meanwhile, had no trouble avoiding him, he was as slow as molasses. I was like a flash
of light, now on the table, now under it, singing my newly made-up verse with all the fire
of an epic. And the other Aesir were laughing their heads off.

Thor, the stupid bully, was still trying to grab me, even though he might as well have
tried to cage the wind. "Had enough, O Prince of Asses?" I jeered, whacking him again
across the rump. I couldn't resist, it was such a tempting target.

He swung at me and missed. "I'll be asking you that soon enough, Loki, when you
tire of that squalling brat and dump her back out in the snow where she belongs," the
Thunder God growled.

"What did you say?" I hissed, my voice gone deadly soft. Around me, the others quit
laughing and grew still, eyeing me warily. For I was not amused.

"You heard me. She's nothing but some Vanir's bastard, why should we care what
happens to her? You'll see in a month or so, and let the wolves have her like you should
have done in the first place."

I slammed him in the jaw. I was so furious I didn't bother to pull my blow, and in
fact I augmented it with magic. Thor flew through the air and smashed right through the
wall of the hall. I followed, in a red-faced fury. "Never say that again about my daughter,
you stupid bastard! You hear me?" I screamed at the dazed Lord of Thunder. "Or so help
me, I'll tear off your head and shove it up your ass."

Somehow my hands were about his throat and I think I would have strangled the big
idiot if Tyr and Baldur hadn't dragged me off him. I fought them like a madman until Odin
shouted, "Loki, get hold of yourself!"

Then I was calm again, the fury within me quenched. "You can let me go now," I
said to the other immortals. They did, staring at me as if they'd never seen me before. I had
never lost my temper like that before. I had always prided myself on my cool head. But I
found my control was next to nothing when my baby was insulted.

"I think you broke his jaw," murmured Modi accusingly.

"Good. Maybe next time he'll learn when to shut up," I snapped, then I strode away
from the hall trailing blue and silver sparks. I was still seething. The nerve of that bumbling
oaf, saying I should have let the wolves have her! I was very nearly sick at the thought. My
precious Belle, food for wolves? Not while I have breath in my body.

I vowed then and there to have nothing more to do with my relatives. From now on
they could cure their own hangovers and indigestion. And fix their own stupid cuts and
bruises. I was disowning them completely. Let them go whining to Gird or one of the other
giantesses for potions and bandages.

I would never forgive them for that terrible insult. And I knew the rest of them
thought what Thor was stupid enough to say aloud. I could read their minds and I knew they
regarded my daughter as little better than a thrall because she, like me, was an orphan.

I cursed them all the way back to my house.

And I didn't speak to any of them again for three years.

So, what did you think of Loki's new addition? The poor guy's so clueless, he has NO idea what he's in for! *chuckles wickedly*