Beneath
Chapter Ninety-Seven – Harvest
The first time she'd travelled with Pathfinder, she'd been rushing off headlong to Asgard and wound up nearly falling to her death. The second time she'd travelled with Pathfinder, she was light-headed and pressing up tight against Loki hoping she didn't get sliced vertically in half because Loki was wearing her structural field generator. The third time was, by comparison, a calm, relaxing trip. Except for the weird sensations in her stomach, the random waves of vertigo, and the fact that Loki apparently wanted to know if anyone would miss her back at the Pole.
He swore he wouldn't try to change anything. And you know he's not going to hurt you. Try to relax. And open your eyes!
By the time she did, though, the ground was already solid underneath her feet and she was swaying. Loki was standing right next to her, a hand near but not quite touching her arm, to steady her if needed, she presumed. She looked around her then and forgot to be dizzy. There was dirt beneath her feet, something she hadn't experienced in some three and a half months. Her head came up, and she slowly turned around. The sun was shining down on them from a beautiful clear sky, just as Loki had said it would be. They stood in the middle of some kind of stadium, with stands made mostly of something that at least looked like concrete, and in the stands along the bottom, several arched openings. The shape of the stadium wasn't round, but it wasn't quite as oblong as a football field, either, she thought. Soccer stadium? she wondered. She didn't really know what soccer stadiums were shaped like.
She turned to face Loki. "This is Asgard?" she asked skeptically.
He laughed, only one corner of his lips pulling up. "Don't sound so impressed."
"No, I just mean…I…It pretty much looks like a stadium on Earth," Jane said, pulling her gloves off then working open her jacket's fastenings. The heat was building up quickly, but the breeze felt great on her legs through the fabric of her dress.
"This is the arena."
"What kind of sports do you play here?" Jane asked, trying to sound chipper, though truthfully this was something of a disappointment. Of all the amazing things she was sure there were to see on Asgard…Loki had brought her to an empty stadium…with tall stands that blocked her view of anything beyond.
"We don't play sports in the same sense that you do. Asgard is a warrior society. No one chases balls around in Asgard, not adults, anyway, not in any formalized manner. We practice with weaponry, and hand-to-hand battle. We demonstrate and improve our endurance, strength, and skills, and we…," Loki trailed off, distracted by memories of doing just that himself, right here, right before his twentieth birthday. Not particularly wanting to dwell on that, he continued on. "The bigger tournaments and competitions and demonstrations are held here."
"I see," Jane said, now free of all gear but her jacket, and carefully removing the devices from her wrists so she could get the jacket off, too. "And, ummm,what kinds of tournaments do you have?" She had a flashback to attending her first academic conference and one of her professors urging her to ask the presenter a question, then struggling to come up with one and asking it in what felt like the most halting, grammatically jumbled way possible out of nervousness.
Loki squinted at her. "Would you like a lecture on the architectural detail of the structure, too? Or would you like to see Asgard?"
Jane's eyes got a little wider. "You mean…you didn't just bring me here to show me the, uh, the arena?"
Loki just shook his head. "Give me those," he said, pointing at the two devices held in her left hand. "We can't wear them; they'll be visible. I'll put them in my satchel."
"You already turned off both the RF switches?" she asked, handing over the thin rectangular gadgets with a certain reluctance. If Loki so chose – or if something somehow went wrong – she would be trapped here, somewhere on Asgard, in an arena where warriors came to beat each other silly, and in a time she didn't even know yet.
"Yes," he said. "I brought us here because I knew the arena was closed today, and our arrival would not be noticed. Even better," he began, extending an arm and motioning for Jane to head in that direction, toward one of the arches, "there's a place here where you can leave Big Red, and no one will see it, and we can easily retrieve it when we leave."
/
/
Loki watched as Jane hung up Big Red on one of the large blunt hooks that descended from the ceiling when he reached for them. When she was done, he gestured upward, palm flat toward the ceiling, and the hooks rose upward again, disappearing from view.
"Magic?" she asked, turning to him.
He considered that for a moment. He'd never really thought about it. "I suppose so. Simple magic. Not much different from what you could do on Midgard with a sophisticated motion sensor."
Jane gave a small laugh with her nod. "There was this special collection at the library at my college, it was in this really quiet room that hardly anybody knew about. When I had to read something that I really had to concentrate on, I'd go there. Then somebody got the brilliant idea to use motion sensors for the lights. Motion sensors in a reading room? Really? You'd be reading along and if the sensor didn't happen to notice you turning a page for a while, the lights would go out. Then you make yourself look like a complete idiot by throwing your arms in the air and waving them around until the sensors notice and turn the lights back on."
Loki chuckled at her story, picturing her with a look of aggravation he was very familiar with, waving her arms around with abandon, alone in the middle of a quiet library room. "This one is more practical. And it doesn't require magic to use it. It's a different kind of magic, more of a…"
"A combination? Science and magic?" Jane asked eagerly. Based on what she could see and what Loki had told her, they were in the Asgardian equivalent of a locker room – not exactly one of the wondrous things she thought she'd see here, or that she was dressed for, but she would take what she could get, and magic coat racks were pretty cool.
"Perhaps," Loki allowed. It was an oversimplification, but Loki hadn't brought her here to try to explain Asgardian engineering and construction and science and magic in her terms. "We should-" He stopped, seeing Jane reaching up and mimicking the gesture he'd made to lower the hooks. When her red jacket appeared and began to descend, she laughed in delight that was rather disproportionate to this act that a two-year-old was perfectly capable of accomplishing. Still, it made him smile. "All right, you've had your fun, now put it back and let's go, shall we?"
Jane nodded, still grinning, and repeated his palm-up motion and watched her jacket rise into the ceiling again.
"I hope you don't mind a walk," Loki said as they continued down a tunnel under the arena stands toward sunlight streaming in through another archway.
"No," she said, then took a deliberately deep breath. "Do you feel that? How great the air feels? Is there some difference in the air here, or is it just because we've been at the South Pole all this time?"
Loki likewise breathed in deeply; it was certainly more pleasant than the South Pole air, but the thin air there had never bothered him as it had Jane. "Both. The air is rich, and there's no pollution of any significance. Quiet, now," he said, putting out a hand to signal Jane to stop and stepping forward. The arena wouldn't be guarded, but patrols were always possible. He saw no one, though. "All right, come on."
Jane followed where Loki led, stepping out of the tunnel and onto a gravelly path paralleling the arena and lined with tall bushes covered in bright red leaves. At Loki's urging she crossed the path, stepped between two bushes, and emerged onto a road paved in some kind of gleaming beige stone, almost like marble except it didn't feel slippery. Then, turning to the left along with Loki, she raised her head and came to a sudden halt. Ahead of her, not so far in the distance rose the golden spires of a fantastical gleaming golden city, pinpoints of other colors here and there, moving shimmering light that she had to guess were waterfalls in seemingly impossible locations. Behind the city mountains rose in a chain of dark gray peaks, maybe the ones Thor had said he and his friends liked to climb.
"Keep moving, Jane. It's a lovely view but Asgardians don't stop and stare at it," Loki said, words colored with light sarcasm, having stopped a few paces ahead of her when he realized she'd fallen still. She nodded and fell into step beside him again, eyes still fixed ahead of her. Loki tried to see it through her eyes. He couldn't do it. For him those buildings, especially the tallest one with its tiered spires, spoke of lies and betrayal and rejection. He fixed his gaze instead on the empty road before them. It wouldn't be empty for long; soon they would reach intersections that would begin funneling them to their destination, along with everyone else who wasn't already there. "You are Asgardian. Your name is Jana. Mine is Lakmund. Hopefully it won't matter. And it would be best if you don't speak to anyone."
"Neither of us is speaking to anyone. No interfering."
"Were you aware that I know some very simple magic for ensuring you're unable to open your mouth?"
Jane jerked her head around. Loki was looking down at her, and he looked completely serious. "Do you remember agreeing not to threaten me?"
"That wasn't a threat. It was a simple question. I thought you were interested in magic." He smiled saccharinely at her and faced forward again. "And we won't speak unless we have to. But if you call me Loki, you could create trouble. There is already a Loki here, and he's considerably younger than me."
Jane's eyebrows went up, and the city ahead of them was forgotten. "What's the date?"
"The date here would be meaningless to you. The date on Midgard is…well, at least in the time zone and calendar the South Pole follows, December 3, 976."
"976," Jane breathed. "What happened in 976?" she wondered aloud, letting her mind wander also to neighboring years. "976…." She sighed and shook her head. "I'm lousy at history."
Loki glanced down at her and laughed. It seemed to actually bother her, but he didn't see why. If you had only 80 or so years to live, why would you bother with knowing what happened in 976 or any other year significantly before your birth? "Not that it matters," he began, "but on Midgard, the Song Dynasty ruled China, Basileios the Young had just begun ruling Byzantium, and the caliph of Cordoba died, leaving his heir, an eleven-year-old son, to rule."
"Really? Huh. Wait, how do you know all that? I'm from Midgard, I mean Earth, and I didn't know all that."
"You did just say you were lousy at history," Loki said. He was trying not to smile now, but it was difficult and he gave up. "I told you before, I was interested in China and Cordoba at the time. And Thor was interested in Byzantium. I don't remember precisely why; I suppose something our tutors told us about them caught our attention. We didn't spend a great deal of time studying Midgard. I couldn't tell you much else going on in your realm at the time. And the story about the king of Cordoba made an impression on me, because at the time Thor and I were both ten years old."
"It made you think that might happen to you?"
"Mmmm," Loki murmured with a nod.
"Father, you should stay home. Take a day off and rest."
"Yes, Father, you work too much. Are you cold? You look cold. Loki, go get him a fur."
"Wait…you and Thor are the same age? And…so you're ten now? I mean…in this time period?"
"We're ten months apart. Whether we were ever the same age was frequently the source of an argument. I was ten…now…and Thor had already turned eleven. What was going on in Asgard on this date was the first Harvest Festival. Asgard always celebrated the end of the main harvest season, but it was a minor holiday. This was the first year it was expanded to a festival. Everyone will be there."
Jane grinned. Everyone. She hoped she would see Loki and Thor. And at the same time she knew it shouldn't happen, and she would have to trust that Loki would make sure it wouldn't happen. How might it change what came later if she actually met either of them when they were still kids? When Byzantium was still a thing.
"So we're going to the Harvest Festival," Jane said. "What will we do there? What should I expect?"
"Ah, my darling Jana," he said, for there were others on the road with them now, and a horse approached behind them, "that is the beauty of it. Because this is the first Harvest Festival, you don't need to know exactly what to expect. A certain amount of surprise won't draw attention." He pulled the hood of the cloak up over his head and lowered his voice. "I doubt anyone will ask, but if so, I'm sensitive to light."
Jane nodded, distracted, attention bouncing from one thing to another. They'd just crossed a street, and now not so far ahead of them two women were walking, heads close together as they talked. Jane took in their clothes as much as she could from behind, one woman in an ivory and silver gown with silver metal – armor? – adorning her upper arms and wrists, the other in rich red, gleaming gold around her wrists and forearms with gaps in the metal, making it look even more decorative than the gold around her own wrists. One was blond and the other gray, both with braids and loose knots bundled atop their heads and more hair trailing down their backs. They approached another intersection and three men and a woman turned onto their street; these were dressed in flowing garments and long robes in greens and blues and purples and grays of what appeared to be simpler cloth; the men wore touches of leather but she didn't see any metal. Different nationalities? Cultures? Social classes? She wanted to ask, but Loki had said the Aesir had better hearing than humans – technically he'd said he had better hearing than her, but she assumed he'd meant it in the broader sense – and she didn't want to risk being overheard, for it was otherwise quiet. It made her nervous enough to imagine them simply looking at her and Loki, though thus far none of the others had paid them any attention.
The clopping of horses' hooves grew louder and she resisted turning, since no one else was, but soon the horse passed them and Jane couldn't stop her eyes from going wide at the figure atop it, a man in dark leather and gold and silver armor, wearing a shining gold helmet with one horn protruding back over his head and two more almost making a circle as they stretched up toward each other, a golden cape billowing out behind him over the horse's back, and a sword that looked just like Loki's hanging at his side. The closest thing she'd ever seen to that helmet was Loki's, but his was shaped very differently, and taller. Otherwise, she felt like she'd stepped into the Middle Ages. Her hand shot up to her mouth to stifle nervous laughter. I have just stepped into the Middle Ages. Just on a different realm. The horse and rider hurried on, taking a right further ahead of them and fading from view.
"Einherjar," Loki leaned down and whispered as they too continued onward. "Asgard's professional army and guard force. If you meet one, I wouldn't ask him if he's dead or drinks mead from a goat. He might not find it as amusing as I did." He stood back up and let the gray hood of his cloak hide his smirk.
Jane shivered. "Noted." She thought then of the Einherjar she had met, sort of, via satellite phone. Jolgeir. His voice had sounded kind and genial, and she hadn't pictured him looking anything like that. She stole a quick glance at Loki, remembering how scared she'd been at first when she found him sitting in her room, in her chair, wearing his full Asgardian get-up, helmet and all. Thor, when she'd first seen him all armored and caped up, had made a similarly strong impression on her…but that one hadn't been fear. She supposed they were going for a "statement" with the way they dressed here. And they're succeeding, she thought.
She hadn't had a chance yet to compare any women's shoes to her strangely transformed ones, but she no longer felt so overdressed in her long rose quartz dress and matching vine-patterned shawl. The part of her that continued to worry that this was a mistake shrank with every step, supplanted with excitement that tingled over her like something physical as they drew closer to the city and perfectly trimmed lawn and trees with a kaleidoscope of green and gold and orange and red leaves gave way to immaculate gardens and statues and picturesque plazas and then the first few buildings, whose height ramped up quickly to soar far over her head. Loki quietly told her what the first few buildings they passed were, but soon people were all around them and they fell silent. She wished for a pair of heavily tinted sunglasses. Not because the sun was so overwhelmingly bright – though just seeing the sun again, a sun, any sun, was a novelty she kept wanting to look up at – but because then she wouldn't have to put so much effort into hiding her amazement at everything she saw.
Loki led Jane down familiar streets, a right, two lefts, another right, and then they were walking alongside the broad street that, further ahead of them, ran in front of the palace. He kept his head lowered, ostensibly – and in part truly – to keep an eye on Jane, but mostly because there were many familiar faces about. Those who were in this past a thousand years old were but two thousand in the present, perhaps with a bit of gray in their hair then that they lacked as they strolled around him now, but not looking terribly different with or without the passage of those thousand years.
Jane found herself pressed close to Loki's side, for the area they walked in now was really crowded. A blond boy of maybe seven or eight who was draped out over the branch of a tree happened to look down her way; Jane couldn't help smiling at him, and he smiled back. She forced her eyes forward again, unable to stop the flash of worry. Despite all the people milling around them in colored cloth and dark leathers and shiny metals, the little boy was the first person she'd actually made eye contact with. Eye contact isn't going to change history. Unless…maybe if it distracted him, and he fell. Her head whipped around to make sure that hadn't happened, and saw the boy was still there, now sliding out further on the limb as a red-headed little boy pulled himself onto the branch, too.
"We should stop here. Try to find a good spot to watch from," Loki said. If they went much further the risk would increase.
"Watch what?" Loki was looking out toward the street – empty except for a few people crossing it – in the direction they'd come from.
"The parade. You said you wanted to see a performance," he said with a smirk, looking down at Jane at the last. Her reaction, the surprise and delight in her widening eyes, was what he'd hoped it might be.
"You're in the parade?" she whispered.
"I am. Or I was."
"Thor, too?" Jane asked, trying to tamp down on some of her eagerness, conscious of Loki's antipathy toward Thor but not wary enough of it at the moment to not ask.
"Yes," he said, looking back out into the street.
Jane followed his gaze, and found herself looking at Asgardian backs. Standing behind children would have been a better bet, but there weren't many of those around, and those that were were younger ones; Jane spotted a few of them sitting on presumably a parent's shoulders. "I can't see," she finally said.
"Really?" Loki said in mock astonishment, one eyebrow going up as he leaned down to make sure Jane could see him despite the hood of the cloak. "I think we discussed this at some point, didn't we? I concluded that taller is better."
She rolled her eyes. "Taller would be easier in these circumstances."
"Better. I suppose you could always go ask those children for help climbing up the tree back there."
"Come on, Lo- Lu-" Jane cut herself off, racking her brains for the name Loki had given her.
"Lakmund," he whispered. "You're terrible at this," he said in his normal voice.
Jane sighed and shook her head. "Lakmund, can't we move somewhere else, where I can actually see? Without having to climb a tree?"
Loki nodded and dipped his head, then tapped his open palm against the arm of the man in front of him. "If you wouldn't mind," he said when the man turned, "the lady cannot quite see from here."
"Of course," the man said, then turned back and spoke to those around him. Jane couldn't hear what he said, but the people shuffled closer together and a few of the men stepped behind the women, who were plenty tall themselves. She understood now why Loki had asked her about shoes with heels. There probably wasn't an adult around who was under five-eight here.
"You have my thanks," Loki said, stepping forward with Jane, up to the strip of grass that separated them from the road. Jane started to say something, and his hand shot up to her elbow and pinched it through the shawl. She gave him a startled and mildly annoyed look.
"It was nothing. Good Harvest Day."
"Good Harvest Day," Loki echoed with a nod. "No talking to others, dearest," he then whispered directly into Jane's ear. "You would sound strange to them."
Jane wrinkled her brow, but she supposed now wasn't the time to ask. Just then a raucous, awful, grating noise came from somewhere off in the distance to their left, and every head turned in that direction. Around her a few hands went up to ears, but then the noise went away, followed a second later by a rumbling that sounded almost like thunder, except it didn't come from the sky. The rumbling then settled into a steady rhythm – the beating of drums, Jane realized. The other sound then picked up again, but this time it wasn't noise, it was music, some tune that Jane of course didn't recognize. The drums faded away and only the other instrument remained. Clarinet? she wondered. Carlo played the clarinet and it didn't sound quite like that. The word "bassoon" came randomly to mind, but Jane realized she didn't know what a bassoon sounded like, or really even what it looked like. "Wind instrument," in the end was the best she could do. The music got louder, and when she leaned out over the strip of grass, in the distance she could see people slowly approaching on the street. Small people. Children. Loki and Thor?
Loki watched Jane out of the corner of his eye around the hood of the cloak. If she was still worrying about her presence here having dire consequences for the universe, she was doing an excellent job of hiding it. People had moved over to make room for them. Generations could now be suffering because a couple of individuals' view of a parade changed. He gave a smirk, and when his attention refocused on Jane, her obvious delight was so infectious his smile softened a bit. He shifted his eyes and saw what she saw; the parade was approaching.
The toes of Jane's right foot tapped to the beat as she impatiently waited for the young musicians to get closer. It was a few more minutes before they were close enough to make them out individually, and she was taken aback to see there were actually only eleven of them creating music so loud, all in a single row stretching across the width of the street. Other children, largely hidden from view, trailed behind them. The kids in that front row were playing long wooden pipes that flared out at the end, angled a little above perpendicular, elongating their necks and obscuring their faces. They drew even closer, stepping in rhythm rather than really marching as she might expect, all boys around eight or ten years old, each with matching sleeveless leather vests over their shirts and with various leather accessories. As the angle at which she watched them changed, their faces became more visible. Jane suddenly gasped. "Oh my-" She pressed her lips together, then began again, more quietly. "Is that you? In the middle?" The little boy in question was the tallest in the row, with a long serious face and a head of thick dark hair cut above the collar of his green shirt.
"Have I changed so little in the last millennium?" he whispered with a small smile, not taking his eyes off his younger self. For Jane this was a novelty of some sort, a thrilling glimpse of a world she'd never seen, a time long before her birth, a satisfaction of the curiosity that was one of her defining traits. For him, it was a look behind a curtain thought irrevocably, permanently closed. A life he'd once lived. A world he'd once loved. A day he'd been so excited for that sleep the night before had come only with difficulty and admonishment. Jane had wanted to see something happy. He'd been uncontrollably happy this day.
The boys on the pipes had almost reached them, and Jane could now see beyond them, too. Behind them were rows of boys that got successively taller, these with swords that they waved about in some kind of routine, with each row seemingly performing a different one. Kids playing instruments in a parade was a pretty familiar concept, even if the instruments themselves were unfamiliar; kids swinging swords and miming Dread Pirate Roberts not so much. Tween and young teen girls with containers slung over their shoulders and long daggers at their hips flanked the sword-wielding boys, while older teen girls followed behind the boys, swinging something that gleamed in the sunlight, maybe swords, or daggers like the younger girls wore – they were still too far away for Jane to see them well. She tried hard to remind herself not to impose her own cultural values onto these people, for the display of children with weaponry was becoming rather unsettling.
It occurred to her then that she hadn't spotted Thor yet. She scanned the line of musicians again, unable to resist another smile at the young Loki, concentrating so hard on his playing. Seven of the eleven were fair-skinned blonds, but none of them particularly looked like Thor. She started looking more closely at the boys with the swords. There was one in the second row who was a little taller, a little thicker, hair about the right color, but she wasn't sure. "Which one is Thor?" she finally asked, remembering to keep her voice quiet.
"Can't you tell?" Loki asked sarcastically, his own eyes on Thor now that the youths had almost reached them. This was the Thor of his oldest memories, the Thor of unfailing confidence and exuberance, the Thor who'd been his closest friend and his protector, whether he needed any protecting or not. He'd loved him. Now he hated him. But when he looked at this boy, the hatred was turbulent and troubled rather than pure and refined. He had never hated this Thor, but this Thor was the same as the other, on the same path from friend and protector to arrogant heavy-handed domineering… Jane. He had to see this through Jane's eyes. This wasn't about him, and it wasn't about Thor. She'd probably given up on getting a real answer from him by now. "The one who looks like he thinks he could conquer an entire realm single-handedly. The center of the first line, behind me."
Jane's first thought was that all the boys met Loki's description, but her eyes went immediately to the location Loki then told her. He wasn't as tall as she expected, maybe not even as tall as Loki, but he was utterly adorable in his layers of red and silver and leather, a bit of baby fat still in his full cheeks, eyes narrowed as he swung and thrust his sword with all he had in perfect coordination with the others in his row. He really didn't look anything like the man who'd emerged from the dust after destroying the giant robot thing in New Mexico, yet when she looked at the determination in his face, she could see a spark of that man in the eleven-year-old boy with his short blond hair parted neatly to the side.
"He was angry about that, actually," Loki continued after a moment. "He had just moved up to the second level, but he didn't know the routine well enough yet, so he had to stay in the first line." Loki himself had been in a similar situation, having recently turned ten, and while he probably did know the first line's routine well enough, he'd been more excited at that point to finally be able to play his bellpipe in a parade and hadn't sought to join the line.
Jane tried to process that, that the lines were related to skill levels and also to age, which explained the pretty steady height progression. She realized everything she was seeing signified something, with some formal system behind it all, but before she could think about it further Loki and the rest of the younger boys with the pipes suddenly went to their knees, now playing something that seemed less like an actual song, something simpler and more repetitive. The ten rows of boys behind them stopped as well, going down to one knee and holding their swords out in front of them, tips pointed downward. The girls then ran in amongst them, each taking a position behind one of the boys, and in a flurry of motion pulled out white cloths that had been threaded through leather bracers on their arms. These they proceeded to fashion into blindfolds, tying them behind each boy's head. "What are they doing?" she whispered, watching worriedly as Thor held perfectly still and had a white cloth secured over his eyes.
"This is why you have to know the routine perfectly."
When everyone was back in position someone gave a whistle – Jane couldn't see who – and the boys got back to their feet. The music from the pipers changed again, and at a particularly loud note from the already loud instruments, the entire group, some hundred fifty, two hundred boys, began moving forward as one. With the first steps the swords were lifted higher, and the routine started over. The pipes struck a long low note, and every boy behind them turned to the right, stepping sideways now, their movements with their swords seamless. They were right in front of her and Loki now, and Jane saw that the older boys in the later rows were doing complicated moves with their entire bodies, lunges and extra steps and even leaps, but still with the same steady forward progress as the younger ones. The pipers struck the same long low note in the midst of their song and the boys that followed made another turn to the right, now walking backward and still remaining in perfect formation. At a higher warbling note less than a minute later they turned 180 degrees, now walking forward again as they continued their sword drill.
Soon Jane couldn't see Thor or Loki – the younger one – anymore, and watched spellbound as the oldest boys, teenagers, executed moves that would have been stunning even had they not been completely blind. The girls behind them were carrying out simpler moves, without blindfolds, and with swords that appeared a little shorter than the boys', Jane could now see. Behind the girls were several horses pulling large carts. A change in sound from the pipers turned her head to the right, where the boys were going back to their knees and the girls were rushing around them again and untying their blindfolds. "That was incredible. We were lucky we got to see it," she said to Loki – the older one.
"They aren't done. They'll do it again. Everyone gets the show. And the next one is the most important. They'll be performing for the king and queen."
"Really? Up there?" Jane leaned out over the grass again, this time straining to see to their right, but all she could make out was more people crowded alongside the street. "Can we get closer?"
"No," Loki said.
"But-"
"No," he repeated, a little louder than he'd meant to, and noticed the man next to him glancing his way. How quickly you forget your fears, Jane, he thought, but he was well aware that Jane and her fears had nothing to do with his refusal. Jane may want to see them, but he had no desire to.
Jane was disappointed. She'd never seen a king or queen, or president, or prime minister, or any other such person in real life, and it would have been cool to see this king and queen, Thor's and Loki's parents. Then she had to correct the previous thought. She had seen a king. She'd kissed a king, briefly. Acting king, she corrected herself again. Close enough. She sighed, remembering the moment. It wasn't actually the best kiss of her life – it had been kind of rushed, and his helmet had kind of bumped into her chin – but it was fervent and deep and left her breathless afterward.
Loki watched as Jane's face went all soft, relaxed, introspective, wistful, and he had the sudden suspicion that she was thinking of Thor – not the one on the street, but the fully grown one she'd fallen for like so many others – followed by a sudden desire to put a stop to it. "You asked once if I'd ever been in love."
Pulled from her reverie, Jane whipped her head around to Loki, then out to the group of people in front of them now, and her eyes went wide. Adults of varying ages – some with gray hair and some who looked no older than the oldest boys from the other group – were doing what Jane had to assume was magic. Their attention was on a plethora of long pieces of brightly-colored yarn or twine that floated a little above their heads, and shaped themselves into impressive representations of creatures and rainbows and flowers and fruits and vegetables – some familiar and some not. Each person had a weapon at his or her hip or back, except for the young children, Thor and Loki's age and younger, who held hands and skipped around in a weaving line underneath the display they were constantly looking up at. These children didn't seem to following a particular routine, and when the adults spotted a young child among the parade-watchers, that child was invited to join in and would run out and simply grab onto another's hand. "Is one of your old girlfriends here?" Jane asked, eyes still fixed on the children and their magical sky, wondering which of them might have caught a young Loki's eye.
"Right there. Standing next to the older man," Loki said, staring out at her with a smile that held a certain fondness. There had been times he'd wanted to throw her off a cliff – and it had been mutual – but there had been good times as well, and enough years had passed that he was able to mostly laugh at the heights of animosity they'd sometimes reached, and look back warmly at the happier times between them, when it had seemed no one understood them but each other. The smile turned bitter. She never knew she was with a Frost Giant.
Jane, meanwhile, was glancing back and forth between the woman Loki had indicated – tall and slender, long curly reddish-blond hair, knee-length blue shirt-dress over leather pants, shining silver bracers up the length of her forearms – and Loki. Because this was a woman, looking to be in maybe her early twenties, and not the little girl and the tale of puppy love she'd expected. "Uh…Luh…Lakmund, that looks a little illegal."
Loki laughed and began to turn away from the street, in toward Jane, putting a hand out to urge her to go with him. He could tell she was reluctant to do so by the way she kept glancing back out at the street and twisted around to see more even as they walked away, but soon they'd pulled away from the crowd and he led her under a tree for some privacy and some shade. "I didn't know she existed at this age, Jane. It was around a century after this. She's nearly two hundred years older than I am."
"She's aging really well. How does that work, by the way? You said you and Thor are ten and eleven, and you look like kids. So…at some point you just virtually stop aging?"
"Only from your perspective. The rate of physical aging slows, yes. Beginning first from around age ten, then dramatically at around age twenty."
"Like…puberty and adulthood?"
"I suppose. Other changes in the body take place as well – increased strength and stamina, flesh and bones less vulnerable to injury. When children we are just as susceptible to illness and injury as you."
"It must be really hard on parents. They must worry constantly. Human parents worry constantly," Jane said, remembering all the books one of her friends had devoured when pregnant and how she'd agonized over everything she ate and everything she bought and later, every unexplained cry or change in behavior.
"I wouldn't know," Loki said, looking away as though to keep an eye on their surroundings, but really to hide the shudder at the thought of what child he might have brought into the world. There'd been a time on Svartalfheim in particular when he'd acted recklessly and paid little heed to any potential consequences of his actions. If he'd left one of those Dark Elves with child, would it have come out a sickly shade of blue? Or frozen the unfortunate woman from the inside out? Or would whatever magic that made him look and feel Aesir be passed on to the cursed child?
"What's her name?"
Loki glanced automatically back in the direction of the parade, though he couldn't see through the bystanders to the street. "Maeva. Maeva Mordidottir. And the older man next to her was Mordi."
Jane nodded. She hadn't really expected the name to be familiar, but she'd thought it was possible she might have come across it in the mythology book Darcy had sent her. She smiled and bit her lip. It would be so fun to share this with Darcy, who would have her laughing and rolling her eyes all across Asgard. She regarded Loki for a moment, as he again looked elsewhere. Sharing it with him, thus far at least, wasn't half bad.
"We should go," Loki said, and didn't have to wait long for the response he expected.
"No, please, let's stay a little longer," Jane said immediately. "We've hardly seen anything."
"All right, I suppose we can stay a little longer." If you insist. "Come on, we can go to the Central Market. It probably isn't too crowded yet."
Jane's smile came back. A Market. On Asgard. On Harvest Day. It must be amazing! She followed Loki's lead, down a few more blocks, past the towering golden palace she tried not to stare at, that Loki had first identified from a blurry blob of energy on imagery captured by the probe they'd sent via Pathfinder. Thor and Loki grew up in that thing, she thought. At least she assumed they had. A few turns took them into an area with streets that looked less like polished marble and more like old, weathered stone. Trees with fall leaves and chirping birds dotted the grounds, fountains adorned small courtyards, and one tall stone building had beside it a small pond with red and white ducks, fed by a waterfall coming off a ledge atop the building and somehow not making any splashes at all as Jane walked right past it.
The Central Market, when they reached it, was self-evident. It was several blocks of displays and stands and carts, a small crowd milling about, some shopping and some just standing around and talking, and none of the horses that had plied some of the other roads. They wound up in front of a stall with a table and several shelves stacked with bins of colorful spices, and Jane was reminded of the pictures of Middle Eastern souqs she'd seen in some travel show a couple of years ago.
"Would you like to try something?" the woman behind the stall asked, holding out a small metal scoop. It startled Jane, reminding her that she was actually part of this world and this time, for this moment, and not some disembodied observer.
"No, thank you," Loki answered smoothly before Jane could respond. "The lady and I are just out for a stroll. Good Harvest Day."
"Good Harvest Day. And I'll be here if you change your mind. I guarantee top quality," the woman said with a smile.
"Come, Jana," Loki said, nudging Jane away with a light hand to her back.
"I wish we could buy something," Jane said, eyes still darting from stall to stall, eyes fixing on a display table laden with books.
"We can, if you like."
"No, we can't. What if I bought a book that someone else was supposed to buy, and learn something really important from? What if I-"
"Please don't bore me. A coin here or there, or a potato or an apple or a book, none of these are going to change the course of history or bring the cosmos to ruin."
"You don't know that," she couldn't help mumbling. He was probably right, but the butterfly effect theory said he could be wrong.
It was getting more crowded, and Jane realized she could no longer hear the pipes in the distance. The parade must be over. A little girl with long blond hair and a pale blue dress ran her way through the crowd and collided with Jane's legs, looking up at her and clearly sparing her little thought before pushing past and on her way. She smiled for the girl, who'd just run into someone from another realm and a thousand years in the future and barely given her half a glance.
Jane started forward again, but then felt Loki's hand circling around her wrist, over the golden bracer, and squeezing just enough to be uncomfortable. "Stop," he whispered in her ear.
"What?" she whispered back.
"We'll wait here a moment. My younger self is near."
"How do you know?" Jane asked, immediately looking around for a dark-haired boy in a green shirt and leather vest. Loki's hand then went to her jaw and turned her head to face his. She blinked nervously.
"I see the guards. And you looking around like that might draw their attention. We're having a nice little chat, you and I, Jana and Lakmund. Yes?"
"Yes," Jane murmured, heart beating rapidly. Drawing the attention of guards would be disastrous, just the kind of thing she'd feared.
Loki smiled warmly at her and caressed her chin with his thumb before drawing his hand away. To anyone watching, it should appear as no more than a mildly intimate moment between a man and a woman. He was just grateful Jane hadn't reacted badly to his unexpected touch. There was no reason this had to go badly; neither of them had done anything wrong, and looking suspicious, if they did, wasn't against Asgardian law. It could, in fact, be fun. And with that his mind was changed. "Good," he finally said, trying to project calm with his voice and expression, for Jane was still clearly nervous. "Jana, do you remember the Einherjar you asked me about? The one you spoke with earlier?"
Flustered by fright, Loki's closeness and conspiratorial voice, and the sudden mention of Jolgeir, Jane simply nodded.
"Would you like to see him?"
/
Well, I don't know if you enjoyed this, but I can tell you I had oodles of fun writing it. A few notes -
(1) The instrument young Loki played has been mentioned in several chapter, most significantly in Ch. 72 "Loss." It wouldn't be a terrible idea to take a look back at the scene in question there, a flashback. The bellpipe was first mentioned in Ch. 68 "Space-Time." (Yes, I've discovered the joy of Advanced Google Searching my own story. Sigh. It's what you get when you cross 700K words, folks.) ;-) Obsessive crazy lady that I am, I researched historical and culture-specific pipes before settling on the two Loki played as a kid. The bellpipe is based on the "Rauschpfeife." If you'd like to hear what it sounds like, go to YouTube and search "Rauschpfeife/Shawm Sopran Renaissance". It is one awesome Polish song that I'd like to own. If you want to hear a Rauschpfeife demonstrated, search "Rauschpfeife medieval shawm in recorder pitch", or, for basically the same video auf deutsch, "Mittelalter Rauschpfeife in Blockflötengriffweise (LAUT!)". Yeah, it's loud/laut.
(2) There was some confusion on the last chapter, concerning Loki's thought "His Jane Foster." That bit was in italics, meaning Loki's direct thoughts, ie, "his" referred not to Loki, but to Thor. But this stuff is ripe for confusion when "he" can be either of them. (How many of you fellow writers share my pain in trying to write a conversation between multiple people of the same gender?!) It took me a while to figure out to resolve the confusion without losing the style of how I wanted to express that bit; in the end, I added the sentence "Her loyalty lies with him" right after the one in question. I think that makes it clear this is not Loki referring to himself...hopefully, and is in line with the rationale I had in mind here for Loki having these thoughts. Whatever kindness Jane shows him, in his mind, can't be more than an artifact of the strange circumstance they find themselves in at the Pole during the winter, and will come to a swift end when the station reopens.
(3) Loki wore down my will power just like Jane's, and I went ahead and posted the first chapter of my current "notebook story," Trials. What Loki's remembering in the beginning, about the arena? Yep, from that story. The Trials were referenced in Beneath Ch. 76 "Questions." (Yes, Advanced Google Search.) Trials is sort of a coming-of-age, rite-of-passage story starring (who else?) Loki, with Thor playing an important role and the rest of the family with its role as well. End advertisement. ;-)
Previews for Ch. 98: Loki does enjoy a bit of calculated risk; there are some familiar Asgardians running around; and there's some more talking and what you might call sweetness, in one way or another.
Excerpt:
"Jane, turn now," he whispered harshly, ensuring she did so with a controlled push. It was a close call. He hadn't noticed them though he'd known they had to be near, but it was crowded and his view was limited.
"What is it? Do we need the stuff in the bag?" Jane asked, clutching the rose-colored shawl more tightly around her and glancing at her wrists adorned with etched golden bracers instead of the devices that would take them safely back to Earth.