Notes: In which Loki considers theology, of a sort, and begins to formulate plans of action. Meanwhile, Annie continues to be conflicted, and pets have certain things on common regardless of their vital status. This chapter was supposed to encompass the events of the next one as well, but it turned out longer than I expected. Which I guess should not have been a surprise, since it's me…
Warnings:Loki's musings on Midgardian religious practices are probably a little blasphemous, but made in sincere innocence. Also, angst. Have I mentioned that before? I'm pretty sure it won't last forever.
Chapter Four
Ordinarily, Loki did not remember his dreams. Indeed, most nights he thought he did not dream at all. George had once told him that was unlikely, since "everyone" dreams, whether they recall them or not. Loki had retorted that the "everyone" of whom George spoke actually encompassed "current and former humans," which of course Loki was not. (What Loki actually was, of course, was a matter of some ongoing confusion to him, but that was irrelevant in the present context.)
Regardless, Tuesday night was an exception to his general rule. Loki woke in the middle of the night, having kicked off all his covers and nearly fallen out of bed. He scrabbled for the bedside table and switched on his reading lamp. The striped bedspread and heavy quilt were hanging off the side of the bed, one of his pillows had already landed on the floor. The kittens, Philip and Elizabeth, who ordinarily slept with him, were sitting on the mat beside the bed looking very offended. Loki could hardly blame them: it could not have been enjoyable, to be awakened by what amounted to an earthquake, and perhaps propelled to the floor besides.
"I do apologize," he whispered, reaching down to rearrange his covers and retrieve his pillow. This he propped behind his back with its fellow, so that he could sit up against the headboard. Then he took a deep breath and composed himself. Elizabeth promptly levitated onto the bed, followed by her brother, and the two kittens marched up the covers to their accustomed spot in the centre of Loki's chest.
"This may eventually become a problem, when you are both grown-up cats," Loki informed his two little friends. "Unless you are willing to take turns." Philip cast a look of innocence upon him, while Elizabeth settled down with her chin resting on her brother's hip. "Well, you can discuss that when the time comes," Loki concluded, edged further down under the covers, trying not to disturb the kittens, and considered the amount of space left on the bed. There was sufficient room for a small ghostly dog, if she was willing to curl up down by his feet.
The shreds of his dream still clung uncomfortably. Loki remembered being either very small or else in a very deep hole, looking up and trying to shield his face as someone- he could not see who- shoveled dirt down upon him. In the dream he had been on the edge of panic, although now he was awake Loki could see that was hardly a practical method of burying someone alive. He could easily have climbed on the dirt as it piled up, until it reached the lip of the hole, and so escaped. If one was serious about the task, one would tie the victim up, or perhaps place him in a box with a sturdy lid-
"And that," he said, aloud, "is more than enough of that." He needed to distract himself, having no desire to fall back into the same unpleasant dream- or worse, a better-organized version in which he really would end up buried alive.
Although surely Annie would send someone to rescue him. Because of course Annie had been in the dream as well, peeking down over the side of the hole and looking concerned.
But then she had walked away, hand in hand with Owen.
The thing was, Loki had no idea what Owen looked like.
And so, in the dream, Owen looked exactly like Colin Firth.
As he recalled that detail, Loki's sense of humour suddenly came to his rescue. The next thing he knew, he was clutching a double handful of the bedcovers to his mouth, muffling snorts of more-than-slightly hysterical laughter. Philip and Elizabeth clung to the bedclothes and gazed at him indignantly- it really was amazing, how much indignation a kitten could inject into its expression- and that only made him laugh harder. He laughed so hard his eyes began to water, but as he scrubbed at them with the sheet he became aware he was crying nearly as hard as he was laughing.
It took rather a long time for Loki to compose himself, and he took pains to make as little noise as possible while he did so. He had no wish to disturb George or Mitchell, and of course Annie would be awake, because as far as he could tell, Annie never slept. Loki's door was open because of the kittens, and he did not wish for her to hear him and come to investigate.
If, of course, she felt inclined to do so.
That line of thought could only be unproductive, if not frankly painful. Suppressing one final hitching breath that might have been a giggle as easily as a sob, Loki stretched himself and gazed at the ceiling. He felt surprisingly relaxed, his outburst seeming to have relieved him of a great deal of the tension left over from the nightmare itself and the nightmarish quality of the last few hours. It occurred to him this was a good thing, that he had the outburst at a manageable level when it could be helpful to him, rather than letting it fester and be compounded for centuries, until the only way to release it was with another destructive explosion.
Really, he told himself, this had to be a cause for optimism. If he kept up his progress he might end in not bringing Ragnarok after all, no matter what the human mythology accused him of.
Possibly not a joking matter, that.
Relatively peaceful though he now felt, he was also wide-awake. Sliding his hands out from under the covers, carefully so as not to disturb the agitated kittens any more than necessary, Loki clasped his hands behind his head and gave himself over to thought. The problem of Owen he firmly set aside: it was not his to solve- and, indeed, not necessarily a problem at all, objectively speaking. That would be for Annie to decide.
Scamp, however, was undoubtedly his responsibility, and so he turned his attention toward her. He was frustrated but not yet discouraged, still fairly confident he could solve the problem and rescue her from her exile. The disappointing results of their first two attempts had made it clear that iron was not the problem. Loki tried to imagine what else could be binding her to the ruin.
The more he thought about it, the more Loki realized how little he actually knew about Midgardian sorcery. This, he thought in annoyance, was an unpardonable oversight on his part. Up until now it had not mattered overmuch, since he could work his own magic on this realm without difficulty. He had indeed found himself in conflict with Midgardian sorcerers on a couple of occasions, but on one he had been able to persuade the other enchanter to rescind her spell, while on the other the realm itself had come to his assistance.
In this case, the enchanter who cast the spell on Scamp was almost certainly long dead and gone to dust. And there was no reason to believe England would be concerned enough about the fate of one little dog to take action. It was, therefore, up to Loki to find a way around this spell.
George had described the enchantment as one intended to protect souls in the graveyard. The more Loki thought about that, the more it puzzled him. He did not pay inordinate attention to the religious practices of this realm, but one could not avoid picking up impressions and bits of information if one but paid only ordinary attention. And some of what he learned made him confused about the nature of this spell.
To begin with, Loki assumed the little church had been raised in honour of the god whose worship on this realm was so widespread that it had requirement of no other name. He would have to confirm this assumption with George. If he was correct in that, his impression was that those who worshiped this god, or God, believed it quite literally capable of anything. Believed it to be omnipotent, in fact, in addition to omniscient and omnipresent.
And if a god was all-powerful, and all-knowing, and all-present to boot… what possible requirement could it have of a demon dog to guard the souls of its departed faithful? Indeed, now he thought of it- did not the word departed indicate the faithful had moved on? Annie, in addition to his other friends, had made it clear that was the norm for humans, which was why ghosts were relatively scarce: a door appeared for you, and on you went.
And where did you go? Loki had heard references, whether in earnest or more figuratively, to a place called Heaven which was, as far as he could tell, a rather less noisy (and probably cleaner) version of Valhalla. So why would the worshipers who constructed this church, and who presumably believed in such a place, have assumed their dead comrades were left hanging around the graveyard in need of a guardian? And from what?
Loki frowned at the ceiling. No answers appeared there. He unclasped his hands and extended his right toward the bedside lamp, adjusted the shade slightly so that a glow was cast upward, and then manipulated his fingers into the position Annie had showed him months before. The crude form of a rabbit appeared on his ceiling, although owing to the friendship bracelets around his wrist, it appeared to be wearing an anthropomorphic scarf.
Loki smiled to himself, remembered the circumstances with a wince, and put the shade back as it was. Concentrate.
The god called God was not native to Britain. Loki had learned that in his first few months on the realm, during the festival of Christmas, when he had asked about the significance of the brightly-decorated trees that suddenly began to be visible in the windows of certain neighbours. George, whose religious upbringing had been in a related but somewhat older tradition, had tried to explain about borrowed customs from the earliest religion of the realm. That was where Loki had first learned the word "pagan," which he later came to understand was also applied to other gods- including, if you believed everything you read in books, himself- most of them from traditions much older in Britain than belief in this one god.
So: perhaps the business of the dog-guardian was borrowed or retained from these older beliefs. That would make the magic very old indeed, and perhaps tied up in superstition and fear. Not at all the same kind of magic as Loki's own, and not the same as the elemental magic of the place.
(Loki remembered the feeling, the protective rage of the magic as it rose from the heart of London, using him as a conduit when it drove away the alien invaders. There had been no fear in it.)
Loki shifted his position, which caused his feet to move under the covers. Apparently abandoning any plans to get to sleep tonight, Elizabeth and Philip pounced on them. (Even if Loki had not hated to be cold, he would still deem it wise to keep heavy covers on his bed.) As he watched his ferocious little friends wrestle the monsters under the bedclothes (and wiggled his feet to make the battle more exciting), Loki continued to turn the problem of Scamp over in his mind.
If she was not hemmed in by iron, perhaps she was bound by- or to- something within the grounds. Or perhaps this business of "consecration" had something to do with it: what locked Mitchell out of the churchyard might well lock Scamp within it.
Research was clearly called for. It was possible there might be a useful book in the excellent, though under-used, library of Asgard. Loki had not paid a visit there in some time- actually, not since he had been granted, or more accurately given back, the right to return any time he wished. Well, perhaps it was time to do so. Among other things, as he moved his foot again to make Elizabeth clutch it in her front paws and bite at his toes through the quilt, he suddenly found himself wanting rather badly to see his mother.
"It is decided, then. Tomorrow, after work," Loki whispered, then unclasped his hands from behind his head and reached out with his left to wiggle his fingers. The kittens abandoned his feet and charged the movement. As they came scampering up the bedspread, Loki hastily switched off the lamp and pulled the covers over his head. Tiny paws scrabbled at the edge of the quilt for a few moments, and then two little purring someones burrowed under the quilt with him, curled up into his neck, and went quiet.
He did not dream again about being buried alive.
~oOo~
Although he slept quite well for the remainder of the night, by Wednesday afternoon Loki found himself sleepy. This caused his mind to wander, and that, perhaps, was the reason that, as he tidied the library, he found himself looking at the books he was stacking on the reshelving cart rather than simply going efficiently about his work.
One of the books was a heavily illustrated guide to looking after a variety of pets. Loki could not resist the temptation to page through it for advice on the proper care of kittens. It was not that he was worried about his treatment of Elizabeth and Philip, exactly, just that… well, the more knowledge one had, the better.
As he turned the pages, however, Loki's hands suddenly went still, and he stared at a picture of a happy-looking dog in a basket, gazing up at a little boy and girl who were carrying dishes of food and water toward her.
"And why," Loki said out loud, causing the librarian to look at him in apparent concern, "did I not think of this earlier?"
~oOo~
"Loki, is that you?" Annie called from the kitchen.
"It is," Loki called back, fending off the kittens and setting down his shopping so that he could remove his jacket and hang it on the hook by the door.
Annie emerged from the other room, tilting her head on one side in curiosity. "You're home early today."
"Not very," Loki demurred. He was actually a little later than usual, but Annie was still quite distracted- she had hardly wished him a good day when he left for work this morning- so presumably she was unaware of the time. Reminding himself that he must for once be patient, Loki smiled at her and asked, "Do you know whether we have any old blankets?"
Annie frowned, but her attention was definitely captured. "I think so. No, I know so- there's an old wool one at the bottom of the linen cupboard. I used it to wrap the mirror from my chest of drawers when we were moving in."
Of course she had. There was no need to ask who "we" were. Apparently, this week Loki was utterly incapable of doing anything that did not remind Annie of her life with Owen. He could feel the smile going stiff on his lips, but Annie was looking curiously at his shopping bags and did not notice.
"What have you got there? Why do you need the blanket?"
Loki pushed the larger bag forward, and Annie crouched to peek inside. She looked up in confusion.
"Is this for Philip and Elizabeth?" she asked, glancing down at the woven-plastic pet basket in the bag. "Because I can't imagine they're going to want to stop sleeping in your bed."
Loki shook his head as he sat down on the floor. "No, it is for Scamp."
Annie looked startled. "Scamp?"
"Yes," Loki replied, and smiled at her expression. He definitely had her attention now. "I found a book at school, which discussed the needs of pet dogs and gave advice on how to care for them."
"Live pet dogs," Annie pointed out, the corners of her mouth quirking slightly.
"Well, yes," Loki admitted. "But there is no reason to believe she is aware that she is not alive. And so, since I still do not know how we will rescue her, I thought perhaps the next best thing to do, while I try to think of something, is to provide her with such comforts as a dog might appreciate. Just so she understands- as well as a dog can, at any rate- that she is no longer abandoned."
Annie looked up with a peculiar expression on her face. Loki was not sure what it meant, but for a moment he really thought she might be about to cry.
Then she scrambled to her feet. "I'll go find you that blanket."
"Thank you," Loki called after her, uncertainly.
Annie came downstairs after a moment, carrying a battered-looking grey wool blanket, handed it to Loki and then took a step backward. She suddenly seemed to be leagues away from him, almost out of his sight. Loki could not understand how it had happened or what he had done, when they had seemed to be talking normally only a moment ago.
"You know, there are boxes in the basement," Annie remarked. "You didn't have to buy her a basket."
Loki was by now incapable of determining whether her words were a rebuke or merely a statement. Lowering his eyes to his hands, he explained quietly,
"The boxes are made of cardboard, and if they were to become wet, they would be ruined. This basket should stand up well to the weather."
"I don't think she's able to feel the wet anyway," was the gentle reply from Annie, who after all would know.
Loki nodded. "But… but she would know if her bed was all turned to mush. If she has a nice sturdy basket with a blanket in it, she will… she will think she is warm and cozy." Loki was beginning to feel extremely foolish, and he could not recall ever feeling so in Annie's presence before. And he was still unable to interpret the expression on her face. He stuffed the blanket into the bag with the basket in it, put his jacket back on, and picked up both bags.
And then he tried again:
"I… after I deliver these things to Scamp, I had thought to pay a visit to Asgard. There may be a useful book in the library there. Would… perhaps you would care to accompany me?"
Annie looked at him, started to say something, and then there was the expression on her face that suggested tears were close.
"I don't think I'd be the best company right now," she said, very quietly.
"Of course," Loki replied hastily, shuffling a step toward the door. "I did not mean to… I will just… I may be rather late." Conscious that his words implied a perhaps unwarranted assumption of interest in his activities, Loki schooled his expression into an impassive mask and made another move toward the door.
Looking suddenly, bewilderingly, alarmed, Annie said quickly, "Aren't you having anything to eat before you- ?"
Loki shook his head and forced a smile, which felt dead on his lips. "I will have something there." Between courtiers, guards, servants, and visitors, the palace not only never slept, it also never seemed to stop eating. Surely he could persuade the kitchens to give him a sandwich. "I hope you... have a pleasant evening," he blurted, let himself out of the house, and fled.
~oOo~
Ordinarily, given a period of reflection, Loki was able to tell whether he had behaved badly and should be ashamed of himself. Prior to coming to Bristol, he had not always acted on that awareness- had almost never acted on it, an uncomfortable impulse toward honesty, at least to himself, compelled him to admit- but he had generally at least known it.
As he got off the bus on the other side of the river, Loki found himself not only distressed, but badly confused. He had definitely left Annie more upset than he had found her, but he was genuinely uncertain how much of that was due to anything he had done, and how much only to the situation.
He finally concluded there was little he could do except to deal with the matter of Scamp, and then try again with Annie when he returned home. He had very little idea what "trying again" would look like, but perhaps something would occur to him.
He refused to consider the possibility that after Owen's visit things would be even worse.
His crushed spirits revived a little as he walked down the path toward the ruin, and spotted Scamp standing just inside the gate. Either the ghost had sensed his approach, or she had been waiting for him. Regardless, at his approach her tail curled over her back and her eyes brightened. Loki suddenly felt some of the weight lift from his shoulders.
"Hello, Scamp," he called softly. Tail wagging, the dog spun in a circle and bounced up and down. Loki carried his bags through the gate toward the ruin, with Scamp bounding around him in a circle. Fortunately, it was almost impossible for even Loki to trip over a ghost. As he reached the open doorway, Scamp hesitated, then followed him inside.
The roof and most of the walls of the church were gone. There might never have been anything for the worshipers to sit upon, aside from the broken stone floor. But at the far end of the church a rough altar yet stood, and after a moment's hesitation, Loki approached it. Scamp did not hesitate to follow him, apparently perfectly comfortable inside the old church. She sat down at a slight distance from Loki and watched as he unpacked the bags he carried.
First, he took out the basket and set it in the safest place he could find, which was under the altar. He folded the blanket into a loose bundle and tucked it into the basket. Scamp looked interested, but gave no sign of understanding what blankets in baskets were for. Considering she had probably been bound in this comfortless place since Loki was still a boy, he supposed that was hardly surprising.
He patted the blanket, uttering a little crooning noise. Scamp stood, looked at him with the sort of deceptively intelligent expression the kittens sometimes turned upon him. Loki was quite sure his pets understood more than he thought they did, if rather less than he wanted to believe. He patted the blanket again, and Scamp stepped forward, then into the basket, where she turned herself around three times and lay down, exactly as the boarhounds of Asgard did in their kennels.
"There," he murmured, "is that not better?" Affairs of the heart might be completely beyond his ken, but this at least he could manage. Scamp's tail stirred, and she looked at him exactly as the dog in the book had looked at the children. Then she rested her chin on the edge of her basket, and watched as he opened the smaller bag and brought out a chewable bone and a fleece toy that really looked more suitable for snuggling with than chewing.
The toys were perhaps silly, but if Annie could move and manipulate objects, it seemed likely Scamp could at least imagine herself to be sharpening her teeth on a suitable toy. When he handed her the bone, she certainly seemed to perceive the purpose for it, and happily, if unproductively, gnawed on the end of it. Loki suspected a chew toy would last a very long time in the jaws of a ghost dog.
And when he brought out the red plastic ball, she was delighted to chase it for as long as Loki was willing to throw it.
He really dreaded the moment when he must leave, but this time Scamp accompanied him to the gate without visible distress, sat down in her usual place, and calmly watched him step through the opening. He blinked at her in surprise- and then he understood.
"You know now that I am coming back," he said to her. Scamp cocked her ears and wagged her tail obligingly. "It is true. I will come back, as often as it takes to free you. All right?"
Scamp wagged her tail again and watched without protest as he walked down the trail.
It was perhaps silly to ensure he was out of Scamp's sight before he went on to his next task, but Loki waited until the ruin disappeared around a bend behind him before stepping off the trail into the trees. It was also unnecessary to be physically surrounded by trees for what he had to do, but he could not deny, he appreciated the image.
World-walking was one of Loki's more useful talents, at least within the Nine Realms. It was also not one he had made use of recently. The terms of his late banishment had not specifically restricted him to Midgard, merely denied him return to Asgard. The effect, however, had been to keep him where he was: as little as he had thought he wanted to go back to the realm on which he had been raised, the other seven had held even less attraction, what with being a war criminal on Jotunheim and almost certainly a pariah everywhere else.
And besides, if the only punishment he suffered for his crimes was the loss of his freedom of movement- well, the least he could do was to follow the spirit of the injunction as well as the letter. Loki had only ceased to name himself a son of Odin when he believed Odin to have renounced him. That did not mean the repudiation had ever been mutual, and if the only way to demonstrate that was by obedience in a small thing the Allfather would probably never even notice, he would try to do so. And then, after the true spirit behind his exile had been made clear to him, the requirement for compliance had been still more urgent.
He had, of course, failed spectacularly, seeming to end up back in Asgard at practically every turn, but since none of these returns had been with his consent, he had managed to escape punishment. And eventually, despite his failures in the matter of conforming to the terms of his exile, he had still been judged to have made what amends for his crimes were required- or perhaps merely possible- and with forgiveness the ban had been lifted. He was once again a free citizen of Asgard, as well as an unconventional yet formally-accepted resident of Great Britain, and while the people of Jotunheim would, understandably, be glad never to see him again, he was technically free to travel anywhere else in the Nine Realms he desired.
Technically free to do so, but in practice Loki would need a good reason indeed for such a voyage- say, a mission for the Allfather, or for Thor's allies the Avengers. In practice, the only realm aside from Midgard where he perceived ties and could expect any kind of welcome was Asgard. Which was almost funny, considering his longtime perception of the relationship between himself and his former home, but there you were.
And here he was: with permission to return any time he wished (his father had specified "the right," but it felt to Loki like permission, and he did not mind the feeling) and the ability to do so. It crossed Loki's mind that he might have actually delayed longer than was courteous in making use of this permission, that it might appear he did not appreciate the gesture, but he squashed the thought ruthlessly. He really, really did not need to worry about anything else, particularly not when there was absolutely nothing he could do about it and was already on his way.
One began by standing securely on the realm- it might be possible to world-walk from a starting point within a tall building, but Loki had never tried it. Then one… reached out. Loki's mind, and also his magic, often worked by a process of analogy, and though he referred to the secret ways between worlds as "paths," in his own mind it always felt more like pulling himself up on one branch of Yggdrasil, and then letting himself down from another. He was, so to speak, in the process of hugging the trunk of the World Tree, preparing to step out onto the appropriate bough, when he suddenly thought about Heimdall.
Technically, of course, there was no requirement for him to tell Heimdall what he intended to do before he did it: he was once again a prince of Asgard, and did not need the Gatekeeper's permission to come and go as he wished. Everyone, and particularly the Allfather, knew Loki could walk between realms unassisted, and no restrictions had been placed on that sort of travel when the overall ban was removed.
It was largely because of Heimdall that Loki had learned these paths in the first place: whether justly or not, he had always perceived Heimdall's attention upon him as a hostile thing. The moment he had been able to do so, he had learned to conceal himself from the Gatekeeper's sight, and to go where he wished without asking Heimdall's leave.
Which, now he thought about it, was probably not the most tactful way to have dealt with the situation. Indeed, as means of convincing the Guardian of Asgard that one was up to no good, circumventing the Bifrost and deliberately hiding from his sight could hardly be improved upon.
Unless, perhaps, one chose to wear a supervillainous helmet with giant golden horns on it while doing so.
Yes, well, there was that.
Now that he had finally proved to the satisfaction of the Allfather- and his heir- that he was not a threat to Asgard (Odin been easier to convince than some of the court, but fortunately his was the only opinion that counted) Loki did indeed have permission to come and go. And avoiding the sort of noise, confusion, and potential alarm caused by the opening of the Bifrost was a defensible reason for declining to call Heimdall every time he wished to say hello to his parents.
Still…
One attracted Heimdall's attention either by being generally untrustworthy, or by deliberately invoking his name, which of course Loki had not. Now that he was officially no longer a threat, it was possible Heimdall no longer watched Loki's every movement, which meant there was a chance Heimdall did not know Loki was, at this very moment, on his way back to Asgard.
And it suddenly occurred to Loki that simply appearing in the palace, so that Heimdall did not have advance knowledge of his arrival… would be rude.
And that realization made him think about Annie again.
Banishing the thought, Loki shifted his metaphorical grip on Yggdrasil, and reached for a different branch.