Beneath
Chapter Eighty-Nine – Parasite
It was convenient that it was now Friday. His day. Convenient, but unnecessary. Had it been Jane's day, he would have simply come up with an excuse.
Ninety years ago. It seemed like a farce now. It was nothing. Loki was going just over a thousand years into the past. He knew the year, the season, the month, the date, the day of the week. He knew the weather. The time the sun had set. What he'd been wearing. What Baldur had been wearing, and Odin, and Frigga, and Thor. And Jolgeir, but then, Jolgeir had worn what he always wore when he was working. There were moments from that day that were complete blanks in his memory, but most of it he could still remember like yesterday, seared into his brain for all eternity regardless of how many centuries it had been since he'd last thought of it.
His other plans were on hold; he wasn't sure if they would even be relevant anymore after this. Would it change his present, what he was going to do? Would it change the entire course of his life? It would not make him Frigga's son; there was no changing that. There would still be, someday, a terrible truth for him to learn, which would lead him to a naïve belief that if he just tried hard enough, he could prove himself to Odin and all of Asgard once and for all and everything would be all right. But he didn't linger in these thoughts long. He wasn't doing this to change his own life. He would deal with that later.
He passed his objective and looked intently – and blankly – at a photograph hanging on the wall, waiting for Olivia and Ken to walk past and returning their greeting as they did so. Once the corridor was empty, he pulled open one of the storage lockers with the firefighting equipment and grabbed an ax, quickly closing the door and tucking it away underneath Big Red. It wasn't quite the type of ax he wanted, but it had in its favor that it was easily available, and he could make it work, even if it took twice as long.
He'd made it almost to the DZ entrance while pulling on his balaclava with one hand and keeping the ax steady under his jacket with the other when he heard his name – his other name – called, and turned.
"Darts tonight, yeah?" Austin was asking. He had on no more than jeans and a blue sweater, Loki was relieved to see. There would be no need to worry about avoiding going outside with Austin, who would then be expecting him to go out to the Dark Sector with him.
"Looking forward to it," Loki said with an easy smile, followed by a wave since his long-perfected friendly smile couldn't be seen.
Austin smiled and waved an open palm back at him and went on his way and it was all so easy. So very, very easy. Loki had no idea if he would ever be coming back to the South Pole after this.
He got the rest of his gear on and set off for the jamesway. The laptop was right where it should be, cables trailing down to the floor and out the side of the tented building to the waiting Pathfinder. Just yesterday Jane had wanted to move it. He'd lied his way out of that one, too, and she'd bought every word. It didn't matter. If he did one thing right, one thing good, it would be this.
Some fifteen minutes later he staggered backward from Pathfinder, stunned. Odin's curses apparently did not agree, for as soon as he'd made himself invisible, pain shot up from his right foot, aggravating the sore left hip he'd been able to heal only to the extent he'd first healed Jane's, and left him unsteady on his feet for a moment. It seemed arbitrary. Cruel. He thought he'd figured it all out, and he usually knew what he would be punished for and why, and thus tried to avoid doing the things that would invoke the curse. But this? How was it mischief? How was it wrong? He did not want to cause chaos. He wanted to stop chaos. And stop it he would. The price was already paid – he was invisible, and the sound barrier would be marginally more difficult to close tonight, if he returned tonight.
The flash, at least, he didn't need to worry about. Applying the same logic as the last time he'd gone to Asgard, he arrived in the early morning hours, the sun just breaking over the horizon, behind the same tavern. His stomach settled quickly – it was empty – and less than two seconds after he again felt the ground beneath his feet he was preparing himself. He stripped off gloves, hat, balaclava, and neck gaiter and put them in the pockets of Big Red which he unzipped, and the rest was by now routine. He opened his satchel and turned off the RF switch. He removed the other devices from his wrists and put them in the satchel. The ax he'd already secured by hanging it from a loop at his side on the Carhartt overalls. He glanced around him uneasily. An oddly warped version of Frigga's magic was everywhere. He hadn't felt it so clearly at the time, but now he sensed the vibrations in everything around him, and he could hardly imagine how much effort it must have taken to place an enchantment over every single thing in Asgard. Almost every single thing.
Hornsblatt Market was less than ten minutes' walk from here. It was not Asgard's largest, its customer-base largely laborers looking for tools and other practical items needed for their work, but it would have what Loki needed. When he'd almost reached it he was forced to pause as three horses pulling wagons clopped down the street in front of him, and he took a moment to look up at the sky, the sun almost fully over the horizon now, bathing the realm in a soft orange light that held the promise of chasing away the chill of darkness. I should never take a sun for granted again, he thought, mesmerized by the sight of it. Then the horses and their burdens passed and Loki was again focused on his task.
Only one or two other customers were at the market at this early hour; merchants were still setting up their stalls and arranging their wares. It was perfect for Loki's purposes. He easily avoided contact with others as he made his way through the market and found the stall he needed. When the merchant turned his back, a cask of lamp oil and a simple pen lighter were gone, hidden away under Big Red where Loki wouldn't have to worry about their visibility. He heard a shout behind him and knew the theft had been discovered – it was hard not to notice a missing cask of oil, after all – which would serve as a useful distraction for the second theft. As another merchant stepped away from his stall to see what the commotion was, Loki took a shovel with a handle only about the length of his forearm – not the most practical length for his purpose, but the most practical length for hiding it under Big Red. Put it on my account, he thought dismissively.
He had a long walk ahead of him, and he was soon sweating profusely. Images of Jane came to his mind. Jane, sitting with her wrists fastened to the gate and begging him not to leave her. Jane, hair plastered to her head with sweat, faint from dehydration, about to severely harm herself by trying to wrench her hands through the restraints. He'd thought at the time she'd been overreacting, a panicking mortal, and he'd had more important things on his mind after finding out they thought he was behind the war against Asgard. He'd realized later that he'd made a mistake, but only now did he realize quite how bad of a mistake it had been. If it was this unpleasant and uncomfortable for him, how much more so for her, a mortal, and right at mid-day with no shade? What was I thinking? he asked himself. I wasn't thinking, obviously, he answered himself in annoyance. Thankfully Jane had not been harmed.
And he would not be, either. He didn't mind sweating, and his own comfort was irrelevant at the moment regardless, but he was used to having to do much more than simply walk somewhere before working up a sweat. He was at least walking rapidly.
Some two hours later he reached his destination – so intent had he been on his goal that its sudden appearance before him caught him by surprise. It was beautiful, really, this young birch tree in a sparse grassy wood. It was late summer, and the leaves were a triangle-shaped healthy vibrant light green that clustered around the branches and hung in short wispy fronds adorned with winged seeds that rustled in the breeze. Left alone, its leaves would turn a striking golden yellow, then drop off for winter, then with the coming of spring catkin flowers would sprout, followed by a new batch of young leaves. The natural cycle would continue and with time the birch would grow taller. With even more time, though, when the tree should be reaching its full majestic height and picnickers should seek it out for its beauty and shade, its growth would instead be stunted. It would be dying.
Hidden by clusters of the bright green birch leaves that were supposed to be there was something that was very much not supposed to be there: a parasite. A bird had made a meal of mistletoe berries elsewhere, then excreted a seed here, on a birch branch. The seed had clung on where it did not belong and begun to germinate, sprouting its own leaves and growing under its own internal biological processes, then in time growing a root that penetrated the unsuspecting birch's tissue and siphoned off water and nutrients from the tree that provided the parasite's home. The mistletoe did not have a will, of course, it did not hold ill will toward the tree. It was simply doing what it was created to do. Loki hated it. Its existence was an offense against him and against all of Asgard and all the Nine Realms. Against Baldur.
Loki swung his head around back in the direction he'd come from, toward the city. This thought hadn't concretely occurred to him before – right now, right in this very moment of Loki's existence far into the past, Baldur still lived. It was around 8:00 or 8:30 in the morning here, and he was perhaps on his way to his lessons now. There was something both wonderful and terrible in the thought of actually seeing Baldur again after ten centuries…but Loki did not let himself dwell on it, and instead focused on the tree again. Once he had done what he came here to do, he, or rather his past self, would see Baldur constantly for the next ten centuries that had already passed, and the next ten centuries beyond that.
He left the cask of lamp oil, the lighter, and the shovel some distance away at the foot of another tree. It would change his memories, his very reality, he supposed, as he went back to the birch, grasped onto it, and hauled himself up, finding the little knots and irregularities in the trunk that made it possible – if not easy – to climb. Luckily, the tree was not so tall, and he reached the second set of branches fairly quickly. Will I know that things have changed? Will I know that at one time Baldur was dead, but now he lives? No one else had ever seemed to know that anything had changed, but perhaps it would be different for him, since he was the one making the changes. He wondered which he would prefer, if it were up to him: to know what he'd done and how he'd changed it, or to simply know that he'd never done what he'd intended to today.
Testing the branches' strength and then placing one bunny-booted foot each in a narrow V between trunk and upward-reaching branch to split his weight between two branches, Loki peered up and out over the branch that the parasite had made its home on. He couldn't stand around thinking about this all day; he needed to act. Once he'd dealt with this tree, he would need to take care of the others. He knew what his past self would have done, had he arrived here and not found what he was looking for. He would have tried another tree, hoping to find that one of the other mistletoe plants he knew of had been sufficiently well-camouflaged to be missed. He had a point to make, after all.
Loki checked his balance – these bulky Midgardian Extreme Cold Weather boots were not at all suited to standing on tree branches, but not changing his attire had helped keep things simple and thus fast – then pulled the long-handled ax out from the loop of fabric he'd hung it from. The angle was awkward, but the branch was not that thick. Keeping one hand on the trunk, he swung the ax at the branch that the parasite had invaded. A piece of bark appeared to have loosened, but otherwise he saw no effect. He swung the ax again, harder this time. The branch was not affected. Loki released the trunk to grasp the ax with both hands, shifting his weight back as far as he dared, then swinging forward and up, letting the trunk stop his momentum. He pressed up on his toes to peer at the branch, but could still see no damage to the branch other than the loosened bark. He looked then at the ax, then released a frustrated breath. The ax was made of Midgardian metal, and perhaps not even Asgard's trees feared such a thing.
He stowed the ax again and climbed higher into the tree until he stood on the third set of branches, putting the targeted branch just above waist-level. He pulled out the ax, steadied himself, drew the ax back, and swung it down with all his considerable strength. The weight of the ax suddenly changed, and Loki let go of it with his left hand to grab onto the trunk to steady himself as the ax swung wildly down, its handle somehow banging into the branch and doing no damage.
He stared at what he held in his right hand, incredulous. The head of the ax had flown off. It would have been comical, were it not any day in the history of any of the Nine Realms except this day in the history of Asgard. Instead of an urge to laugh, Loki felt an urge to obliterate Midgard for its spectacularly shoddy craftsmanship. The anger flared then quickly faded. Not all of Midgard deserved to be obliterated. He thought of Jane and her milk and cookies, then Jane in her bulky brown firefighter's suit, when she'd carried an ax, maybe even this now-decapitated one in his hand. Whoever had made these axes, they deserved to be obliterated.
It would take far too long and be far too risky to try to go back and steal an Asgardian ax, but Loki had long ago learned to be resourceful when necessary. He let the ax handle fall to the ground, then lowered himself back to the first set of branches, pivoted around, and dropped, landing in a crouch on the ground and wincing at the pain in his right foot.
In about half an hour he found what he was looking for – a vergil vine, half the thickness of his little finger, pliable, strong. A length of it secured firmly to a tree had been able to bear his weight until he was nearly twenty. With the vine he had everything he needed. His Asgardian-bladed knife he used to cut the vine. The sturdy metal edge of the lamp oil cask he used to tap the ax head back onto the haft. The knife he used again to cut notches into the short length of the haft that stuck out of the ax head. The vine he used to wrap around the notches and over the blade again and again before tying it off, and the knife he used a third time to trim away the excess length of vine. Hardly perfect, Loki thought, lifting the ax and swinging and spinning and catching it a few times, but it should be enough. It wasn't as though he needed to chop down one of those Giant Redspur Oaks on Vanaheim. His gaze lingered on the tree nearest him, an aspen. May as well test it here first. He swung the ax relatively lightly, and in the next second jerked his head away to avoid flying bits of bark hitting his eyes. He looked back at the tree and stared in surprise and confusion. The ax, still gripped in his hands, had cut a shallow wedge into the tree. He let go of the ax and turned to face the birch. Twice he'd swung at the birch branch, both times harder than at the trunk of this aspen, and both times he'd failed to do anything more than loosen a piece of bark.
A bad feeling settled at the base of his spine, but there was nothing to be done about it. He was behind schedule now and he had to keep going.
He got himself back up the tree, gave the ax a strong swing, and watched as it hit the branch with a dull thud, sending a small thin chip of bark flying. Loki's grip tightened on the ax. Something was not right.
/
/
The sun continued its inexorable rise, and nothing was working.
With each successive failure, Loki took less and less time to think through what had happened, and what he would try next. When he got no results no matter what he did with the ax – cursed wretched miserable excuse of an ax from a cursed wretched miserable excuse of a realm – he thought about the other things he had with him. Lamp oil. His intention had been to chop off the branch besot by mistletoe, drag it off somewhere, chop host and parasite into smaller pieces, dig a trench around it with the shovel, set it ablaze, and reduce it to ash he would then bury. If he couldn't remove the branch, he could burn it directly on the tree. It didn't matter if the whole tree burned – Asgard had more. It didn't matter if the whole wood burned – Asgard had more of those, too. He noticed something wrong in the odor as soon as he began pouring from the cask. He stopped pouring and got some of the oil on his fingers and found the consistency wrong as well. He brought it to his nose, and eventually, reluctantly, to his tongue. It was water. The trader was a cheating, thieving swine. The fact that Loki had actually stolen the supposed oil from the cheating trader was irrelevant.
He found a position that sufficiently supported him and tried to twist and pull at the branch himself, for his strength was not insignificant, and he might be able to at least weaken the branch and try the ax again. It didn't work. He balanced himself out on the branch as best he could – birch branches were not particularly sturdy – and grasped for the mistletoe. He hadn't wanted to touch it, but his options were dwindling. He found it hardier than expected, and no matter how hard he pulled at it, all he succeeded in doing was sending a few oval-shaped dark green leaves to the ground. He had his one good knife. The first two times he tried, it slipped from his hand before he could use it, and he had to climb down the tree to retrieve it. The third time he gripped it with both hands, but it would not cut; its blade had dulled and bits of rust were visible on its edge. He'd sliced up a vine with the knife, but it shouldn't be that badly damaged. None of this should be possible. Coincidence upon coincidence upon coincidence upon severe improbability.
Still perched up in the tree, his full weight on the branch the mistletoe had invaded, Loki sat back against the trunk to catch his breath and wipe the sweat from his brow. This branch should not even be able to hold my weight for such a long time. Too much improbability. All other thoughts fell away then as just one bloomed at the forefront of his mind. There was only one explanation for this.
Magic.
Not his mother's magic. Something different. He reached out with a slightly shaking hand and held it over the mistletoe plant. Try as he might, he couldn't feel anything there, couldn't see anything there, just the faint reverberations of the enchantment on the tree itself, which had somehow never extended from the host to the parasite. Someone else's magic, then. But whose? Magic that did not leave any personal trace was possible – old Mordi had demonstrated it to him more than once – but Loki had never mastered it, at least not well enough to mask his signature from Mordi, or from himself. How many others could possibly learn such a thing?
Time was steadily trickling away; he could not just sit around thinking. He should have finished with multiple trees now, instead of still being stumped by this one. If magic was the problem, then magic would be the solution. He hadn't intended to use any magic here, especially once he realized Odin's curses would punish him even for trying to prevent the death of his son, but his options had now dwindled down to nothing else.
He tried to remove the magic in place, but he could not even detect the magic in place, and it proved fruitless. He tried to transform the mistletoe into birch twigs, but not even one measly wood shoot would change. He tried to make the mistletoe invisible but could not. He could feel his own magic, the particles responding to his tugs – his abilities had been weakened but not lost – but he could do nothing to affect the mistletoe.
He scrambled down the tree. If the magic on the mistletoe prevented him from affecting it, he would just have to broaden his thinking. Everything he'd tried on the mistletoe he began trying some version of on the entire tree. None of it worked. Loki was beginning to panic. The sun had reached its zenith and had already begun to sink again. Hours upon hours upon hours he'd been at this, for nothing. Another tree, he thought. Another tree on top of this tree. He tried to form it, to raise it up to encase the birch and hide it. Nothing happened. There has to be a way. There has to be a way, he told himself again and again, his eyes darting wildly about as though somewhere hidden nearby was the solution he sought.
A twig snapped in the distance. Then another. And another. The noises of footfalls were getting louder. Someone was approaching through the wood. Loki quickly checked himself; he was still invisible, but the useless cask of water on the ground by the birch was not. He grabbed it and moved away, stashing it beside the shovel, behind the aspen tree. He stood there beside the aspen, checking again and again that he was still invisible, and waited. He could hardly believe his eyes when the figure emerged.
It was him. He stared, wide-eyed, as his younger self strode forward – and how young he was! Just thirty-four years old, not visibly aged a bit for over a decade, looking only perhaps a year or two older than Baldur himself on this day. He'd forgotten how very young he'd been then. His hair was longer, his armor light, much more leather than metal, and a sword hung from his right hip. He was approaching the birch tree.
The fascination fled him. It had taken too long. He was too late. He watched now with a sense of dread. His other self, with the springier steps of youth, reached the tree and rocked back and forth on his heels a few times as he looked toward the mistletoe that was almost entirely hidden by birch leaves. Is he hesitating? Did I hesitate? He didn't remember hesitating. He remembered trying to figure out the best way to remove the length of wood he needed. Maybe he's hesitating, Loki thought, but then younger Loki stepped up to the trunk and jumped up, his Asgardian boots much better for helping him scramble up the tree than the white Midgardian bunny boots he wore himself.
His thoughts raced. He had to stop this. Distract him, he thought. Make him stop and think. Make him think someone's watching. He looked around on the ground around him and found a pinecone from a nearby stand of spruces. He turned it over once in his hand to learn the shape of it, then threw it at the trunk below his younger self. It fell well short, landing silently in the grass. Silently he cursed his inability to get right something as simple as throwing a pinecone. He looked around him again, this time picking up a rock as wide as his palm and twice as thick. The shape was reasonably regular; Loki would not miss. He took aim again right below the other Loki's feet as the other withdrew a knife from a pouch on his left hip and stretched out over the branch. He threw. The stone flew past the younger Loki and landed well beyond him, the young man too absorbed in his task to notice its flight, the sound of the stone's landing once again absorbed by thick grass.
This simply cannot be, Loki thought, incredulous. If there was anything he knew, it was proper aim.
He hadn't wanted to interact with himself from some other time period, including here, but yet another line was quickly crossed as desperation began to claw at him. Still invisible, he pitched his voice low as he called out, "Loki!" He had only a split second to note how surreal it was to be calling out his own name, before he realized the other Loki had not reacted in the slightest. He'd never dampened his sound; he hadn't wanted to use the additional magic. His voice should have been heard. The younger Loki was cutting away at the mistletoe, and his knife was working perfectly well. "Loki!" he shouted again. No response.
The younger Loki was leaping down from the tree, long thin twig of mistletoe in his hand. And it was thin, he knew it was thin, he had always meant it to be thin. He would make it even thinner, his younger self would. Loki crept forward, closing in on his younger self, who failed to notice his approach. He broke into a run for the last distance, intending to tackle the other him, but suddenly his balance was gone and the ground was flying up at him and his face slammed into the grass. It didn't hurt, and he never stopped moving, pushing himself fluidly from the ground. "Stop right there!" he shouted, running after the other him again. The younger Loki acted as though he were entirely alone. Loki stopped and stared, shaking his head in disbelief. It wasn't just the mistletoe. It was tree itself, the whole wood, perhaps-
Another twig snapped. Loki jerked his head toward it, somewhere off to his right. Someone else is here? He held himself completely still and listened, but heard nothing else for a long moment. Then it came again, what sounded like a foot crunching over dried leaves. It wasn't the younger Loki; he was hurrying for the room he kept in the palace stables, for he had an arrow to form from a twig. Another noise came, this time behind him, not far away. He whirled around, startling a bird from the ground into flight. He remained still a while longer but heard nothing else. He thought perhaps the other sounds had also come from a bird, or some other animal scavenging along. Or perhaps I simply imagined it, he thought bitterly. Perhaps I've imagined this entire thing. Time travel. Pathfinder. Jane Foster. Midgard's South Pole… Perhaps I never woke up from the green monster's thrashing.
He knew it couldn't be true, though, because he could never have dreamed all of this up.
He'd heard nothing for some time, not even a frightened bird, so he went back for the shovel – he left the metal-girded cask, for it was awkward to carry and he couldn't imagine what use a container of water would be – and set off toward the city along a somewhat circuitous route that would help him avoid crowds.
The front gate to the stables was open, as it always was, to allow the flow of fresh air, so Loki's entry was effortless. He passed a couple of stablehands at work and went to the repurposed stall he'd been given for his own use. Across the open central part of the stable was Lifhilda's stall, and in these days he'd cared for the favored mare almost entirely by himself. It had given him the perfect place to work on this day, with privacy and plenty of tools and no questions asked. The door to his old stall was, of course, closed. As he again ran through potential scenarios of how he was going to stop this, he drifted over without conscious thought to Lifhilda's stall, where the top half of the gate was open. She startled and snuffled at the unseen hand on her cheek, but Loki felt her hot puffs of breath as she drew in his scent. She calmed quickly; despite the changes in time and place, his scent was apparently little changed. Lifhilda nuzzled his hand, and Loki regretted he had no snack to give her.
If he opened the gate and sent Lifhilda out, the stablehands would call out in confusion and go after her, and that should get his younger self's attention. He was considering it, when movement in the open rafters above his head caught his eye. A boy of perhaps seven or eight years old was up there in the shadows, closer to the converted stall; from what appeared to be a comfortable and familiar position he was peering down at him. Or at Lifhilda, he supposed, his attention drawn by the sounds she'd made a few moments ago. The boy looked away then, to the other side of the stable, to where the younger Loki was. Loki's eyes followed him, then lost focus.
"I saw him in the stable, My Lord. He was making an arrow."
"And how do you know it was an arrow he was making?"
"It was shaped like one. And he held it up like this, like he was pulling it back in a bow."
This was the child who had given testimony against him. Loki felt a wave of bitterness toward the little rat who should have been off playing with friends, or home with parents, or engaging in studies, or doing anything else in all of Asgard besides sneaking around and watching him march toward murder. But it passed quickly. The boy's statements had been superfluous in the end.
Loki reached a hand up to undo the latch on the gate, deciding to try releasing Lifhilda after all, when the door to the room opposite opened. It was too late. His younger self emerged with flickers of a grin on his face, eyes bright with excitement and nerves, leather scabbard holding a single slender arrow instead of a sword.
Loki forgot Lifhilda, forgot the boy, and followed the other Loki out, sticking close behind him. The quiet clanking of metal against metal from the direction of the stable behind them made two heads of black hair turn; Loki caught sight of a mass of reddish-brown hair disappearing behind the wall. Someone else saw me? Loki thought. Another stablehand? No one else had testified about seeing him in the stables. And he didn't remember turning and seeing someone watching. But when he turned around again, his younger self was already walking away, quickly putting distance between them – it obviously hadn't made much of an impression on him, and he perhaps hadn't even seen the person peering at him from behind the wall.
He hurried to catch up to the other him. Soon he would walk through a restricted passageway leading around the side of the palace out to the large public garden where Baldur was foolishly entertaining the masses for the day. It was Loki's last, best chance.
As soon as they were past the guard and alone, a wall on their right, tall bushes in front of the undulating walls of the palace on their left, Loki sped up and overtook his young doppelganger. "Halt," he commanded, but as before his voice was not heard. He walked backwards, staying in front of the other him all the way. "You don't know what you're doing." Violently he ripped away the illusion of his invisibility, but the other Loki's eyes were on the ground, for he would not expect anyone else to be here and he was deep in his own thoughts. "You will kill him. He will die, do you hearme?" He did not. Loki looked down at himself; he had made himself visible. "Why don't you see me? Why don't you hear me? You fool! When he's gone, you won't be the invisible middle son anymore, you'll be reviled and spat upon, forgotten in your anguish. Even your mother won't be able to bear your presence. And when you've clawed your way back up from that, you'll be the forgotten younger son, and you aren't even their son! You will never be the same after this! You will never-"
The younger Loki suddenly stopped; the older Loki sucked in a breath, thinking finally, finally, whatever was wrong with the cosmos had righted itself, and he'd been seen and heard. The younger Loki shook his head. Then he started to laugh, and set off again. The older Loki stepped aside and stared at him in disbelief as he continued on toward his fate. Doubts, he thought. He's having doubts. And he's convincing himself right out of them. Shoring up his determination to stay his course. You think you're determined? he asked silently, then hurried after the other Loki again, falling into step behind him, and voicing his thoughts aloud. "You think you're determined? You know nothing of determination. You know nothing of my determination. I will stop you. If you won't listen, I'll do whatever I have to. You won't do this. I made a promise. I swore an oath. You'll regret this for the rest of your life. I'll stop you," he repeated, barely aware anymore of the words that tumbled from his lips as his hand gripped his knife. It might not cut, but it would still stab.
He raised the knife to drive it down into the shoulder, but before he could make contact a gale force wind such as what Thor might have conjured made him stumble to the side and his arm go far off course. The wind dissipated and Loki stood where it had pushed him, looked around him intently, and wondered if he had truly gone mad. The other Loki had not been affected at all. Not even Thor with Mjolnir could create a rush of air like that, that blew against only one person and lasted only seconds.
Another thought then occurred to him. Thor cannot. But…perhaps I can? He'd never tried it before, winds and weather in general being Thor's domain, but wind was in essence a movement of air from a high pressure area to a low pressure area, and he did know how to cause small changes in air pressure. Such a wind as that, though? No, he thought. He could not cause that. Could I learn? Possibly. If I could learn, could others? There had been someone hiding just inside the stable. "What magic is this?" he asked aloud. The other Loki, now far down the path from him, would not have heard even had he been inches away. But this he did not say for his ears. "Reveal yourself." No one did. Loki was not particularly surprised. Why should anything on this day go as I intended? There was no time to deal with whatever was preventing him from stopping the younger Loki. He hadn't been the only one involved in today's calamity. If he couldn't stop himself, he would stop Hodur.
He emerged from the passage alongside the palace and weaved his way through cobbled sheets and onto quiet paths and there it was. For better or for worse – Loki did not take the time to consider which – he couldn't see Baldur through the crowd surrounding him in a U-shape, laughing riotously and hurling things at him. Hardly anyone threw an actual weapon anymore by this point; that had long since grown dull. Now it was all about creativity.
From the pebbled path he stepped onto the perfectly trimmed thick grass of the garden lawn. Hodur was easy to spot. He'd already released whatever he'd brought to shoot from his bow for the day, so being blind, he stood at the back of the crowd, waiting for someone to tell him what had caused some particularly rowdy reaction. Waiting, though he didn't know it, for Loki to come along and ruin the final years of his life. The younger Loki loitered on the fringes of another area of the crowd, establishing his presence elsewhere. He wouldn't remain there long.
Loki crept up to Hodur, leaned in close, and whispered in his ear. "Hodur, it's Loki. I need you for something. Come with me." He didn't need an explanation; he was this man's prince, and a word from him would be enough. But Hodur, whose hearing was perfectly good, did not react any more than the younger Loki had before him.
Am I some sort of apparition? That I do not truly exist here? He placed a hand on Hodur's shoulder, but when he tried to squeeze he met unexpected resistance. It was as though a thin but impenetrable membrane surrounded the old man, something perhaps not unlike what he'd created around Jane for a time, months ago, to help her adjust to the thin air.
He took his knife in hand again and tried to sink it into Hodur's drawing arm. It was like trying to carve through metal, except he should have been able to at least scratch metal. He gave a half-hearted kick to the back of Hodur's knee. His foot hit something immovable that hurt no one but himself. He twisted and spun and put everything he had into a second kick and got nothing for it except jarring pain that seemed to reach all the way from the unhealed wounds on his sole all the way up through up through his neck.
The younger Loki was drifting in this direction. Baldur, still unseen, laughter and jests unheard over everyone else's, had perhaps another minute to live.
Loki stepped back; his younger self stepped into his place. He watched, dazed, as another hand fell on Hodur's shoulder. This one Hodur felt. The younger Loki lowered and deepened his voice to whisper a few words; Loki knew exactly what they were. The other Loki pulled the arrow from the scabbard; Loki made one last attempt, though he knew it wouldn't work. He grabbed for the arrow. It slid right through his hand, unfelt. He'd hoped that somehow, against all logic, it would work. "You are a scourge," he said, whispering his own words into his younger self's ear. "You belong here no more than that mistletoe in your hand."
The young Loki placed the arrow in Hodur's hand and began guiding him forward. Barely a glance was spared them, for all attention was on Baldur.
Loki closed his eyes. He would not watch this part. Everything grew still and quiet, and Loki could almost imagine the entire cosmos had ceased to exist, except for him. By touch alone, he opened up his satchel and reached a hand inside, easily identifying the items he needed.
A collective gasp wrenched him from his cocoon. Then a yell. Loki opened his eyes. Hodur stood there, the crowd just beginning to pull away from him. The other Loki had already moved away; Loki had no wish to see him. Through the gap in the crowd, he could just see Baldur, partly hidden behind Hodur, staggering backward. Falling into the lavender bushes. Shaking. Grasping. Someone ran forward. The shouting began. Loki turned away.
He was not the only one. The crowd was thinning. Some were perhaps running for help. A few people were hurrying off clutching stunned children in their arms. A blond woman stumbled away and collapsed on a bench, gaze unfocused. A dark-skinned woman shoved her way out of the group and dumped the contents of her satchel onto the grass. An auburn-haired man backed away unsteadily, eyes wide with disbelief.
The flash came, and Loki did nothing to mask it. By new he knew without consciously thinking about it that there was really no need. Asgard disappeared and his stomach wrenched with the changes in gravity and disorientation of this raw travel through Yggdrasil. Loki closed his eyes and waited for this day to be over for a second time.
/
Okay, so those of you who've wanted to know more about the Baldur story, do you still have questions? I'm guessing yes. Let me know, if you like, what they are. As I've told some of you, I won't address everything angle of the Baldur story in Beneath - some of that will be only in Eighteen. But there are also aspects of it in this story that won't be in Eighteen. (And no, I say this not as advertising for Eighteen, actually, since it isn't even on this website at this time, and while I very much hope to write it, and have already written parts of it, I don't guarantee it will happen. So it's just a bit of explanation for you.) Part of the reason not everything will be explained here is that the Baldur story isn't the focus or culmination of Beneath. I think of these three chapters here as "The Baldur Trilogy." ;-)
Thank you all for your kind comments on the last chapter...it got quite the response! I hope I haven't disappointed you with the follow-up. Did you know mistletoe was a parasitic species? I didn't, until I researched it over a year and a half ago. I was pretty surprised, and then I thought, ohhhh, this is perfect.
There's at least one of you out there I'm pretty sure knows what's going on in this chapter, BTW. Pretty sure you'll know it if it's you. ;-)
I have company coming for 4-5 days shortly, so I'll almost certainly not get as much written as normal, though if feasible I'll still stick to the "you must write every day" rule.
Teasers for (gasp!) Ch. 90: Jane deals with some aftermath of those late-night talks herself; Loki's really not quite as alone as he thinks he is; Jane's curiosity really is still there - it just keeps getting preempted; Loki has some stuff to try to figure out; somebody has something to celebrate (and it probably isn't Loki, ya know).
And the excerpt (I have to say, I'm fond of this one, ha):
Loki gave a low chuckle. "You don't want to do that."
"Why not?" [Jane asked.]
"I would pull you down with me."