by Kim Wilkins
“Stories!” Verda’s white hand grabbed Aud’s wrist, her pale eyelashes blinking rapidly. “You don’t tell him stories about us, do you?”
“I . . .” Aud considered the version of events she had related to Loki. “I told him about Helgi, yes.”
“No! We’re done for!”
“He’ll find us! Whatever shall we do?”
“Please, sisters, please,” Aud said, her hands held palm up in front of her. “Don’t worry. He doesn’t know I see you. I haven’t given him a single clue to where you live.”
“He’s too crafty, too cunning,” Urd said. “He’ll take a tiny hint and work it out from there.”
“No, no, I promise you.”
Slowly, after repeated reassurances, the Norns began to calm. Finally, Aud asked them, “Why are you so afraid of Loki?”
They exchanged worried glances.
“We owe him,” Urd said.
“What for?”
“Never you mind.”
“If he finds us,” Skuld said, “he’ll expect payment.”
“You know, Aud, that we don’t change fate for just anyone,” Verda said. “We did it for you because we like you and because you were prepared to bend your neck to the punishment.”
“To restore the balance,” Urd added.
“Because we don’t conceive fate, we only make it manifest in the world,” Skuld said, indicating the threads all over the floor. “The threads of fate are mysterious and eternal.”
“But Loki . . .” Urd began.
Skuld took over the story. “We owe Loki a favor. Whatever he asks us, we have to grant. The consequences could be dire. He could ask us to unpick the past and make him the king of Valaskjálf. He could ask us to respin the future so that Ragnarok comes early. He could interfere in the lives of too many. He has no sense of right or wrong.”
“He must never find us,” Verda whispered, trembling at the thought. “Never.”
“You must be so careful.”
“Don’t you tell a soul where we live.”
“I’ll break your brooch!” Verda threatened. “You won’t see your little boy for a thousand years.”
“We shan’t tell you a thing about him.”
“Beware of us, Aud.”
Aud shook her head. “I won’t tell anyone. You know I won’t. I’ve never betrayed your trust. And don’t I bring you pretty things from the world outside?”
Verda touched the carved hair clasp, which she had pinned at the back of her neck. “Yes, that’s true.”
“Perhaps we shouldn’t worry,” Urd said.
Skuld fixed Aud with a snake’s glare. “She’ll give us no reason to worry.”
Aud reached out. “Verda. May I see Helgi once more before I go?”
“No,” snapped Verda, returning to her loom. “You’ve upset us all with your talk of Loki.”
“Go home,” Urd said, resuming her work. The bright thread flew from the loom to the floor. The candle guttered and dimmed.
“Come back with more presents,” Skuld said. “I’d like a hair clasp too.”
“And me,” said Urd.
“I’ll bring them as soon as I can.” She looked longingly at Verda, but the brooch was not forthcoming. She tried to burn the image of Helgi into her mind, knowing it was all the comfort she would have until her return. In the meantime, she would cherish the ache of his absence.
As Aud returned home through the dark passages, up the steep steps and across the passes and plains to Gammaldal, she considered the images of Helgi in her mind’s eye. He looked well, he looked happy. She had done the right thing. He was alive, even if he was beyond the circle of her arms. The memory of his accident haunted her with sickening regrets. If only she hadn’t let him ride Steypr. If only, if only, if only. By the time they met again, she would be a stranger to him, where once she had been the center of his bright world. Her heart was as leaden as the sky before a week of rain. If only.
From the top of the slope of Gammaldal she spotted a figure in the water of Sjáfjord. Vidar. She paused to watch him and felt a warm morsel of consolation. What a blessing that he had taken her in. His kindness had eased her first few years in Asgard, calmed her desperate unhappiness, taught her that good still existed in the world. Slowly, slowly, her heart had expanded again after the shock of losing Helgi and she had fallen unexpectedly in love.
Aud lifted her hand to wave and call out to Vidar, but then she noticed he was drawing runes. He was using seeing magic again.
This has something to do with Midgard.
Aud crept closer. Vidar would not be expecting her; she usually returned after dark. She found the shelter of a thicket of trees and watched him. He was stripped to the waist. Aud felt an unruly flutter of desire at seeing the long strands of his hair stuck to his wet shoulders. Her fingers could too easily imagine how it would feel to brush that hair away; her lips could too easily imagine the warm salty taste of his skin. The water wrapped around his lean, hard ribs as eagerly as her eyes. His body blocked the vision in the water, but she didn’t dare move any nearer. Then, just as she thought that the reasons for Vidar’s journey would remain a mystery, he shifted his weight to the left and Aud saw into the water.
A woman.
The barb of jealousy was as cold as it was swift. He would risk a journey across Bifrost for a Midgard woman? He would enter into confidence with Loki for a Midgard woman?
Vidar banished the vision and turned. In the unguarded instant before he saw Aud, she recognized on his face all the signs of love: longing, desire, tenderness. She realized her hands had balled into fists.
“Aud? he said, straightening his shoulders. “How long have you been there?”
She opened her mouth to lie, to say she had just arrived, to convince him she had seen nothing. Instead, she said, “Who is she?”
Vidar’s face grew ashen. He hastened out of the water. She turned to walk away from him. He grasped her shoulders with dripping hands.
“Aud, no. You mustn’t tell. You mustn’t.”
She shrugged him off. “I have nobody to tell.”
He seized her again, more roughly, and turned her to face him.
“Don’t tell Loki,” he said urgently.
Did he think her loyalty so easily swayed? The insult stung her. “Of course I won’t tell him.”
“This can’t get back to my father. The consequences would be . . .” Such a look of vulnerability crossed his face that she wanted to hold him and kiss his fears away. But he did not dream of kissing her. He was in love with somebody else.
“Who is she?”
“I won’t speak of it again.” He released her and strode toward the house. “Come inside. We’ll make some supper and forget what has passed here. Forget what you have seen.”
Aud followed him home. Pale streaks of sunset glimmered over the sea and jealousy coiled in her stomach like a poisonous snake.
Seven
Vidar and Loki arrived at Valaskjálf in the last dark wedge of night. On the distant horizon, pale light resolved. The horses’ breath was silver fog in the gloom.
“We’ll leave Arvak and Heror here,” Loki said, dismounting and giving Heror a pat on the flank. “The rest of the way we’ll go on foot.”
Vidar did as he was told and followed Loki through the dark woods. “I don’t like being so close to my father, Loki,” Vidar said as they tracked through the trees. “Are you going to explain why we’re here?”
Loki had been delighted and eager to help Vidar with his secret crossing to Midgard, but had refused so far to explain a single detail of his plan. Vidar, so long used to being self-sufficient, found this profoundly unnerving. A step into the beyond with only a vague idea of what lay below.
“It’s simple. Heimdall watches Bifrost at night.”
“Yes.” The bridge in and out of Asgard was only open during the hours of darkness.
“And Heimdall has exquisitely sensitive hearing . . . so that he can protect us from enemies who m
ight try to steal in.”
“Yes.”
“Then how do you suppose Heimdall sleeps? For he must sleep.”
Vidar shook his head, perplexed. “I’d never thought of it.”
“He must sleep during the day, when the light is brightest and the world is busiest. How can he manage even a moment’s rest when he can hear a fish’s tail in the river?”
“I don’t know.”
Loki smiled in the dark. “Aha! So you see, I am worth the trouble. I already know more than you do. Heimdall can only sleep under a cloak specially woven to block out all sights and sounds. It was made for him by the sea giant, Eistla. I know all this because Eistla admires no man more than she admires me.” Loki smiled vainly.
Vidar finally understood Loki’s plan. “So, if we steal his cloak I can wear it across Bifrost and he’ll neither see nor hear me.”
“Almost right, cousin,” Loki said. “If we steal his cloak, we’ll wake him up and you’ll have to answer to Odin. But Eistla told me something that not even Heimdall knows. The cloak is magical. If we steal a single thread, we can spin enough to weave a cloak for you and for Arvak if you like.”
Vidar touched his finger to his lips. “Quiet now. Heimdall will be on his way home soon. We want him to think we are animals in the forest, not conspirators waiting to prey upon him.”
They paused at the hem of the wood. The early light swelled, the first glimmer caught the silver roof of Odin’s hall. The vast black building with its hunched spine was silent, but seabirds called to the morning overhead. Dew shivered on the still fields of flax and barley, the dawnlight was white and cold.
Loki elbowed Vidar and gestured toward the east. A shadow approached. Vidar shrank behind a tree and watched. Heimdall returning from Bifrost. He walked nearly the full length of the hall before finding a door and letting himself in. Minutes dragged by. A dim light peered through a crack in a shutter at the end of the hall, then was extinguished. Vidar waited, his heart squeezed tight.
Finally, he touched Loki’s shoulder. “Come, Loki,” he said quietly. “He must be asleep by now.”
Loki followed him out of cover of the wood, and said, “Perhaps on the way, you’ll explain why you want to go to Midgard?”
Vidar fell silent, his lips pressed tight together. Protests and arguments were dangerous. Loki would pick over his words, the silent inflections of his hands and eyes, and make uncannily clever guesses.
“No?” Loki asked. “You won’t explain? I’ll find out eventually. You’ll let something slip.”
“Believe what you will.”
They approached the western end of the hall. Loki dropped his voice to a whisper. “Vidar, you look nervous. Are you really so afraid of your father?”
Afraid of his father? Afraid of the monster in his stained furs and dazzling jewels; one eye baleful, the other just an empty socket. Afraid of that black space, that void in Odin’s skull, which had sent men mad? The rumors about it were many: to look into Odin’s eye socket was to look into eternity reeling away, into one’s darkest, most secret fears, into the combined nightmares of every religion’s underworld. Or afraid of Odin’s dangerous delusions, his drunken logic, his deafening anger?
The sick misgivings Vidar had about Odin were more than just fear. Vidar was Odin’s son; they were formed of the same flesh and fiber. Vidar feared the part of himself that resembled his father. Somewhere, under the layers, that sinister miasma of ruthless cruelty could be waiting to spiral up like an ocean storm.
“I’d simply prefer never to have to deal with him again,” Vidar muttered.
“Eventually, you’ll be pulled into the family,” Loki said. “You know that.”
“That’s not necessarily true.”
“You’re fooling yourself. Your fate is with them. One way or another, they’ll draw you back; they’re inescapable.”
“I don’t wish to discuss it.”
Loki pointed to a door at the far west end of the building. “Heimdall’s door. It’s bolted from inside of course. Heimdall sleeps so soundly with his cape on that he worries thieves might visit him unnoticed.” He gave Vidar a wicked grin. “Thieves like you and me.”
“How do we get in, then?”
Loki pulled a piece of dark rock from his pouch. “Once again, I’m indispensable,” he said. “Really, Vidar, what would you have done without me?”
Vidar had to smile. “I don’t know, Loki. I just hope the cost is not more than I can afford.”
“I’m offended, cousin,” Loki said, sounding not at all offended. “I’m helping you because we are two of the same, you and I. We are outsiders.” Loki admired the rock in the dawn half-light. “This I stole from a fire giant named Muspel.” He weighed it in his left hand. “It has special properties. It draws metal to it. So if I place it just behind the bolts and pull it across . . .” Loki pressed the rock against the door, pulled slowly. With a satisfying snick the bolts slid out of place.
Vidar realized he was holding his breath.
Loki slowly pushed at the door. It squeaked. He stood back. “Go on, Vidar,” he said, “after you.”
Vidar slipped through the doorway, his eyes searching the room. It was dim and small with a low roof. The fire spat halfheartedly in the hearth. Heimdall was nowhere to be seen.
“There,” said Loki, indicating a lump of shadows near the hearth. Vidar peered closer, spied Heimdall’s toes. The cloak he wore sucked up light, smudging itself into the dark.
“You know he’s snoring like a forest fire under there,” Loki said. “We just can’t hear it because of the cloak.”
Vidar set his teeth; Loki was talking so loudly. “I know Heimdall can’t hear us,” he said, “but what about . . . others?”
Loki sighed. “Vidar, you have lost your taste for danger. What have you been doing out at Gammaldal the last thousand years? Weaving dresses and singing love songs?”
Vidar didn’t respond. He crouched next to Heimdall, peering at the cloak. “I think I spy a loose thread,” he said.
“Well, pull it,” Loki said. He was circling the walls slowly, picking up jewelry and carvings and examining them.
Vidar tentatively seized the loose thread. At that moment Heimdall stirred in his sleep, startling Vidar off-balance. He tipped over, nearly plunging his hands into the fire.
Loki laughed gloriously from a corner of the room. “Oh, well done, Vidar,” he said, slipping a carved whalebone into the front of his tunic. “That’s the Aesir spirit.”
Vidar ignored him, reached forward and this time got hold of the thread. He pulled. It eased out. Other threads caught behind it and bunched up. With his spare hand he held them flat. Soon, he had a thread the width of the cloak.
“I have it,” he said, standing and winding it around his wrist. “We should go.”
Loki’s tunic was bulging with stolen goods. “Yes, we should. But careful now. The sun is up, and you know Odin likes his early-morning walks.”
Vidar pulled open the door and ushered Loki out. The sun had crested the horizon now, a searing white glow. As Loki closed the door behind them, Vidar caught sight of a dark shape on the periphery of his vision. He turned with a gasp. In the distance, the hulking figure of his father. A thousand years compressed into a moment and Vidar remembered the broken body of his murdered lover. His breath stopped and he flattened himself against the wall. Loki instinctively did the same.
“What is it?” Loki asked, his pale eyes wide.
“Odin.” His blood rushed like a hot wave through his fingers and toes.
Loki leaned carefully forward. “All is well, cousin,” he said. “He heads toward the east. He hasn’t seen us.”
Vidar’s heart slowed. “You’re certain?”
“Yes. But we must be silent and quick.” Loki indicated the woods with a tilt of his head. “As soon as we see him disappear over the rise, we should run.”
Vidar chanced a glance toward the east. The dark figure moved slowly into the sun. Vidar could s
ee Odin’s back; if Odin turned even a fraction to his right he might catch sight of them. Vidar felt vulnerable and exposed, and longed for the cover of the trees.
“Wait,” Loki said, his arm extended in front of Vidar’s chest.
Odin approached the summit of the slope, then disappeared over the top of it.
“Now,” Vidar hissed.
They sprinted for the woods. Vidar half expected that his father’s booming voice would call “Vidar?” and freeze the blood in his veins.
But, miraculously, they plunged into the trees without notice.
Loki’s eyes were wild. “What an adventure, eh, Vidar?”
“Let’s just find our horses and leave,” Vidar said, “and may the next time I see Valaskjálf be a hundred years hence.”
Aud was working on carving another hair clasp for the Norns. Without Vidar’s expert help, the design was out of proportion and the curves hard and chunky. Hoofbeats outside had her springing to her feet and throwing open the door.
Not Vidar. Loki on his black stallion, his long hair tied behind him, his pale hands on the reins, his lean body erect in the saddle. He turned to smile at her and she felt herself smile back.
“Hello, Aud,” he said. “I have a gift for you.”
“Vidar’s not here,” Aud said. He had disappeared before she was awake, all part of his new secrecy.
“Vidar’s just a minute behind me,” Loki said, dismounting and letting Heror roam off. “We’ve been making preparations for his trip to Midgard. We raced home from Valaskjálf.” He advanced and touched her hair conspiratorially. “Well, I did. Last I heard he was calling out behind me, ‘Loki, it’s not a race.’”
Aud scanned the trees in the distance. So Vidar was going to Midgard. Her heart felt bruised. How long did he intend to be gone? How did he intend to spend his time with that woman?
“What’s wrong, Aud?” Loki said, studying her face closely. “You look positively desolate.”
Aud checked herself. She couldn’t allow a single hint of Vidar’s secret to be displayed to Loki. “I will miss him if he goes to Midgard.”
“You may come to stay with me if you want company,” Loki said. “Here, a gift for you.” He pulled out of the front of his tunic a pair of moonstone brooches joined by a golden chain.