Sigyn looked at Euthalia for a long moment. Her arms were beginning to tremble.
Euthalia reached for the bowl. “Let me help you—”
“No!” Sigyn’s voice was more worried than harsh. “No, we can’t risk jostling it.” She leaned further forward and bent her elbows, adjusting the strain from her arms to her back. “A little longer.”
“Why?” asked Loki, looking to Euthalia. “If you do not believe this is your doing—and I do not agree or disagree, I only ask—if you do not believe this is your fault, then why work to release me?”
Euthalia made a gesture to encompass Loki, the serpent, the cave. “Is it not obvious? Even one guilty of heinous crimes should not be tortured.”
“Never?” Loki asked. “Even if his crimes were heinous? Not, of course, that mine were.”
Euthalia shook her head. “If he is awful, if he has done hideous, unspeakable things—executed, maybe, if he cannot live among men and the laws of men. But not tortured, or else we are no better than he.”
Sigyn bit her lip as she shifted a leg. “It is nearly full,” she said to Loki.
“No,” Loki urged. “Not yet. A little longer.”
The dark, viscous fluid glistened in the single candle’s light, shivering near the rim as the bowl trembled. It looked malevolent even merely pooling in the bowl.
Sigyn shook her head. “I must, or it will overflow. A spill would be worse.”
“No,” began Loki. “Sigyn—”
“I will be quick,” she said, her voice tight and pleading. “So fast, my love. So quick.”
Loki began to curse, loosing such a stream of foul profanity as Euthalia had never heard even among her father’s warriors, among the sailors of Byzantium, from men dying against their will. He squeezed his eyes shut and he shouted obscenities and Sigyn pulled the bowl of venom away.
The snake’s mouth poured forth its acid poison, and drops fell into Loki’s scarred face. He screamed in fresh agony.
Sigyn ran with the bowl, holding it extended and moving as smoothly and quickly as she could over the rough ground, and when she had reached the edge of the candle’s circle of light she pitched the acid forward into the darkness. It hissed as it hit the stone, audible even over Loki’s shrieks.
Loki wrenched as the venom trickled over his face and burnt into him, convulsing against the ropy intestines which held immobile. The stones did not break beneath him, but the ground began to shake with his paroxysm, groaning with the strain of his struggles.
Euthalia stumbled with the trembling earth. She snatched at her pinafore and extended it over his face, trying to shield him. The snake hissed at her, and fresh poison burned through the cloth like quick fire and struck him. Euthalia leapt back as her clothing hissed and smoked with the venom.
Sigyn ran back, faster now that she did not have to take care with the bowl, and shoved it again between the snake and her husband. Loki’s convulsions slowed, and he moaned wordlessly.
Sigyn knelt beside the first protruding rock, the one which held his shoulders, and whispered apologies to him, pressing her cheek to his dark hair. Euthalia felt helpless and removed. She was useless here.
“Can’t you remove the serpent?” she asked. She felt stupid even speaking. Of course they would have thought of that.
“More venom,” Sigyn said softly. “I cannot reach it without setting down my bowl—and even if someone were to help me, angering it only produces more venom.”
“And the binding?”
“Firm magic,” rasped Loki. “They are a binding of my own flesh and my own blood. They will not break.”
“Must you carry the bowl so far to empty it?”
“Look around you,” snapped Sigyn.
The ground about Loki’s three stones was slightly concave, Euthalia noted. If Sigyn poured the venom here, it would roll back and scorch Loki’s feet. Perhaps that was how the ground had been etched, before she had learned to carry it further.
Euthalia’s throat felt raw and swollen as if she’d been screaming along with Loki. “I only want to free you and find Vidar,” she said miserably. “Only these two things, and I am helpless to do either.”
“Not everything is yours to do,” Sigyn said softly, and Euthalia looked at her. Sigyn glanced up briefly and then quickly returned her eyes to the bowl, already puddled with venom. “You cannot return my sons,” she said. “No one can. They died in Midgard, and they were too young to be counted as warriors. They will not come to feast in Valhöll.”
Loki licked his cracked lips. “Their sister will not torment the innocent.”
“Their sister!” repeated Sigyn. “They are not siblings, Loki, for all they share a father. Hel is a monster, even by Jötunn standards. Do not think to comfort me with empty lies.”
“I’m sorry,” Euthalia said, her voice thick with grief for children she had not known and regret for a punishment she had not encouraged. “I’m so sorry. I will do all I can to see you released.”
Sigyn looked at her, meeting her eyes for the first time. “Please.”
Euthalia nodded. Then she looked at Loki. “You knew,” she said. “You knew I loved him, and that if I looked at him, I would lose him. You did destroy what we had.”
“No,” said Loki. “You destroyed what you had. Was it I who screamed upon seeing what was in your bed? Did I recoil when you learned what it was you’d opened your legs to, what face you’d kissed, what horror you’d pulled close in the dark? No. I gave you vision instead of darkness. What you did with that vision is yours alone.”
“Like you gave Hodr a mistletoe wand to throw!” snapped Euthalia. “If you are so full of knowledge, tell me how to break his curse!”
“Oh, I could,” said Loki. He grinned, scabbed lips splitting, and rolled his eyes to meet hers. “But would you believe me?”
Ice lanced through Euthalia’s chest. No, no she dared not. Loki spoke half-truths, crafted to work the greatest harm. He might tell her a charm which would instead worsen the curse. He might tell her how to break the curse but use the result to create a greater problem. It was a dilemma, needing to ask him and needing to distrust him.
Loki laughed, watching her. Sigyn looked away, avoiding Euthalia’s eyes.
Euthalia turned and started toward the faint daylight and Heimdallr’s escape.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Euthalia went haunted about her chores in Sessrúmnir, with Loki’s screams and taunts echoing in her head. Her discomfort reached beyond knowing his brutal agony. She did not want to see him tortured by the burning venom, but she could not stand how he mocked her and tore at her love with Vidar. Why? What made him so hateful?
Chaos, she recalled. Chaos, to counter harmony. Sigyn had warned her that Jötnar were meant to destroy. Perhaps Loki simply could not help himself.
But no, there were things Loki loved and wanted to preserve. Nari and Narfi—and Sigyn’s peace of mind, reassuring her that they would not be tormented by his daughter Hel. There were bits of humanity in Loki, if humanity were the right word for an inhuman Jötunn.
“Little Greek!”
Euthalia had yet to hear Freyja use her given name. But she could not refuse her mistress’s call, not without risking a blow to the head or a jerk to her hair. “Yes?”
“Come with me.”
Freyja had looked startled, for just a heartbeat, when Euthalia had returned from her trip, and Euthalia had wondered, for just a heartbeat, if Freyja had hoped she would not return—that Angrboda would devour her like she had talked of devouring Sigyn. But the thought was too terrifying to hold for more than a moment, and Euthalia let it slip away, keeping only a lingering relief that she slept with the other thralls well away from the goddess.
She followed Freyja to one of the external storehouses made of earth and wattle. “I am having the Vanir and Æsir to feast tonight,” said Freyja, “and I asked Idun to send over her magical epli for us. But they have been spilled in my storehouse and mixed with the other nuts and ber
ries.”
Freyja gestured, and Euthalia looked into the storage hut. The floor was nearly hidden beneath a thick scattering of nuts and berries, a tapestry of colors and textures in the sunlight spilling in from the door.
“It would be a grave insult to serve ordinary fruits and berries instead of Idun’s magic,” explained Freyja archly. “So you must sort them for the feast. You have—” Freyja glanced at the sky—“perhaps as much as two hours.”
Euthalia stared at the harvest-rich floor. Berries of all colors were mingled with nuts of many shapes and sizes, and Idun’s magic epli could be any of them. “But, how am I to tell which are which? There are so many—”
“How you accomplish your task is not my concern,” snapped Freyja. Euthalia could see the small creases of pleasure about her eyes. “But if you are not finished before the guests arrive, I will beat you myself.”
Equal parts rage and despair rose within Euthalia. “How have I offended you? This has nothing to do with Vidar or Sigyn! Nothing!”
“No,” agreed Freyja. “But you are my thrall and you must do the tasks I set you. Do you think I will be able to bend Odin’s ear if I am shamed before him for spoiled nuts and berries which carry no magic? Of course not. So you must do this, even if you think it has nothing to do with your lost husband.”
She smiled, teeth flashing like a predator’s, and turned away to return to her hall. She did not look back, confident in her swaggering triumph.
Euthalia stepped into the storehouse, taking care to work her feet gently down so not to crush any of the richly-colored berries. The entire floor was covered with the mixture. Had every container in the storehouse been inverted along with Idun’s epli?
Euthalia pushed aside enough of the fruits and nuts to make space to kneel, and she folded her knees to the dirt floor. She scooped up a double-handful and stared at them in her cupped hands.
Impossible. Even sorting the produce just into the various types of berries and nuts would be a challenge within the limited time. Separating them also by magic was unthinkable. Euthalia had no idea which pieces were Idun’s magic produce and which were merely nuts and berries. Who had brought them? Had Freyja created this chaos only to torment Euthalia?
She sifted the collections of berries and nuts in her hands, letting them spill messily through her fingers and roll across the floor. There was no difference among them. She knew each type of berry, each shape of nut, but there was no magic to them. Perhaps there was no magic at all—only Freyja’s lie that somehow they were different.
The sobs had crept upon her before she realized, and her first tears took her by surprise. But she did not fight them, and she let her sobs build. There was no way to distinguish the magic, and no time to separate the produce, and no way to find Vidar.
Someone brushed past her, and she choked off a cry as she looked up, ashamed to have been caught weeping. But the woman who saw her did not slow. It was a thrall woman, dressed in dull and faded clothing, and she moved to the far side of the little hut and squatted to the floor.
Another person entered, and another. Two more thralls, a man and a woman. Each squatted or knelt and began to sort nuts and fruits into piles, using just the tips of their fingers.
Euthalia looked around at them. She knew them, recognized them from Freyja’s hall and others, but she did not know them well—not so well that they should share in her task of their own will. “Why?” she asked. “Why are you helping me?”
A woman answered without looking up from her work. “We can help you in this thing which you cannot do.”
Euthalia rubbed tears from her cheek. “Which I cannot?”
“You cannot tell the magic,” the woman answered. She nudged two nearly identical beech nuts beside one another. “These are the same to you.”
Euthalia shuffled nearer on her knees and reached out to pick them up. “They are both beech nuts. I cannot say anything more about them.”
The woman smiled a pale, weary smile. “You can pick them up.” She reached out and took one, rolling it in her hand. “We can handle only the natural epli.” She reached for the other, lifting it slightly with her fingertips and dropping it to the floor, where it bounced and rolled. “The magical epli of Idun burn us.”
“Burn you!” Euthalia reached for the woman’s hand.
But the thrall pulled her fingers away. “It is not so severe as that.” She began sorting again. “You are the wife of a god, so you are meant to take them. You have dined on them yourself. But we cannot hold them long, and we dare not eat them. Which is, I am sure, the purpose of it. Idun’s epli are for the gods and goddesses alone. Not the thralls who serve them.”
Euthalia thought of Birna bringing her fruits which she encouraged but never took herself. She had never guessed they were Idun’s magical food which sustained the gods. But of course, Sigyn had been in Asgard long enough for generations of her Midgard family to have passed, and human brides would need the magical food to continue with their husbands.
But the magic repelled the human thralls. “Then you harm yourself to help me. Why? Again, why are you helping me?”
The woman deftly rolled berries and nuts to one side or another, testing each with a brush of the fingers. “You are kind to us,” she said simply. “You said thralls were still hearts and minds. We are insects to her. She is a goddess, and we are not, indeed, but she relies upon us for her comfort. And we are insects to her. Not to you.”
Euthalia stared at the woman who went on sorting, never looking up, and she felt a dull hollow open in her stomach. She had never thought of the thralls particularly, had never gone out of her way to be kind even after she had become one of them. Yes, she appreciated Birna and enjoyed her company, and yes, she had been polite to the servants when she had gone to Valhöll, but kind—had she ever been kind to them? Sought them out to give a gift, tell a joke, do a favor?
But the men and women around her paid little attention to her guilty wonder, as they slid berries and nuts from one pile to another, organizing neat divisions about the floor.
They would need baskets. Euthalia shook herself and rose to bring empty containers from the rear of the storehouse. “Which are the magical ones?” she asked.
They each pointed to a pile, a smaller selection of beech nuts or elderberries. As the magical epli did not trouble her, Euthalia knelt to gently gather each of the designated piles into a separate basket, taking care not to bruise the berries. She lined these along one wall and started gathering the ordinary fruits and nuts into baskets which she kept separated on the other side. Gaps began to widen in the multi-colored carpet of harvest.
If she could handle the magical epli as the thralls could not—then she was not entirely like them. The wife of a god could handle the epli. She was still the wife of a god. Vidar was still her husband. She had not been abandoned entirely.
The thought warmed her with a hot strength which made the baskets light. She was still his wife.
As the thralls worked, she collected their sortings. At one point she went out and brought back water and flatbread for them to share before returning to their task.
The sun had slanted through the door and was turning the earthen floor golden with its evening autumn light when the thralls began to rise from the floor. “They are sorted,” the woman said. “You can collect the rest.”
“Thank you,” Euthalia said urgently. “Thank you, thank you.”
The woman reached out and took Euthalia’s hand. “Torfrid,” she said. “My name is Torfrid.”
Euthalia bit her cheek in quick shame. She should have thought to ask. “Thank you, Torfrid.”
Torfrid pressed Euthalia’s hand briefly, and then turned and left with the others.
Euthalia knelt and gathered the remaining piles, cupping handfuls into their respective baskets. She was crawling across the floor after an escaped gooseberry when a silhouette darkened the door.
“How is your work coming?” inquired a sweetly malicious voice.
Euthalia leapt to her feet and turned back to Freyja. “The task you’ve set me is finished,” she said. She reached to roll the berry from her palm into the woven basket beside her. “All is sorted for your guests tonight.”
But Freyja ignored her, staring around at the empty floor. “You—how did you work so quickly?” she asked. But as she turned back to Euthalia, it was plain she did not want to be answered. “That was good work, girl,” she bit off in a tone which made the words a threat.
Euthalia bowed her head and suppressed a smile which could ruin her.
“As a reward for your diligence,” Freyja said, “you may serve in my hall tonight.”
Euthalia’s heart quickened. Would Odin come? Of course he would—if the Æsir and Vanir were gathering, he would not be absent. Would she be able to speak with him about Vidar?
“Thank you,” she said, trying to keep the anticipation and hope from her voice. Freyja glared at her, and she added, “Mistress. Thank you, mistress.”
But she did not mind. Let Freyja think herself clever and cruel and controlling. She was sending Euthalia exactly where she wanted to go—to Odin, to ask after her husband.
That night, Euthalia carried the precious epli about the hall, distributing them to gods and goddesses who never thought of the pains they had caused that afternoon. When she had finished, and with a glance to be certain Freyja was looking elsewhere, Euthalia carried sweet mead to Odin’s chair. “My lord,” she said, “what have your ravens learned?”
He did not look at her. “Come to my hall tomorrow,” he said, “and we will speak of Vidar.”
Her heart spasmed in her torso. Was this an omen of good news? Of bad? “My lord—”
“No,” he said firmly. “Not here.”
And so she went away, her stomach twisted and her face held in a merciless mask of neutrality, lest Freyja guess she had been petitioning Odin for more than the honor of refilling his wine. And she served the rest of the night without looking again at the massive figure.
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